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THE GREAT TRADITION 



A BOOK OF SELECTIONS FROM ENGLISH AND 
AMERICAN PROSE AND POETRY, ILLUSTRATING THE 
NATIONAL IDEALS OF FREEDOM, FAITH, AND CONDUCT 



CHOSEN AND EDITED BY 

EDWIN GREENLAW 

KENAN PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA 

AND 

JAMES HOLLY HANFORD 

ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH, UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA 



Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us. 

Burns, Shelley were with us — they watch from their graves. 



SCOTT, FORESMAN AND COMPANY 
CHICAGO NEW YORK 



0^ 






COPYBIGHT, 1919 

By Scott, Foresman and Company 



©CLA5ii21l9 



TABLE OF CONTENTS 



^ 



^ THE RENAISSANCE 

I. THE EXPANSION OF THE INDIVIDUAL— page 

Doctor Faustus {Abridged), Christopher Marlowe '..... 1 

Tamburlaine (Selection), Christopher Marlowe 12 

"All Knowledge to Be My Province," Francis Bacon 13 

A More Divine Perfection, Richard Hooker 14 

Self Discipline: The Story of Guyon, Edmund Spenser 15 

The Gospel of Beauty, Edmund Spenser , , , , 23 

n. A GREATER BRITAIN— 

The Character of Elizabeth, John Richard Green 25 

The Menace of Spain, John Richard Green 28 

The Spirit of England, William Shakespeare 31 

"This England" {Richard II) 31 

Unity Against the Foe {King John) 32 

England at War {Henry V) 32 

Ballad of Agincourt, Michael Drayton 34 

The Deeds of Elizabethan Seamen, Richard Hakluyt 36 

To the Virginian Voyage, Michael Drayton. 36 

The Victory of England, Sir Walter Raleigh 37 

in. TRAINING FOR EMPIRE— 

The Education of Men Who Are to Rule, Sir Thomas Elyot 42 

"The Rank Is But the Guinea's Stamp," Sir Thomas Elyot 46 

Op Virtuous and Gentle Discipline, Edmund Spenser 47 

"The Brave Courtier," Edmund Spenser 49 

Counsels of Experience, Francis Bacon 50 

Of Truth 50 

Of Travel 51 

Of Studies 52 

Of Nature in Men 53 

Of Great Place 53 

Of Dispatch 55 

The Service of Learning to the State, Francis Bacon 56 

In Praise of Learning 56 

Some Defects in Learning 59 

Of the Architecture of Fortune 60 

This Third Period of Time 62 

IV. IDEAS OF THE STATE— 

The Imaginary Commonwealth op Utopia, Sir Thomus More 63 

Thomas More to Peter Giles, of Antwerp 63 

England Through Utopian Eyes 66 

iii 



iv CONTENTS 

PAGE 

A Discourse upon International Relations, Happiness, and Reformers 72 

Labor in Utopia 76 

"And the Pursuit of Happiness" 79 

The WeKare of all the People 82 

"One Sovereign Governor," Sir Thomas Elyot 84 

The Garden of the Commonwealth, Sir Thomas Elyot 85 

Some Elizabethan Political Ideas in Shakespeare's Dramas 85 

Our Sea-Walled Garden (Richard II) 85 

Of Divine Right {Richard II) 87 

The Commonwealth of the Bees {Henry V) 90 

Of "Degree" {Troilus and Cressida) 91 

Of Government, Richard Hooker ; 93 

Maintaining Things That Are Established 93 

Of Law in Nature 94 

Of the Sources of Government 94 

Of the Law of Nations. 98 

"Her Voice the Harmony of the World" 99 

Two Counsels on Government, Francis Bacon 101 

Of Empire 101 

Of Innovations , , , , 102 

V. THE POET'S comment- 
Sonnets, William Shakespeare 102 

My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is, Sir Edward Dyer 105 

The Character of a Happy Life, Sir Henry Wotton 105 

Death, John Donne 105 

A Pindaric Ode, Ben Jonson 106 

His Pilgrimage, Sir Walter Raleigh 107 

The Last Pages of "The History of the World," Sir Walter Raleigh, ,,,,,. 108 



PURITANS AND KINGS 

I. THE SOUL AND THE WORLD— 

1. The People of a Book 

The Puritan Spirit, John Richard Green 109 

2. The Conflict in the Soul 

The Collar, George Herbert. 112 

Love, George Herbert 112 

Virtue, George Herbert 112 

The Retreat, Henry Vaughqn 112 

The World, Henry Vaughan 113 

Behind the Veil, Henry Vaughan 113 

The Fight with ApoUyon, John Bunyan 114 

Vanity Fair, John Bunyan 115 

3. Carpe Diem: Robert Herri ck 

Corinna's Going a-Maying 117 

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time 118 

To Daffodils 118 

A Thanksgiving to God for His House 118 

To Keep a True Lent 119 



CONTENTS V 

n. FAITH AND FREEDOM: JOHN MILTON— page 

1. The Maker of an Heroic Poem 

Himself a True Poem (An Apology, and A Letter) 119 

L'AUegro 120 

II Penseroso 122 

Lycidas 123 

Sonnets: On Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty-Three 126 

On His Blindness 126 

To Cyriack Skinner 126 

Of Darkness Visible {The Second Defense) 126 

Of Celestial Light (Paradise Lost) 127 

The Poet's Service to the State (Reason of Church Government) 128 

Fallen on Evil Days (Paradise Lost, Samson Agonistes) 130 

"Servant of God, Well Done!" (Paradise Lost) 131 

2. The Poem 

Paradise Lost, Book I, and Book II, 1-527) 131 

3. Liberty and Discipline (Areopagitica) 

The Virtue of Books 146 

Of Restraints 147 

Liberty of Thought 148 

A Heretic in the Truth 150 

Liberty the Nurse of All Great Wits 150 

Of DiscipUne (Reason of Church Government) 153 

Britain the Home of True Liberty (Second Defense) , 154 

4. The State 

The Masterpiece of a Politician (Reformation in England) 154 

The Source of Power (Tenure of Kings and Magistrates) 155 

Of Justice (Eikonoklastes) 156 

A Free Commonwealth (A Ready and Easy Way) 157 

So Foes op the State 

On the Detraction upon Certain Treatises 159 

On the Same 159 

On the New Forcers of Conscience 159 

On the Lord General Faiiiax 159 

To the Lord General Cromwell 160 

6. The International Mind 

On the Late Massacre in Piedmont 160 

The Nation's Protest (Piedmont) 160 

England and America (Of Reformation in England) 161 

The Brotherhood of Man (Tenure of Kings) 162 

m. THE BEGINNINGS OF FREE GOVERNMENT IN AMERICA— 

The Pilgrims and Their Compact, William Bradford 162 

The First Promotion of Learning, Edward Johnson 164 

The Mat-Pole of Merry Mount, Nathaniel Hawthorne 165 

IV. COMMONWEALTH AND RESTORATION— 

The Triumphs of the Commonwealth, Oliver Cromwell 171 

Peace Hath Its Victories, Oliver Cromwell 173 

An Appeal for Unity, Oliver Cromwell 174 

The Restoration, Samuel Pepys 175 

The Puritan, Samuel Butler 177 

Of Commonwealth (Leviathan), Thomas Hobbes 178 



vi CONTENTS 

PAGB 

The Political Verse op John Dryden 183 

Astraea Redux (Selection) 183 

Absalom and Achitophel (Selection) 184 

The Hind and The Panther (Selection) 186 

EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IDEALS OF SANITY AND ORDER 

I. CRITICISMS OF SOCIAL LIFE AND MANNERS— 

The Rape of the Lock, Alexander Pope 188 

The Spectator as an Instrument op Reform, Joseph Addison 198 

The Trumpet Club, Richard Steele 199 

The Spectator Club, Joseph Addison 201 

Public Opinion in the Making, Joseph Addison 203 

A Political Busybody, Joseph Addison 205 

II. STANDARDS OF INTELLECT AND TASTE— 

A Busy Life, Joseph Addison 207 

A Lady's Library, Joseph Addison 209 

The Education of Women, Daniel Defoe 210 

An Essay on Criticism, Alexander Pope (Selection) 212 

How TO Judge a Play, Joseph Addison 213 

ni. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEALS— 

The True Born Englishman, Daniel Defoe 215 

The British Constitution, Joseph Addison 216 

The Career of Conquest, Richard Steele 218 

Selections from Gulliver's Travels, Jonathan Swift 219 

Political Acrobatics 219 

Political Parties and International Relations 221 

Pubhc Servants in Lilliput 225 

EngUsh Institutions 225 

Research. 228 

War 232 

The Uses of Wealth 234 

IV. PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE— 

Woman (Moral Essays), Alexander Pope 235 

The Golden Mean (Second Epistle of Second Book of Horace), Alexander Pope. . 235 

A Perfect Universe (Essay on Man, Epistle I), Alexander Pope 236 

Self Love and Reason (Essay on Man, Epistle II), Alexander Pope 239 

Government (Essay on Man, Epistle III), Alexander Pope 240 

Equality (Essay on Man, Epistle IV), Alexander Pope 241 

Virtue (Essay on Man, Epistle IV), Alexander Pope 241 

Men of Fire, Richard Steele 241 

A Vision op Human Life, Joseph Addison 242 

THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 

I. THE ERA OF REVOLUTION— 

1. The New Sympathy 

An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard, Thomas Gray 245 

The Wrongs of Man, William Cowper 247 



CONTENTS vii 

PAoa 
Of Slavery 247 

The Lot of Poverty 248 

Of War 249 

Of Tyranny 249 

My Country 251 

The ReaHty of Humble Life, George Crabbe 251 

Democratic Ideals in the Poetry of Robert Burns 

The Cotter's Saturday Night 253 

A Winter Night 256 

A Man's a Man for A' That 258 

The Twa Dogs 258 

To a Mouse 261 

Macpherson's Farewell. 261 

A Dream 262 

The Tree of Liberty 263 

The American War 264 

Scots Wha Hae 265 

A Vision 265 

The Dumfries Volunteers 266 

The Toast 266 

Address to the Deil 266 

The Sincerity of Burns, Thomas Carlyle 268 

2. The Struggle Against Tyranny in England and America 

The Character of Pitt, John Richard Green 269 

Cabinet Government under George III, "Junius" 272 

An Address to the King, "Junius" 273 

An Imperial Britain, Edmund Burke 274 

On Concihating the Colonies, Edmund Burke 277 

On the Affairs of America, Edmund Burke 283 

Concord Hymn, Ralph Waldo Emerson 294 

Lexington, John Greenleaf Whittier 294 

Liberty or Death, Patrick Henry 295 

Washington Anticipates the Declaration, George Washington 296 

From the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson 296 

Times That Try Men's Souls, Thomas Paine 297 

On the American Revolution, William Cowper 298 

The Destiny of England and America, John Richard Green 298 

England and America in 1782, Alfred Tennyson 299 

3. The Upheaval in France 

Storm and Victory, Thomas Carlyle 299 

The Death-Birth of a World, Thomas Carlyle 304 

The Storm, Matthew Arnold 304 

4. The Theory of Political Justice 

Burke, William Wordsworth 305 

The Character of Burke, John Morley 305 

"A Liberty Connected with Order," Edmund Burke 307 

Of the Nature of Liberty 307 

The Nature of the British Constitution 309 

Of the Rights of Men 311 

Of Chivah-y 313 

Of Free Government 316 

The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine 319 

Government Is for the Living 319 



viii ' CONTENTS 

FAQB 

Of "Chivalry" 321 

What Are "The Rights of Man"? 325 

Of an Ambitious Norman, and of Titles 327 

America and the French Revolution 329 

"Made in Germany" 330 

A League of Nations 331 

Pohtical Justice, William Godwin 333 

Wealth and Poverty 333 

Of Perfectibility 334 

The Moral Effects of Aristocracy 335 

5. England and the French Revolution 

On the French Revolution, WiUiam Cowper 336 

Experiences of an English Idealist, William Wordsworth 337 

First View of the Revolution 337 

An Idealist of the Revolution 338 

Disappointment and Restoration 341 

France: An Ode, Samuel Taylor Coleridge 350 

n. THE CONFLICT WITH NAPOLEON— 

1. The Issue 

The War of Liberty, William Wordsworth 352 

The Cause 352 

The Relation of National Happiness and National Independence 354 

The Grounds of Hope 356 

Sonnets on the Crisis, William Wordsworth 356 

"Fair Star of Evening" 356 

On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic 356 

Thought of a Briton 357 

September, 1802, Near Dover 357 

Written in London, September, 1802 357 

"Milton! Thou Shouldst Be Living" 357 

"It Is Not to Be Thought of" 357 

"When I Have Borne in Memory" 358 

"There Is a Bondage Worse" 358 

"These Times Strike Monied Worldlings" 358 

"England! The Time Is Come" 358 

"Here Pause: The Poet Claims at Least This Praise" 358 

"Vanguard of Liberty" 359 

"Come Ye— Who, If" 359 

"Another Year!" 359 

2. The Downfall op Tyranny 

Sonnets on Napoleon, William Wordsworth 359 

October, 1803 359 

Anticipation 360 

Nelson at Trafalgar, Robert Southey ; 360 

Waterloo, Lord Byron , 366 

Waterloo, William Makepeace Thackeray 371 

Waterloo, William Wordsworth 380 

Moscow, William Wordsworth 380 

Political Greatness, Percy Bysshe Shelley 381 

Ozymandias, Percy Bysshe Shelley 381 



CONTENTS ix 

m. THE FAILURE OF REVOLUTION : SOLUTIONS OF THE SPIRITUAL PROBLEMS— 

1. The Return to Nature ^^°^ 

The Poet, William Wordsworth 381 

The Poet's Mission, William Wordsworth 382 

The Divine Life in Man and Nature, William Wordsworth.'. .-. 384 

Expostulation and Reply r 384 

Tintem Abbey 384 

Ode: Intimations of Immortality 386 

The World Is Too Much with Us 389 

Toussaint L'Ouverture ; 389 

Peele Castle 389 

Ode to Duty 390 

The Mountain Echo 390 

To a Skylark. 391 

Laodamia 391 

Character of the Happy Warrior 393 

On Universal Education {The Excursion) 394 

Propaganda and Poetry, Samuel Taylor Coleridge 395 

Christabel, Samuel Taylor Coleridge 401 

Dejection: An Ode, Samuel Taylor Coleridge 404 

2. The Free Personality 

Selections from the Poetry of Lord Byron 406 

Prometheus 406 

Sonnet on Chillon 406 

Solitude {Childe Harold) 407 

The Onward March of Freedom {Childe Harold) 409 

The Ocean {Childe Harold) 409 

The Renegade Poets {Don Juan) 410 

The Isles of Greece {Don Juan) 412 

The Vision of Judgment {Selection) 413 

3. A Vision of Perfection 

Poems by Percy Bysshe Shelley 415 

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty 415 

Ode to the West Wmd 416 

England in 1819 418 

The Power of Man {Prometheus Unbound) 418 

A Vision of the Future {Prometheus Unbound) 418 

The Day! {Prometheus Unbound) 420 

The World's Great Age Begins Anew {Hellas) 420 

Adonais 421 

A Du-ge 428 

4. The Immortality of Beauty 

The Poetry of John Keats 429 

Beauty {Endymion) 429 

Le Belle Dame Sans Merci 429 

Ode To a Nightingale 430 

Ode on a Grecian Urn 431 

On Chapman's Homer 431 

When I Have Fears 432 



3j CONTENTS 

NINETEENTH CENTURY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 

I. THE PROGRESS OF DEMOCRACY AND SOCIAL REFORM— 

1. Utilitarian- Ideas of Liberty ^^°^ 

On Liberty, John Stuart Mill 433 

2. The Principles and Policies of British Liberalism — ■ 

The Spirit of Liberalism, Viscount Morley 439 

Progress of the Nation under the Liberal Regime, John Bright 440 

Why I Am a Liberal, Robert Browning 444 

The Lost Leader, Robert Browning 444 

3. Freedom and the Empire 

Home-Thoughts, from Abroad, Robert Browning 444 

Home-Thoughts, from the Sea, Robert Browning 445 

You Ask Me, Why, Tho' 111 at Ease, Alfred Tennyson 445 

Of Old Sat Freedom on the Heights, Alfred Tennyson 445 

Love Thou Thy Land, Alfred Tennyson 445 

Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, Alfred Tennyson 447 

Hands All Round, Alfred Tennyson 450 

To the Queen, Alfred Tennyson ._ 450 

A Song in Time of Order, Algernon Charles Swinburne 451 

An Appeal, Algernon Charles Swinburne 452 

Recessional, Rudyard Kipling 452 

4. International Sympathies 

At the Sunrise in 1848, Dante Gabriel Rossetti 453 

Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth, Arthur Hugh Clough 453 

The Italian in England, Robert Browning 453 

The Patriot, Robert Browning 455 

On the Monument Erected to Mazzini at Genoa, Algernon Charles Swinburne 455 

To Louis Kossuth, Algernon Charles Swinburne 456 

France 1870, George Meredith 456 

America, Sidney Dobell 461 

To Walt Whitman in America, Algernon Charles Swinburne 461 

II. THE CRUSADE AGAINST MATERIALISM— 

1. The Gospel of Work 

The Inheritance, Thomas Carlyle 463 

Happiness and Labor, Thomas Carlyle 464 

Plugson of Undershot, Thomas Carlyle 465 

Labor, Thomas Carlyle 468 

Captains of Industry, Thomas Carlyle 470 

2. The Poet's Comment 

The Song of the Shirt, Thomas Hood 473 

West London, Matthew Arnold 474 

The Day Is Coming, William Morris 475 

Northern Farmer: New Style, Alfred Tennyson 476 

3. Wealth and Commonwealth 

Traffic, John Ruskin 477 

The Soldier's Duty to His Country, John Ruskin 487 

The White Thorn Blossom, John Ruskin 489 

4. The Ministry of Culture 

Sweetness and Light, Matthew Arnold 495 



CONTENTS xi 

in. SCIENCE AND FAITH— 

1. The Problem Stated ^^°^ 

The Physical Basis of Life, Thomas Henry Huxley 507 

2. The Supernatural in Life 

Natural Supernaturalism, Thomas Carlyle 516 

Certainty and Peace, John Henry Newman 521 

3. Poems of Doubt and Faith 

The Challenge of Science (In Memoriam), Alfred Tennyson 524 

The Higher Pantheism, Alfred Tennyson 525 

Wages, Alfred Tennyson 626 

Crossing the Bar, Alfred Tennyson 526 

An Epistle of Karshish, Robert Browning 626 

Abt Vogler, Robert Browning 630 

Rabbi Ben Ezra, Robert Browning 531 

Prospice, Robert Browning 634 

Epilogue to Asolando, Robert Browning 634 

Quiet Work, Matthew Arnold 534 

To a Friend, Matthew Arnold 635 

Morahty, Matthew Arnold 635 

Self-Dependence, Matthew Arnold 535 

Dover Beach, Matthew Arnold 636 

Where Lies the Land, Arthur Hugh Clough 536 

"Carpe Diem" (From the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam), Edward Fitzgerald. . 536 

The Garden of Proserpine, Algernon Charles Swinburne 537 

Invictus, William Ernest Henley 538 

AMERICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PERIOD 

I. THE NEW NATION 539 

Mother of a Mighty Race, William Cullen Bryant 539 

Liberty and Union, George Washington 539 

Party Spirit, George Washington 542 

America and the World, George Washington 543 

The Foundations of Our Government, Thomas Jefferson 545 

The Comedy of Politics, Washington Irving 546 

The American Experiment, Daniel Webster 660 

Free Government, Daniel Webster 661 

Sacred Obligations, Daniel Webster 663 

A Nation of Men, Ralph Waldo Emerson 564 

The Present Crisis, James Russell Lowell 568 

What Mr. Robinson Thinks, James Russell Lowell 569 

The Pious Editor's Creed, James Russell Lowell 570 

The Poor Voter on Election Day, John Greenleaf Whittier 571 

The Ship of State, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 572 

n. EXPANSION AND SOVEREIGNTY— 

1 Hear America Singing, Walt Whitman 572 

Pioneers! O Pioneers! Walt Whitman 572 

Rise, O Days, Walt Whitman 574 

Address at Gettysburg, Abraham Lincoln 575 

The Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln 575 

Commemoration Ode, James Russell Lowell 576 



xii CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Thott Mother With Thy Equal Brood, Walt Whitman 581 

O Star of France, Walt Whitman , . . . 583 

The Purpose op Democracy, Walt Whitman 584 

A New Earth and a New Man, Walt Whitman 586 

Dangers Within the State, Walt Whitman 587 

Nationality — (And Yet), Walt Whitman 588 

One Country, Frank L. Stanton 589 

m. THE EVE OF A NEW ERA— 

Not the Pilot, Walt Whitman 590 

The Prophecy op a New Era, Walt Whitman . 590 

The Destiny of America, Walt Whitman 590 

The Meaning op the Declaration of Independence, Woodrow Wilson 591 

Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson 594 

America, Sidney Lanier 596 



THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY 

I. A CLASH IN IDEALS— 

A Challenge to the Democratic Principle, Hugo Munsterherg 597 

The Mind of Germany, John Dewey 597 

The Gospel of Duty and Its Implications, John Dewey 601 

n. THE CASE AGAINST GERMANY— 

1. Britain's Indictment 

International Honor, David Lloyd George 603 

2. America's Indictment 

The Menace of Prussian Ambition, Woodrow Wilson 608 

The Significance of America's Entry into the War, Viscount Grey 611 

III. PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION— 

1 . The New Democracy 

A New Force in Politics, Carleton Hayes 613 

The Reconstruction of British Labor, From the Report of the Sub-Com- 
mittee of the Labor Party 614 

An Experiment in Democracy, Donald Hankey 618 

■ The Organization of Democracy, Edwin A. Alderman 619 

Natural Aristocracy, Paul Elmer More 620 

2. The Fellowship of Nations 

The British Commonwealth of Nations, General Smuts 623 

America and England, Arthur J. Balfour 625 

America in the World, John Dewey 627 

International Justice, Woodrow Wilson 628 

The Associated Peoples of the World, Woodrow Wilson 630 



INTRODUCTION 

This book is the result of a study, extending through five years, of methods 
by which the required course in literature for elementary college students may 
be made more effective. The editors, with their colleagues who have been asso- 
ciated in teaching English (3) in the University of North Carolina, were dissatis- 
fied with the prevailing type of course, — the study of literary history illustrated 
by "specimens" — as a requirement for elementary classes made up of students 
preparing for all sorts of careers. They believed that there should be a sharp 
differentiation between the methods used in such a course and those employed 
in advanced elective courses, where philological scholarship and literary criti- 
cism have value not only because of the greater maturity of the students but 
also because these students have chosen their courses through liking for such 
work. The editors believed, therefore, that that type of course which endeav- 
ored to create an interest in literary phenomena, their sequence and relations, 
was unwise because such interest, even when induced by an experienced teacher, 
is factitious, possessing little permanent value for the average student, who 
means to be a farmer, or a banker, or a lawyer, or an engineer. They believed, 
also, that the type of course which has developed through the dissatisfaction of 
many teachers with the one just outlined, — the course founded not on technical 
scholarship but on ''interest," a series of pleasant rambles among the foibles 
of Pepys or in the intricate rhythms of De Quincey, or a compound of love 
lyrics and fiction and Elia, while more likely than the other to arouse interest 
in reading, yet offends by its miscellaneousness, its lack of body, its failure to 
supply material for the development of what Bacon called "the sinews and 
steel of men's minds." 

The present volume recognizes both the need of teaching literature for its 
human and intrinsic value and the need of providing salutary discipline through 
a rigid adherence to a logically connected program of ideas. The basis of the 
book is historical, but it does not represent literary history in the narrower sense. 
The selections are chosen partly for their value as expressions of permanent 
human emotions and points of view; partly as landmarks in the march of the 
Anglo-Saxon mind from the beginning of the modern period. They are intended 
to represent, not the literary forms and manners, but the dominant ideas of 
successive epochs in the national life of the two great English speaking peoples, 
as these ideas have received large and permanent expression in literature. It 
will be recognized at once that in making this their principle of selection the 
editors have been true to the deeper current and the main intention of English 
literature, which has from the beginning been conditioned not by canons and 



xiv THE GEEAT TEADITION 

principles of art but by national thought and feeling. It will be acknowledged 
also that what is most vital in English literature, especially in the later periods, 
has connected itself more or less closely with the special problem and the great 
practical achievement of the Anglo-Saxon race, the working out of self-govern- 
ment. For this reason the emphasis on political materials, in so far as these 
materials embody principles rather than detailed applications, is justified, not 
only by their practical value in the problems and duties of citizenship, but by 
their adaptability to the broader end of humanistic culture. 

That the book, however, is not an anthology of patriotic literature will be 
apparent upon examination of the table of contents. Indeed, the editors have 
carefully avoided the poetry and prose of national aggrandizement. The prin- 
ciple that has guided the choice of material has been that expressed by Arnold : 
*'It is important, therefore, to hold fast to this: that poetry is at bottom a 
criticism of life ; that the greatness of a poet lies in his powerful and beautiful 
application of ideas to life, — to the question. How to live." It is this quality 
of the poet as a teacher that the greatest English poets themselves have always 
insisted upon as the mark of their calling. Philip Sidney speaks of "that 
delightful teaching which must be the right describing note to know a poet by " ; 
and, like others of his contemporaries, "a passionate lover of that unspeakable 
and everlasting beauty to be seen by the eyes of the mind," he regards poetry 
as the chief means by which to attain the end of knowledge — * ' to know, and by 
knowledge to lift up the mind from the dungeon of the body to the enjoying 
his own divine essence." One might make use of that time-honored device, the 
' ' roll-call, ' ' to show how continually this view is voiced by the greatest English 
poets. Spenser, the poet's poet, the embodiment of the qualities which seem 
to make of poetry a thing apart, nevertheless stated that his aim in writing the 
Faerie Queene was "to fashion a gentleman or noble person in virtuous and 
gentle discipline." Milton summed his idea of Spenser, whose disciple he 
was, in the statement that he was "a better teacher than Aquinas," and Milton's 
own writings bear abundant witness to his wish to be regarded as a teacher. 
In countless places in his poetry Wordsworth illustrated his faithfulness to the 
ideal which he professed: "Every great poet is a teacher; I wish to be con- 
sidered as a teacher or as nothing." To him "poetry is the breath and finer 
spirit of all knowledge ; it is the impassioned expression which is in the counte- 
nance of all science"; a belief which Shelley reiterates when he holds that 
poetry is ' ' the center and circumference of knowledge ; it is that which compre- 
hends all science"; and which rings out in the final words of his Defense: 
* ' Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. ' ' 

The task of the editors has been to select a body of prose and poetry that 
should not only illustrate the "planet-like music" of great thought clad in 
fitting vesture but should also reveal a great tradition, a constant and pro- 
gressive commentary on what the race has achieved in the arts of life. It is 
what Shelley called "idealized history," by which he meant events seen as 
outward shadows of spiritual truths. It is a bible of the English speaking 



INTRODUCTION XV 

peoples on both sides of the Atlantic, made up of scriptures that we value not 
for flawless art but for their interpretation of the spirit of the race. Whatever 
has been admitted has been chosen because it seemed to have some bearing on 
the right interpretation of this spirit and to have the quality of permanence. 
It will be found that the book includes most of the poetry and much of the prose 
that teachers have long agreed upon as the basis for an elementary college course. 
There is, therefore., ample material for the teacher who wishes to trace the his- 
torical development of English literature or for him who wishes to emphasize 
the imaginative sweep and the beauty of expression found in great literature. 
But it is felt that elementary students are more likely to arrive at some measure 
of appreciation of literature as belles lettres if little is said in class about the 
value of such appreciation. For such students the best method of approach 
would seem to be frankly intellectual : the attempt to answer the question ' ' What 
does the author have to say in this piece of writing and how is this related to 
what we have studied or to what men have thought in the past or are thinking 
in the present?" In order to assist the student in his effort to assimilate the 
material and to make it a permanent possession, a complete outline has been 
supplied and special titles are given, usually in the words of the author, for the 
selections from longer works. ' 

But while the book contains a large amount of the material generally 
included in books designed for survey courses, presenting it, however, in such a 
way as to assist the pupil to get something permanent out of it, the editors have 
omitted many writers and works usually represented in such anthologies. Many 
authors, significant for historical reasons, are appropriately studied in advanced 
courses where the chief emphasis is on the history and development of English 
literature as an art, but have no value to the elementary student except for their 
contribution to his lumber-room of facts. Thus, Cowley is an important figure 
for the study of the growth of English classicism; his dates, his use of the 
couplet or the ode, and the names of his poems will not ordinarily be retained 
by a Sophomore beyond the date of the final examination in the course. We 
inflict such "discipline" upon him because of our own interests or our own 
scholarly training; we are not thinking of him at all. It ought not to fill us 
with pride if the examination books we read at the end of the term are mere 
compounds of more or less accurate information about the relations between 
Genesis A and Genesis B, the middle English dialects, the problem of author- 
ship of Piers Plowman, the poetry of Crashaw, the use of the Spenserian stanza 
in the eighteenth century, ''the return to nature," and the other disjecta 
membra of a Cook's tour through literature. Through the marvelous recupera- 
tive power of nature, the germs of such misinformation as may chance to find a 
temporary lodgment within the outer corridors of sophomore intelligence are 
lightly and easily brushed aside after the day of testing has passed, and things 
are as they were. 

The space saved by these omissions and others like them has been used for 
presenting many new selections. These will be found valuable, it is believed, 



xvi THE GEEAT TRADITION 

not only because of their timeliness but also because they help to give unity an( 
solidity to the entire structure of the book. For example, we are accustomed t( 
the use of selections from the essays of Lord Bacon. These, however, have not 
hitherto been related to present thought; they have been studied chiefly for 
their difficulties of style and vocabulary. But the Advancement of Learning, 
which is practically unknown to college students, contains many passages which 
are much easier for them to understand ; it is also a trumpet-call for ambitious 
youth. Furthermore, when these passages from Bacon's treatise on learning in 
his own day are studied in connection with certain of his essays, or counsels of 
experience, and along with selections from Elyot and Spenser which bear on 
the same subject, — the training of those who were to rule Britain, we have a 
sounder principle of organization than that given by literary bibliography, 
annotation, and criticism of style ; we have also an excellent method for under- 
standing the mind of the Renaissance; and, best of all, we have solid cont 
tion to the education of those of this new day who are to rule in our comi^. 
wealth and in the new and greater commonwealth of the peoples of the worl^ 
As to timeliness of interest, examples are to be found in the scathing satire oi 
war and governments in Swift's Gulliver, or in Thomas More's sarcasm on 
"a place in the sun" as given in Utopia, or in Hooker's judgment on the 
philosophy that led Germany to attack the world, or in the fine argument for 
a League to Enforce Peace contained in the extract from the Leviathan of 
Hobbes, or in the compact summary of the difference between the theory ' 
government held by the late masters of Germany and the ideals of democrac^. 
set forth in the closing paragraph of Mills 's essay on Liberty. This last example 
is one of many that are scattered through the book which serve to show t|it 
difference between the philosophy and ideals of militarist Germany and the 
philosophy and ideals of the allied democracies. Could anything be more timely 
from this standpoint than to have college men study Burke, not only for the 
splendors of his style, or as an illustrious exponent of the art of oratory, but for 
those great passages in which he sets forth the principles of justice, international 
honor, and free government? Consider, for example, in the light of present 
problems, his treatment of the nature of empire, or his warning against the 
attempt to draw an indictment against a whole people, or his conception of 
justice tempered with mercy — "not what I may do, but what humanity, reason, 
and justice tell me I ought to do ' ' — or his insistence that the safety of the people 
consists not in documents and constitutions but in the spirit that informs them, 
a spirit as light as air, as strong as links of iron ; or his definition of free gcvern- 
ment : "To make a government requires no great prudence. Settle the seat of 
power; teach obedience; and the work is done. To give freedom is still more 
easy. It is not necessary to guide ; it only requires to let go the rein. But to 
form a free government ; that is, to temper together these opposite elements of 
liberty and restraint in one consistent work, requires much thought; deep 
reflection; a sagacious, powerful, and combining mind." Throughout the book 
will be found such passages, sometimes familiar enough, but here thrown into 



INTEODUCTION xvii 

^^new relief because of the quickening of our sensibilities in a time of national 
^ danger and triumph, or because of the setting in which they are here placed. 
Take for example Wordsworth's vision of the old chivalry and old romance in 
France, with the appeal that the thought of them made to his poet's imagina- 
tion, and then his meeting with a ' ' hunger-bitten girl ' ' and his friend 's comment, 
' ' 'Tis against that that we are fighting. ' ' The incident illuminates, as by a 
lightning's flash, the problem of present life. Or who among the throngs of 
students who learn, wearily enough, something about Milton would miss the 
thrill that comes from recognizing a familiar spirit if his ''lesson" should 
contain the passage from the tract on Reformation in England, here printed 
on pages 161-162, in which Milton, more than a century and a quarter before 
Burke, spoke passionately in defence of America and of the spirit that led 
eventually to the founding of a new nation across the seas; or if it contained 
-jjcf^^.paragraph from the Tenure of Kings in which Milton proclaims the brother- 
"'W6d of man: "Who knows not that there is a mutual bond of amity and 
•brotherhood between man and man over all the world, neither is it the English 
^sea that can sever us from that duty and relation." Such passages, made 
'" impressive because they become parts of a great tradition that the student 
gleans from the literature of centuries, are not transient steps toward a pass- 
"5 mark ; in the moments in which they are found there is stored up life and food 

for future years, 
to 

T In order to bring out clearly the meanings that such a body of thought 
contains for us, the arrangement of the material differs widely from that usually 

* employed. Chronology has been disregarded where it has seemed desirable to 
do so ; dates have been supplied where necessary to the understanding of the 

. selection, and not otherwise ; the same author may be represented under different 

' headings. More important than these matters of detail is the outline, or syllabus, 
which is supplied as a guide. Thus, the sixteenth century is not studied as a time 
when certain authors wrote at certain times various poems, dramas, and prose 
works. The ideas which enable one to enter into the mind of the Renaissance, 
so far as this is possible in an elementary course, are impressed upon the stu- 
dent's mind through definition and illustration. So throughout the book the 
plan of listing chronologically a large number of authors, with specimens of 
their work, is abandoned. The ideas that are expressed by the author of the 
selection are what the pupil is expected to master. The Table of Contents is 
therefore an integral part of the method of the book ; it is to be carefully studied 
in order that the relationship of the particular selection to that section in which 
it is placed may be fully understood. Further helps will be found in the Index, 
which again is not a mere catalogue of facts, or a body of notes, but a com- 
mentary. It follows from what has been said that annotation, in the ordinary 
sense, is not a part of the plan of the book. The editors believe that over- 
efnnotation, for elementary classes, not only deadens interest but confuses the 
student's mind by leading him to think that the results of his study are to be 



xviii THE GREAT TEADITION 

tabulated like a dictionary or an encyclopaedia instead of organized into a 
structure like a building. 

In this combination of doctrine with discipline we find once more the old 
definition of Humanism. Such was the conception of the men who founded 
classical learning in the Renaissance. The discipline they sought in the orderly 
and precise study of the classics was not a philological discipline alone, a matter 
of syntax and Greek particles, but the rebirth of a civilization in the minds of 
men. And the doctrine was the translation of this discipline into terms of 
citizenship. For Vergerius and Vittorino in Italy and Erasmus and Thomas 
More in England sought always to train men to be governors. The movement 
took its strength from the desire to realize the great tradition of antiquity in 
order to translate it into an intense nationalism for new times. Italy knew little 
gf her past; those who sought to create for her a soul founded their work on 
what they considered their true ancestry, ancient Rome, and, through Rome, 
Greece. Classical tradition was her tradition. So, too, Tudor England lacked 
national culture and sought the grounds for creating it in a similar study of a 
perfect civilization. There was reason, then, for the predominance of the classics 
in any scheme for the education of a gentleman. The new nations of the fifteenth 
and sixteenth centuries found in antiquity, classical and Hebraic, their Great 
Tradition. 

The bearing of these facts on our present educational and national problems 
is unmistakable. We stand at the end of an era, at the dawn of a new day. The 
rise of the modern state in the Renaissance was not more completely a phe- 
nomenon in that time than the conquest of the world by democracy is destined 
to become in our own. Our need is the same as theirs : to realize a new humanism, 
competent to guide through doctrine and discipline. Our need is greater than 
theirs, because the chief responsibility in those days rested on kings. About the 
only hope held out by Castiglione, in his treatise on courtiership, was that the 
prince might be a decent fellow, amenable to suggestions offered by wise cour- 
tiers. In those days the prince was the state. It is not so with us, now that all 
the world is to be the inheritance of democracy, either a democracy in which 
liberty is connected with order, or a democracy in which all things are levelled; 
nothing is secure, a new chaos in which hot, cold, moist and dry strive for 
momentary mastery and are gone. 

Now this need, overwhelming as it is, is met by a racial tradition as rich 
and as clearly defined as that of classical antiquity. It is only of late years that 
we have become somewhat aware of this, — fitfully, uncertainly, partially aware 
of it. For example, the teaching of history in our schools has somehow missed 
the fact that England and America are united not only by blood and speech but 
by a common tradition extending back through centuries; that American free 
institutions took form from the institutions of England; and that the American 
Revolution was one step in the great evolution of free government, a step as 
significant for the mother country as for us. The full value of this stupendous 



INTRODUCTION xix 

achievement, the joint working-out of free government, we have only begun to 
estimate. England is too often thought of as the abode of tyranny, the hereditary 
enemy of free America ; the old battles are still stupidly fought over in our 
schools, and a prejudice is formed that is not only dangerous but destructive 
to that cooperation in democratic government which is the manifest destiny of 
England and America. Something of what all this means, or is capable of 
meaning, is revealed in this book, in which for the first time the deepest idealism 
of the two countries, their bible of democracy as expressed in their literature, 
is set forth as a unity and with the cumulative effect of a mighty evolution. The 
book, therefore, becomes a revelation of the doctrine and the discipline of an 
ordered liberty, of the way in which the best liberal thought of today grows out 
of a great tradition, the warp and woof of the life of a thousand years. The 
best possible preparation for the new life, no longer isolated and set apart, that 
America now enters upon is to see that these ideas are as widely diffused as 
possible, so that they may reach, in one form or another, every citizen, every- 
where. And the best possible antidote to the madness of disordered liberty is to 
translate this idealism into what Walt Whitman called ''personalities." 

With such a tradition to draw upon for steadiness and vision, the oppor- 
tunity of the teacher of English is immeasurably extended. The greatest need 
of the present in the field of higher education is, as Paul Elmore More has said, 
"to restore to their predominance in the curriculum those studies that train 
the imagination, not, be it said, the imagination in its purely aesthetic function, 
. . . but the imagination in its power of grasping in a single firm vision, so 
to speak, the long course of human history and of distinguishing therein what 
is essential from what is ephemeral. ' ' The present volume, by enabling the stu- 
dent to enter into the mind of a past which is great in itself and vitally related 
to the present, invites the teacher of English literature to become what he has 
hitherto signally failed to be, a real champion of those elements in education 
which are faring ill amid the pressure of utilitarian subjects. Incidentally, such 
a preliminary study of the course of English literature affords the best possible 
basis for advanced study. Thus, a training in the fundamental ideas of the 
Renaissance is a better foundation for a scholarly and technical knowledge of 
Shakespeare or Spenser than is a survey, no matter how careful, of dramatic 
origins, or of Renaissance epic theory, or of the literary ideas of the Areopagus. 
So also in the Romantic period the first essential of thorough comprehension is 
a consideration of the intellectual, emotional, and spiritual experience which 
came to Englishmen as a result of the French Revolution. Thus the ninth, 
tenth, and eleventh books of Wordsworth's Prelude, which are not given in 
any book of selections commonly used in survey courses, become altogether the 
most important literary document of the age, constituting, as Legouis remarks, 
an inward history of Wordsworth's generation and showing how the nineteenth 
century was born out of the eighteenth. To pass lightly over a subject of such 
commanding importance, while attempting to focus th,e stfadent's attention 



XX THE GREAT TRADITION 

on the development of medievalism, or even, choosing the better part, while 
encouraging him in pleasant rambles with Elia or Hazlitt through the by-ways 
of literature, is to put a weapon into the hands of those critics who condemn 
the English teacher as a pedant or a dilettant and to hasten the exodus of 
college men from the liberal arts course. If we wish to restore literature to its 
true place as the main fortress of liberal culture we shall revise our methods of 
dealing with it. 

A peculiar advantage of studying literature in this way is the opportunity 
which it affords of bringing about a new integration of the entire curriculum 
of liberal subjects. It was perhaps the greatest advantage of the older classical 
discipline, intelligently conceived,, that it dealt with culture as a unit. Thus in 
Milton's program of education the history, the science, the art, the philosophy 
of Greece and Eome were studied as a single subject matter, interrelated in all 
its parts. The common medium of all was literature. The fruit of education in 
the ancient tongues was the comprehension of a great civilization in its entirety, 
a closely woven knowledge of the best that had been thought and done by a 
great people. The time for such a re-creation of antiquity in the mind has long 
since passed. Greek and Latin, even for the few who surrender themselves to 
the claims of the most classical of courses, have shrunk to a mere department 
of knowledge. Rightly or wrongly, we have substituted modern culture for 
ancient as the material of humane discipline. And in so doing, as the defenders 
of the old system are ever ready to point out, we have failed to secure a compar- 
able result. But this failure is due to no inherent deficiency in the subject 
matter. It is due rather to the fact that we have found no new unity to take the 
place of the old. We have divorced science from philosophy and history from 
art. The chief virtue of the modern professor consists in his ability to stick to 
his last. The teacher of science, the teacher of history, the teacher of philosophy, 
''each in his sea of life enisled," continues to dispense his private and peculiar 
knowledge, indifferent to its place or bearing in the sum of things. To the 
teacher of literature above all others falls the task of relating the work of other 
departments, for literature in the broadest sense contains the fruit of all. 
Unfortunately, however, too many teachers of English treat, their subject as if 
it were no less isolated than the rest, and the emphasis in the available books 
of selections accentuates this tendency. In the course contemplated for users of 
this volume, literature is the record of man's achievement on this planet in 
modern times. It is indeed a criticism of life, and that in no narrow sense. An 
understanding of it demands that the student draw on all his resources of 
knowledge in many fields. Adequate instruction implies the closest cooperation 
between the teacher of English and the teachers of history, of ethics and meta- 
physics, of social science, of government. The method looks forward to a revision 
of the whole curriculum of liberal arts in the interests of singleness of impres- 
sion. Meanwhile, the teacher of literature, if he is awake to his responsibilities, 
can do much to remedy the chief defect in our college program by revealing to 
the student the essential unity of human thought. 



INTKODUCTION xxi 

The unity of human thought, and the enormous, silent power of forces 
inherited are written in our blood. After speaking of the argument that a 
virile nation had better give attention to "doing things worthy to be written 
[than] writing things fit to be done," Philip Sidney says of England: 

Certain it is that, in our plainest homeliness, yet never was the Albion nation without 
poetry. Marry, this argument, though it be levelled against poetry, yet is it indeed a 
chain-shot against all learning. ... Of such mind were certain Goths, of whom it is 
written that, having in the spoil of a famous city taken a fair library, one hangman — 
belike fit to execute the fruits of their wits — who had murdered a great number of bodies, 
would have set fire in it. ''No," said another very gravely, "take heed what you do; for 
while they are busy about these toys, we shall with more leisure conquer their countries." 
This, indeed, is the ordinary doctrine of ignorance. 

So in overweening and pride a band of men who likened their leaders to "Wotan 
and Siegfried, and to another tribal deity, trampled Belgium, destroyed cathe- 
drals and colleges and libraries, and boasted that they would replace these treas- 
ures inherited from the workmen and artists and dreamers of past ages with 
something just as good, turned out with speed and precision in their modern 
factories. But in "these toys," symbolic of the great tradition of the human 
spirit, resided a potency that called to arms freemen from the four quarters of 
the earth. 

In Sidney's story, as in the recent incarnation of it in the conquerors of 
Belgium and their nemesis, are seen the two heredities. The first heredity is 
that of the lust for power, brutal, unregardful alike of human suffering and of 
human effort to escape from the dungeon of the body to a realization of the 
divine essence of the soul. The savagery of war, the savagery of industrialism, 
the savagery of intolerance, the savagery of the mob, are all fruits of this 
heredity, the survival of the beast. And the other heredity is the gift of the 
spirit. The Russian peasant, most humble of men, thinks that he possesses some 
share of it. Piers Plowman talked of it, Latimer and Ridley and all the glorious 
company of martyrs saw its brighter flame through the flames that consumed 
their mortal bodies. It was the Grail that cheered the little company of exiles 
in the cabin of the Mayflower and enabled them to write that first compact of 
free government in America. It was the courage in the heart of Washington, . 
and the divinity that was in Lincoln. It is " the one Spirit 's plastic stress ' ' that 

Sweeps through the dull dense world, compelling there 

All new successions to the forms they wear, 

Torturing the unwilling dross that checks its flight 

To its own likeness, as each mass may bear. 

And bursting in its beauty and its might 

From trees and beasts and men into the Heaven's light. 

"Genius itself," as Paul Elmer More has admirably said, "the master of 
music and poetry and all art that enlarges life, genius itself is nothing other 
than the reverberations of this enormous past [the voice of the race] on the 
sounding-board of some human intelligence, so finely wrought as to send forth 



Xxii THE GREAT TRADITION 

in purity the echoed tones which from a grosser soul come forth deadened and 
confused by the clashing of the man's individual impulses." 

The faith of the martyr, the courage of the pioneer, the steadfastness of 
the hero, the love of the emancipator, the vision of the poet, — and the virtue 
of plain and inarticulate men and women everywhere, gain their power from 
this great tradition of the race. It was this idealism, sleeping but not dead, 
that swept America like a divine fire in the months following April of 1917. 
In the great war this heredity met and conquered the heredity of brute power. 
Other crises remain to be met, for the warfare never ends. It is the task of 
school and college to guard the flame. 



The editors desire to express their grateful acknowledgements to the follow- 
ing authors and publishers for the use of copyrighted matter contained in the book : 
To Paul Elmer More and to the Houghton Mifflin Company, for the selection from 
Aristocracy and Justice; to John Dewey and to Henry Holt & Company, for the 
extract from German Philosophy and Politics, and to Professor Dewey and the 
Atlantic Monthly Company for the paragraphs from ''Understanding the Mind 
of Germany." The extract from British Social Politics is used by the kind 
permission of the author. Professor Carleton Hayes. Through the kindness of 
the Atlantic Monthly Company the editors are enabled to include the paragraphs 
from Professor Miinsterberg 's article on ''The Standing of Scholarship in 
America." The selection by Donald Hankey, from A Student in Arms, is 
included by kind permission of E. P. Dutton & Company, publishers of the book. 
For the right to use an extract from Viscount Morley 's Recollections, the editors 
are indebted to the publishers, the Macmillan Company. The selections from 
Whitman's, prose and verse are used by the kind permission of the literary 
executor of Whitman's works, Mr. Horace Traubel. 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 

THE RENAISSANCE 

I. THE EXPANSION OF THE INDIVIDUAL 



The Tragical History op Doctor Faustus 

cpieistopher marlowe 

Enter Chorus 

Chorus. ISi^ot marching now in fields of 

Thrasymene, 
Where Mars did mate the Carthaginians ; 
Nor sporting in the dalliance of love, 
In courts of kings where state is overturn'd ; 
Nor in the pomp of proud audacious deeds, 
Intends our Muse to vaunt her heavenly 

verse : 
Only this, gentlemen, — we must perform 
The form of Faustus' fortunes, good or bad : 
To patient judgments we appeal our plaud, 
And speak for Faustus in his infancy. 
Now is he born, his parents base of stock, 
In Germany, within a town call'd Rhodes : 
Of riper years, to Wertenberg he went. 
Whereas his kinsmen chiefly brought him 

up. 
So soon he profits in divinity. 
The fruitful plot of scholarism grac'd. 
That shortly he was grac'd with doctor's 

name, 
Excelling all whose sweet delight disputes 
In heavenly matters of theology; 
Till swoln with cunning, of a self-conceit, 
His waxen wings did mount above his reach. 
And, melting, heavens conspir'd his over- 
throw ; 
For, falling to a devilish exercise. 
And glutted now with learning's golden 

gifts. 
He surfeits upon cursed necromancy; 
Nothing so sweet as magic is to him. 
Which he prefers before his chief est bliss: 
And this the man that in his study sits. 

[Exit. 

Faustus discovered in his study 

Faust. Settle thy studies, Faustus, and be- 
gin 

To sound the depth of that thou wilt pro- 
fess: 



Having commenc'd, be a divine in show, 

Yet level at the end of every art, 

And live and die in Aristotle's works. 

Sweet Analytics, 'tis thou hast ravish'd me ! 

Bene disserere est finis logices. 

Is, to dispute well, logic's chief est end? 

Affords this art no greater miracle? 

Then read no more ; thou hast attain'd that 

end: 
A greater subject fitteth Faustus' wit : 
Bid Economy farewell, and Galen come, 
Seeing, Ubi desinit philosophus, ibi incipit 

medieus : 
Be a physician, Faustus; heap up gold. 
And be eternis'd for some wondrous cure : 
Sumtnum bonum medicines sanitas, 
The end of physic is our body's health. 
Why, Faustus, hast thou not attain'd that 

end? 
Is not thy common talk found aphorisms ? 
Are not thy bills hung ujd as monuments. 
Whereby whole cities have escaj)'d the 

plague. 
And thousand desperate maladies been 

eas'd? 
Yet art thou still but Faustus, and a man. 
Couldst thou make men to live eternally, 
Or, being dead, raise them to life again, 
Then this profession were to be esteem'd. 
Physic, farewell ! Where is Justinian ? 

[Reads. 
Si una eademque res legatur duobus, alter 

rem, alter valorem, rei, etc. 
A pretty case of paltry legacies ! [Beads. 
Exhcereditare filium non potest pater, nisi, 

etc. 
Such is the subject of the institute, 
And universal body of the law : 
This study fits a mercenary drudge, 
Who aims at nothing but external trash; 
Too servile and illiberal for rne. 
When all is done, divinity is best: 
Jerome's Bible, Faustus; view it well. 

[Beads. 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



Stipendium peccati mors est. Ha! Stipen- 

dium, etc. 
The reward of sin is death : that's hard. 

[^Beads. 
Si peccasse negamus, fallimur, et nulla est in 

nobis Veritas; 
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive 
ourselves, and there's no truth in us. Why, 
then, belike we must sin, and so consequently 

die: 
Ay, we must die an everlasting death. 
What doctrine call you this, Che sera, sera, 
What will be, shall be ? Divinity, adieu ! 
These metaphysics of magicians, 
And necromantic books are heavenly; 
Lines, circles, scenes, letters, and characters ; 
Ay, these are those that Faustus most de- 
sires. 
0, what a world of profit and delight, 
Of power, of honor, of omnipotence, 
Is promis'd to the studious artisan ! 
All things that move between the quiet poles 
Shall be at my command: emperors and 

kings 
Are but obeyed in their several provinces, 
Nor can they raise the wind, or rend the 

clouds ; 
But his dominion that exceeds in this, 
Stretcheth as far as doth the mind of man ; 
A sound magician is a mighty god : 
Here, Faustus, tire thy brains to gain a 

deity. 

Enter Wagner 

Wagner, commend me to my dearest friends. 
The German Valdes and Cornelius; 
Eequest them earnestly to visit me. 
Wag. I will, sir. [Exit. 

Faust. Their conference will be a greater 

help to me 
Than all my labors, plod I ne'er so fast. 

Enter Good Angel and Evil Angel 

G. Ang. 0, Faustus, lay thy damned book 
aside. 

And gaze not on it, lest it tempt thy soul, 

And heap God's heavy wrath upon thy head ! 

Read, read the Scriptures: — that is blas- 
phemy. 

E. Ang. Go forward, Faustus, in that fa- 
mous art 

Wherein all Nature's treasure is eontain'd: 

Be thou on earth as Jove is in the sky. 

Lord and commander of these elements. 

[Exeunt Angels. 

Faust. How am I glutted with conceit of 
this ! 

Shall I make spirits fetch me what I please. 



Resolve me of all ambiguities. 

Perform what desperate enterprise I will ? 

I'll have them fly to India for gold, 

Ransack the ocean for orient pearl. 

And search all corners of the new-found 

world 
For pleasant fruits and princely delicates; 
I'll have them read me strange philosophy. 
And tell the secret of all foreign kings ; 
I'll have them wall all Germany with brass. 
And make swift Rhine circle fair Werten- 

berg ; 
I'll have them fill the public schools with 

silk, 
Wherewith the students shall be bravely 

clad; 
I'll levy soldiers with the coin they bring, 
And chase the Prince of Parma from our 

land. 
And reign sole king of all the provinces ; 
Yea, stranger engines for the brunt of war. 
Than was the fiery keel at Antwerp's 

bridge, 
I'll make my servile spirits to invent. 

Enter Valdes and Cornelius 

Come, German Valdes and Cornelius, 
And make me blest with your sage confer- 
ence, 
Valdes, sweet Valdes, and Cornelius, 
Know that .your words have won me at the 

last 
To practice magic and concealed arts: 
Yet not your words only, but mine own 

fantasy. 
That will receive no object ; for my head 
But ruminates on necromantic skill. 
Philosophy is odious and obscure; 
Both law and physics are for petty wits ; 
Divinity is basest of the three. 
Unpleasant, harsh, contemptible, and vile : 
'Tis magic, magic, that hath ravish'd me. 
Then, gentle friends, aid me in this attempt ; 
And I, that have with concise syllogisms 
Gravell'd the pastors of the German church. 
And made the flowering pride of Werten- 

berg 
Swarm to my problems, as the infernal 

spirits 
On sweet Mus^us when he came to hell. 
Will be as cunning as Agrippa was. 
Whose shadow made all Europe honor him. 
Vald. Faustus, these books, thy wit, and our 

experience. 
Shall make all nations to canonize us. 
As Indian Moors obey their Spanish lords, 
So shall the spirits of every element 



THE EENAISSANCE 



Be always serviceable to us three ; 

Like lions shall they guard us when we 

please ; 
Like Almain rutters with their horsemen's 

staves. 
Or Lapland giants, trotting by our sides ; 
Sometimes like women, or unwedded maids, 
Shadowing more beauty in their airy brows 
Than have the white breasts of the queen of 

love : 
From Venice shall they drag huge argosies, 
And from America the golden fleece 
That yearly stuffs old Philip's treasury ; 
If learned Faustus will be resolute. 
Faust. Valdes, as resolute am I in this 
As thou to live : therefore object it not. 
Corn. The miracles that magic will perform 
Will make thee vow to study nothing else. 
He that is grounded in astrology, 
Enrich'd with tongues, well seen in minerals. 
Hath all the principles magic doth require:^ 
Then doubt not, Faustus, but to be re- 

nowm'd. 
And more frequented for this mystery 
Than heretofore the Delphian oracle. 
The spirits tell me they can dry the sea. 
And fetch the treasure of all foreign wrecks. 
Ay, all the wealth that our forefathers hid 
Within the massy entrails of the earth : 
Then tell me, Faustus, what shall we three 

want? 
Faust. Nothing, Cornelius. 0, this cheers 

my soul ! 
Come, shoAV me some demonstrations magi- 
cal. 
That I may conjure in some lusty grove. 
And have these joys in full possession. 
Vald. Then haste thee to some solitary 

grove, 
And bear wise Bacon's and Albertus' works, 
The Hebrew Psalter, and New Testament ; 
And whatsoever else is requisite 
We will inform thee ere our conference 

cease. 
Corn. Valdes, first let him know the words 

of art; 
And then, all other ceremonies learn'd, 
Faustus may try his cunning by himself. 
Vald. First I'll instruct thee in the rudi- 
ments. 
And then wilt thou be perfeeter than I. 
Faust. Then come and dine with me, and, 

after meat. 
We'll canvass every quiddity thereof; 
For, ere I sleep, I'll try what I can do : 
This night I'll conjure, though I die there- 
fore. [Exeunt. 



Enter two Scholars 
First Schol. I wonder what's become of 

Faustvis, that was wont to make our 

schools ring with sic probo. 
Sec. Schol. That shall we know, for see, 

here comes his boy. 

Enter Wagner 

First Schol. How now, sirrah! where's thy 
master ? 

Wag. God in heaven knows. 

Sec. Schol. Why, dost not thou know"? 

Wag. Yes, I know ; but that follows not. 

First Schol. Go to, sirrah ! leave your jest- 
ing, and tell us where he is. 

Wag. That follows not necessary by force 
of argument, that you, being licentiates, 
should stand upon: therefore acknowl- 
edge your error, and be attentive. 

Sec. Schol. Why, didst thou not say thou 
knewest ? 

Wag. Have you any witness on't? 

First Schol. Yes, sirrah, I heard you. 

Wag. Ask my fellow if I be a thief. 

Sec. Schol. Well, you will not tell us? 

Wag. Yes, sir, I will tell you; yet, if you 
were not dunces you would never ask 
me such a question, for is not he corpus 
naturalef and is not that mobile f then 
wherefore should you ask me such a 
question? But that I am by nature 
phlegmatic, slow to wrath, and prone 
to lechery (to love, I would say), it 
were not for you to come within forty 
foot of the place of execution, although 
I do not doubt to see you both hanged 
the next sessions. Thus having tri- 
umphed over you, I will set my coun- 
tenance like a precisian, and begin to 
speak thus : — Truly, my dear brethren, 
my master is within at dinner, with 
Valdes and Cornelius, as this wine, if 
it could si^eak, would inform your wor- 
ships : and so, the Lord bless you, pre- 
serve you, and keep you, my dear 
brethren, my dear brethren! [Exit. 

First Schol. Nay, then, I fear he has fallen 
into that damned art for which they 
two are infamous through the world. 

See. Schol. Were he a stranger, and not 

allied to me, yet should I grieve for 

. him. But, come, let us go and inform 

the Rector, and see if he by his grave 

counsel can reclaim him. 

First Schol. 0, but I fear me nothing can 
reclaim him! 

Sec. Schol. Yet let us try what we can do. 

[Exeunt. 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Enter Faustus to conjure 

Faust. Now that the gloomy shadow of the 

eai'th, 
Longing to view Orion's drizzling look, 
Leaps from th' antarctic world unto the sky, 
And dims the welkin with her pitchy breath, 
Faustus, begin thine incantations. 
And try if devils will obey thy best. 
Seeing thou hast pray'd and sacrifle'd to 

them. 
Within this circle is Jehovah's name, 
Forward and backward anagrammatis'd, 
Th' abbreviated names of holy saints. 
Figures of every adjunct to the heavens, 
And characters of signs and erring stars. 
By which the spirits are enf orc'd to rise : 
Then fear not, Faustus, but be resolute, 
And try the uttermost magic can perform. — 
Sint mihi dei Acherontis propitii! Valeat 
numen triplex Jehovce! Ignei, aerii, 
aquatani spiritus, salvete! Orientis 
princeps Belzehub, inferni ardentis 
monarcha, et Demogorgon, propitiamus 
vos ut appareat et surgat Mephis- 
topJiilis, quod tumeraris : per Jeliovam, 
Gehennam, et consecratam aquam quam 
nunc spargo, signumque crueis quod 
nunc facio, et per vota nostra, ipse nunc 
surgat nobis dicatus Mepliistophilis ! 

Enter Mephistophilis 

I charge thee to return, and change thy 

shape ; 
Thou art too ugly to attend on me : 
Go, and return an old Franciscan friar; 
That holy shape becomes a devil best. 

[_Exit Mephistophilis. 
I see there's virtue in my heavenly words : 
Who would not be proficient in this art? 
How pliant is this Mephistophilis, 
Full of obedience and humility ! 
Such is the force of magic and my spells : 
No, Faustus, thou art conjurer laureat. 
That canst command great Mephistophilis : 
Quin regis Mephistophilis fratris imagine. 

Be-enter Mephistophilis like a 
Franciscan friar 

Meph. Now, Faustus, what wouldst thou 

have me do? 
Faust. I charge thee wait upon me whilst I 

live. 
To do whatever Faustus shall command. 
Be it to make the moon drop from her 

sphere. 
Or the ocean to overwhelm the world. 
Meph. I am a servant to great Lucifer, 



And may not follow thee without his leave : 

No more than he commands must we per- 
form. 

Faust. Did not he charge thee to appear to 
me? 

Meph. No, I came hither of mine own ac- 
cord. 

Faust. Did not my conjuring speeches raise 
thee ? speak. 

Meph. That was the cause, but yet per ac- 
cidens; 

For, when we hear one rack the name of 
God, 

Abjure the Scriptures and his Saviour 
Christ, 

We fly, in hope to get his glorious soul ; 

Nor will we come, unless he use such means 

Whereby he is in danger to be damn'd. 

Therefore the shortest cut for conjuring 

Is stoutly to abjure the Trinity, 

And pray devoutly to the prince of hell. 

Faust. So Faustus hath 

Already done; and holds this principle. 

There is no chief but only Belzehub ; 

To whom Faustus doth dedicate himself. 

This word "damnation" terrifies not him, 

For he confounds hell in Elysium: 

His ghost be with the old philosophers ! 

But, leaving these vain trifles of men's souls. 

Tell me what is that Lucifer thy lord? 

Meph. Arch-regent and commander of all 
spirits. 

Faust. Was not that Lucifer an angel once ? 

Meph. Yes, Faustus, and most dearly lov'd 
of God. 

Faust. How comes it, then, that he is prince 
of devils? 

Meph. 0, by aspiring pride and insolence ; 

For which God threw him from the face of 
heaven. 

Faust. And what are you that live with 
Lucifer ? 

Meph. Unhappy spirits that fell with Luci- 
fer, 

Conspir'd against our God with Lucifer, 

And are for ever damn'd with Lucifer. 

Faust. Where are joxi damn'd? 

Meph. In hell. 

Faust. How comes it, then, that thou art 
out of hell? 

Meph. Why, this is hell, nor am I out of it. 

Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of 
God, 

And tasted the eternal joys of heaven. 

Am not tormented with ten thousand hells. 

In being depriv'd of everlasting bliss ? 

0, Faustus, leave these frivolous demands, 



THE EENAISSANCE 



Which strike a terror to my fainting soul! 
Faust. What, is great Mephistophilis so 

passionate 
For being deprived of the joys of heaven? 
Learn thou of Faustus manly fortitude, 
And scorn those joys thou never shalt pos- 
sess. 
Go bear these tidings to great Lucifer : 
Seeing Faustus hath incurr'd eternal death 
By desjDerate thoughts against Jove's deity, 
Say, he surrenders up to him his soul, 
So he Avill spare him four-and-twenty years. 
Letting him live in all voluptuousness; 
Having thee ever to attend on me, 
To give me whatsoever I shall ask, 
To tell me whatsoever I demand. 
To .slay mine enemies, and aid my friends. 
And always be obedient to my will. 
Go and return to mighty Lucifer, 
And meet me in my study at midnight. 
And then resolve me of thy master's mind. 
Meph. I will, Faustus. [Exit. 

Faust. Had I as many souls as there be 

stars, 
I'd give them all for Mephistophilis. 
By him I'll be great emj^eror of the world, 
And make a bridge thorough the moving 

air, 
To pass the ocean with a band of men ; 
I'll join the hills that bind the Afric shore, 
And make that country continent to Spain, 
And both contributory to my crown : 
The Emperor shall not live but by my leave, 
Nor any potentate of Germany. 
Now that I have obtained Avhat I desir'd, 
I'll live in speculation of this art. 
Till Mephistophilis return again. [Exit. 

****** 

Faustus discovered in his study 

Faust. Now, Faustus, must 

Thou needs be damn'd, and canst thou not 
be sav'd: 

What boots it, then, to think of God or 
heaven ? 

Away with such vain fancies, and despair; 

Despair in God, and trust in Belzebub : 

Now go not backward ; no, Faustus, be reso- 
lute : 

Why waver'st thou 1 0, something soundeth 
in mine ears, 

"Abjure this magic, turn to God again!" 

Ay, and Faustus will turn to God again. 

To God ? he loves thee not ; 

The god thou serv'st is thine own apjoetite. 

Wherein is fix'd the love of Belzebub: 

To him I'll build an altar and a church. 



And offer lukeAvarm blood of new-born 
babes. 

Enter Good Angel and Evil Angel 

G. Ang. Sweet Faustus, leave that execrable 
art. 

Faust. Contrition, i3rayer, repentance — 
what of them? 

G. Ang. 0, they are means to bring thee 
unto heaven ! 

E. Ang. Rather illusions, fruits of lunacy. 

That make men foolish that do trust them 
most. 

G. Ang. Sweet Faustus, think of heaven and 
heavenly things. 

E. Ang. No, Faustus; think of honor and of 
wealth. [Exeunt Angels. 

Faust. Of wealth ! 

Why, the signiory of Embden shall be mine. 

When Mephistophilis shall stand by me. 

What god can hurt thee, Faustus? thou art 
safe: 

Cast no more doubts. — Come, Mephis- 
tophilis, 

And bring glad tidings from great Luci- 
fer ; — • 

Is't not midnight ? — come, Mephistophilis, 

Veni, veni Mephistophile! 

Enter Mephistophilis 

Now tell me what says Lucifer, thy lord? 
Mejyh. That I shall wait on Faustus whilst 

he lives. 
So he will buy my service with his soul. 
Faust. Already Faustus hath hazarded that 

for thee. 
Meph. But, Faustus, thou must bequeath 

it solemnly, 
And write a deed of gift with thine own 

blood ; 
For that security craves great Lucifer. ■ 
If thou deny it, I will back to hell. 
Faust. Stay, Mephistophilis, and tell me, 

what good Avill my soul do thy lord? 
Meph. Enlarge his kingdom. 
Faust. Is that the reason why he tempts us 

thus? 
Meph. Solamen miseris socios habuisse do- 

loris. 
Faust. Why, have you any jDain that tor- 
ture others ! 
Meph. As great as have the human souls of 

men. 
But, tell me, Faustus, shall I have thy soul ? 
And I will be thy slave, and wait on thee. 
And give thee more than thou hast wit to 

ask. 
Faust. Ay, Mephistophilis, I give it thee. 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



Mepli. Then, Faustus, stab thy arm coura- 
geously, 
And bind thy soul, that at some certain day 
Great Lucifer may claim it as his own ; 
And then be thou as great as Lucifer. 
Faust. [Stabbing his arm] Lo, Mephis- 

tophilis, for love of thee, 
I cut mine arm, and with my proper blood 
Assure my soul to be great Lucifer's, 
Chief lord and regent of i^erpetual night ! 
View here the blood that trickles from mine 

arm. 
And let it be propitious for my wish. 
Meph. But, Faustus, thou must 
Write it in manner of a deed of gift. 
Faust. Ay, so I will [Writes]. But, Mephis- 

tophilis. 
My blood congeals, and I can write no more. 
Meph. I'll fetch thee fire to dissolve it 

straight, [Exit. 

Faust. What might the staying of my blood 

portend ? 
Is it unwilling I should write this bill ? 
Why streams it not, that I'may write afresh ? 
Faustus gives to thee his soul: ah, there it 

stay'd ! 
Why shouldst thou not? is not thy soul 

thine own? 
Then write again, Faustus gives to thee his 

soul. 

Re-enter Mephistophilis with a chafer of 
coals 

Meph. Here's fu-e ; come, Faustus, set it on. 
Faust. So, now the blood begins to clear 

again ; 
Now will I make an end immediately. 

[Writes. 
Meph. 0, what will not I do to obtain his 

soul ! [Aside. 

Faust. C onsummatum est; this bill is ended, 
And Faustus hath bequeathed his soul to 

Lucifer. 
But what is this inscription on mine arm ? 
Homo, fuge: whither should I fly? 
If unto God, he'll throw me down to hell. 
My senses are deceiv'd; here's nothing 

writ : — 
I see it plain; here in this place is writ. 
Homo, fuge : yet shall not Faustus fly. 
Meph. I'll fetch him somewhat to delight 

his mind. [Aside, and then exit. 

Be-enter Meppiistophilis with Devils, who 
give crowns and rich apparel to 
Faustus_, dance, and then depart 

Faust. Speak, Mephistophilis, what means 
this slaow ? 



Meph. Nothing, Faustus, but to delight thy 

mind withal. 
And to show thee what magic can perform. 
Faust. But may I raise up spirits when I 

please ? 
Meph. Ay, Faustus, and do greater things 

than these. 
Faust. Then there's enough for a thousand 

souls. 
Here, Mephistophilis, receive this scroll, 
A deed of gift of body and of soul: 
But yet conditionally that thou perform 
All articles jjrescrib'd between us both. 
Meph. Faustus, I swear by hell and Lucifer 
To effect all promises between us made ! 
Faust. Then hear me read them. [Reads] 
On these conditions following. First 
that Faustus may be a spirit in form 
and substance. Secondly, that Mephis- 
tophilis shall be his servant, and at his 
command. Thirdly, that Mephis- 
tophilis shall do for him, and bring him 
whatsoever he desires. Fourthly, that 
he shall be in his chamber or house in- 
visible. Lastly, that he shall appear to 
the said John Faustus, at all times, in 
what form or shape soever he please. 
I, John Faustus, of Wertenberg, Doc- 
tor, by these presents, do give both body 
and soul to Lucifer prince of the east, 
and his minister Mephistophilis ; and 
furthermore grant unto them, that, 
twenty-four years being expired, the 
articles above-written inviolate, full 
power to fetch or carry the said John 
Faustus, body and soul, flesh, blood, or 
goods, into their habitation wheresoever. 
By me, John Faustus. 
Meph. Speak, Faustus, do you deliver this 

as your deed? 
Faust. Ay, take it, and the devil give thee 

good on't ! 
Meph. Now, Faustus, ask what thou wilt. 
Faust. First will I question with thee about 

hell. 
Tell me, where is the place that men call 

hell? 
Meph. Under the heavens. 
Faust. Ay, but whereabout? 
Meph. Within the bowels of these elements, 
Where we are tortur'd and remain for ever : 
Hell hath no limits, nor is cireumscrib'd 
In one self place ; for where we are is hell. 
And where hell is, there must we ever be : 
And, to conclude, when all the world dis- 
solves, 
And every creature shall be purified. 



THE EENAISSANCE 



All places shall be hell that are not heaven. 
Faust. Come, I think hell's a fable. 
Meph. Ay, think so still, till experience 

change thy mind. 
Faust. Why, think'st thou, then, that Faus- 

tus shall be damn'd ? 
Meph. Ay, of necessity, for here's the scroll 
Wherein thou hast given thy soul to Lucifer. 
Faust. Ay, and body too : but what of that"? 
Think'st thou that Faustus is so fond to 

imagine 
That, after this life, there is any pain 1 
Tush, these are trifles and mere old wives' 

tales. 
Meph. But, Faustus, I am an instance to 

prove the contrary. 
For I am damn'd and am now in hell. 
Faust. How ! now in hell ! 
Nay, an this be hell, I'll willingly be damn'd 

here : 
What ! walking, disputing, etc. 
But, leaving off this, let me have a wife, 
The fairest maid in Germany ; 
For I am wanton and lascivious, 
And cannot live without a wife. 
Meph. How ! a wife ! 
I prithee, Faustus, talk not of a wife. 
Faust. Nay, sweet Mephistophilis, fetch 

me one, for I will have one. 
Meph. Well, thou wilt have one? Sit there 

till I come : I'll fetch thee a wife in the 

devil's name. [Exit. 

Re-enter Mephistophilis with a Devil drest 
like a Woman, with fireworks 

Meph. Tell me, Faustus, how dost thou like 

thy wife ? 
Faust. A plague on iier ! 
Meph. Tut, Faustus, 
Marriage is but a ceremonial toy ; 
If thou lovest me, think no more of it. 
I'll cull thee out the fairest courtesans. 
And bring them every morning to thy bed : 
She whom thine eye shall like, thy heart shall 

have. 
Be she as chaste as was Penelope, 
As wise as Saba, or as beautiful 
As was bright Lucifer before his fall. 
Hold, take this book, peruse it thoroughly : 

[Gives book. 
The iterating of these lines brings gold ; 
The framing of this circle on the ground 
Brings whirlwinds, tempests, thunder, and 

lightning ; 
Pronounce this thrice devoutly to thyself. 
And men in armor shall appear to thee, 
Ready to execute what thou desir'st. 



Faust. Thanks, Mephistophilis: yet fain 
would I have a book wherein I might 
behold all spells and incantations, that 
I might raise up spirits when I please. 

Meph. Here they are in this book. 

[Turns to them. 

Faust. Now would I have a book where I 
might see all characters and i^lanets of 
the heavens, that I might know their 
motions and dispositions. 

Meph. Here they are too. 

[Turns to them. 

Faust. Nay, let me have one book more, — 
and then I have done, — wherein I might 
see all plants, herbs, and trees, that 
grow upon the earth. 

Meph. Here they be. 

Faust. 0, thou art deceived. 

Meph. Tut, I warrant Uiee. 

[Turns to them. 

Faust. When I behold the heavens, then I 
repent. 

And curse thee, wicked Mei3histo]3hilis, 

Because thou hast depriv'd me of those joys. 

Meph. Why, Faustus, 

Thinkest thou heaven is such a glorious 
thing? 

I tell thee, 'tis not half so fair as thou. 

Or any man that breathes on earth. 

Faust. How prov'st thou that? 

Meph. 'Twas made for man, therefore is 
man more excellent. 

Faust. If it were made for man, 'twas made 
for me : 

I will renounce this magic and repent. 

Enter Good Angel and Evil Angel 

G. Ang. Faustus, repent ; yet God will pity 

thee. 
E. Ang. Thou art a spirit ; God cannot pity 

thee. 
Faust. Who buzzeth in* mine ears I am a 

spirit ? 
Be I a devil, yet God may jDity me ; 
Ay, God will pity me, if I repent. 
E. Ang. Ay, but Faustus never shall repent. 

[Exeunt Angels. 
Faust. My heart's so harden'd, I cannot 

repent : 
Scarce can I name salvation, faith, or 

heaven, 
But fearful echoes thunder in mine ears, 
"Faustus, thou art damn'd!" then swords, 

and knives, 
Poison, guns, halters, and envenom'd steel 
Are laid before me to despatch myself; 
And long ere this I should have slain myself, 



8 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Had not sweet pleasure eonquer'd deep 
despair. 

Have not I made blind Homer sing to me 

Of Alexander's love and CEnon's death f 

And hath not he, that built the walls of 
Thebes 

With ravishing sound of his melodious harp, 

Made music with my Mephistophilis ? 

Why should I die, then, or basely despair! 

I am resolv'd ; Faustus shall ne'er repent. — 

Come, Mephistophilis, let us dispute again, 

And argue of divine astrology. 

Tell me, are there many heavens above the 
moon? 

Are all celestial bodies but one globe. 

As is the substance of this centric earth ? 

Meph. As are the elements, such are the 
spheres. 

Mutually folded in each other's orb. 

And, Faustus, 

All jointly move upon one axletree, 

Whose terminus is term'd the world's wide 
pole; 

Nor are the names of Saturn, Mars, or 
Jupiter 

Feign'd, but are erring stars. 

Faust. But, tell me, have they all one mo- 
tion, both situ et tempore f 

Meph. All jointly move from east to west 
in twenty-four hours upon the poles of 
the world; but differ in their motion 
upon the poles of the zodiac. 

Faust. Tush, 

These slender trifles Wagner can decide : . 

Hath Mephistophilis no greater skill? 

Who knows not the double motion of the 
planets ? 

The first is finish'd in a natural day ; 

The second thus ; as Saturn in thirty years ; 
Jupiter in twelve; Mars in four; the 
Sun, Venus, and Mercury in a year; 
the Moon in twenty-eight days. Tush, 
these are freshmen's suiDpositions. But, 
tell me, hath every sphere a dominion 
or intelligentiaf 

Meph. Ay. 

Faust. How many heavens or spheres are 
there? 

Meph. Nine; the seven planets, the firma- 
ment, and the empyreal heaven, 

Faust. Well resolve me in this question; 
why have we not conjunctions, opposi- 
tions, aspects, eclipses, all at one time, 
but in some years we have more, in some 
less? 

Meph. Per incequalem motum respectu 
totius. 



Faust. Well, I am answered. Tell me who 

made the world ? 
Meph. I will not. 

Faust. Sweet Mephistophilis, tell me. 
Meph. Move me not, for I will not tell thee. 
Faust. Villain, have I not bound thee to 

tell me anything? 
Meph. Ay, that is not against our kingdom ; 

but this is. Think thou on hell, Faustus, 

for thou art damned. 
Faust. Think, Faustus, upon God that made 

the world. 
Meph. Remember this. [Exit. 

Faust. Ay, go, accursed spirit, to ugly hell ! 
'Tis thou hast damn'd distressed Faustus' 

soul. 
Is't not too late? 

Ee-enter Good Angel and Evil Angel 

E. Ang. Too late. 

G. Ang. Never too late, if Faustus can re- 
pent. 

E. Ang. If thou repent, devils shall tear 
thee in pieces. 

G. Ang. Repent, and they shall never raze 
thy skin. . [Exeunt Angels. 

Faust. Ah, Christ, my Saviour, 

Seek to save distressed Faustus' soul ! 

Enter Lucifer, Belzebub, and 
Mephistophilis 

Luc. Christ cannot save thy soul, for he is 
just : 

There's none but I have interest in the same. 

Faust. 0, who art thou that look'st so ter- 
rible? 

Luc. I am Lucifer, 

And this is my companion-prince in hell. 

Faust. 0, Faustus, they are come to fetch 
away thy soul! 

Luc. We come to tell thee thou dost in- 
jure us; 

Thou talk'st of Christ, contrary to thy 
promise : 

Thou shouldst not think of God: think of 
the devil. 

And of his dam too. 

Faust. Nor will I henceforth : pardon me 
in this, 

And Faustus vows never to look to heaven, 

Never to name God, or to pray to Him, 

To burn his Scriptures, slay his ministers, 

And make my spirits pull his churches down. 

Luc. Do so, and we will highly gratify thee. 

Faustus, we are come from hell to show thee 
some pastime : sit down, and thou shalt 
see all the Seven Deadly Sins appear in 
their proper shapes. 



THE EENAISSANCE 



9 



Faust. That sight will be as pleasing 

unto me, 
As Paradise was to Adam, the first day 
Of his creation, 
Luc. Talk not of Paradise nor creation; 

but mark this show: talk of the devil, 

and nothing else. — Come away! 

****** 

[JL long interval, during which Faustus has 
many marvelous adventures in all parts 
of the world] 

Enter Wagner 

Wag. I think my master means to die 

shortly, 
For he hath given to me all his goods : 
And yet, methinks, if that death were near. 
He would not banquet, and carouse, and swill 
Amongst the students, as even now he doth. 
Who are at supper with such belly-cheer 
As Wagner ne'er beheld in all his life. 
See, where they come! belike the feast is 

ended. [Exit. 

Enter Faustus with two or three Scholars, 
and Mephistophilis 

First Schol. Master Doctor Faustus, since 
our conference about fair ladies, which 
was the beautif ulest in all the world, we 
have determined with ourselves that 
Helen of Greece was the admirablest 
lady that ever lived : therefore. Master 
Doctor, if you will do us that favor, as 
to let us see that peerless dame of 
Greece, whom all the world admires for 
majesty, we should think ourselves much 
beholding unto you. 

Faust. Gentlemen, 

For that I know your friendship is unf eign'd, 

And Faustus' custom is not to deny 

The just requests of those that wish him well 

You shall behold that peerless dame of 
Greece, 

No otherways for pomp and majesty 

Than when Sir Paris cross'd the seas with 
her. 

And brought the spoils to rich Dardania. 

Be silent, then, for danger is in words. 

[Music sounds, and Helen passeth over the 
stage] 

Sec. Schol. Too simple is my wit to tell her 
praise. 

Whom all the world admires for majesty. 

Third Schol. No marvel though the angry 
Greeks pursu'd 

With ten years' war the rape of such a queen. 

Whose heavenly beauty passeth all compare. 



First Schol. Since we have seen the pride of 

Nature's works. 
And only paragon of excellence. 
Let us depart ; and for this glorious deed 
Happy and blest be Faustus evermore ! 
Faust. Gentlemen, farewell: the same I 

wish to you. [Exeunt Scholars. 

Enter an Old Man 

Old Man. Ah, Doctor Faustus, that I might 

prevail 
To guide thy steps unto the way of life, 
By which sweet path thou mayst attain the 

goal 
That shall conduct thee to celestial rest ! 
Break heart, drop blood, and mingle it with 

tears, 
Teai's falling from repentant heaviness 
Of thy most vile and loathsome filthiness, 
The stench whereof corrupts the inward soul 
With such flagitious crimes of heinous sin 
As no commiseration may exjDel, 
But mercy, Faustus, of thy Saviour sweet, 
Whose blood alone must wash away thy 

guilt. 
Faust. Where are thou, Faustus? wretch, 

what hast thou done? 
Damn'd art thou, Faustus, damn'd; despair 

and die! 
Hell calls for right, and with a roaring voice 
Says, "Faustus, come; thine hour is almost 

come" ; 
And Faustus now will come to do thee right. 
[Mephistophilis gives him a dagger. 
Old Man. Ah, stay, good Faustus, stay thy 

desperate steps! 
I see an angel hovers o'er thy head. 
And, with a vial full of precious grace, 
Offers to pour the same into thy soul : 
Then call for mercy, and avoid despair. 
Faust. Ah, my sweet friend, I feel 
Thy words to comfort my distressed soul ! 
Leave me a while to ponder on my sins. 
Old Man. I go, SAveet Faustus; but with 

heavy cheer, 
Fearing the ruin of thy hopeless soul. 

[Exit. 
Faust. Accursed Faustus, where is mercy 

now^ 
I do repent ; and yet I do despair : 
Hell strives with grace for conquest in my 

breast : 
What shall I do to shun the snares of death 1 
Meph. Thou traitor, Faustus, I arrest thy 

soul 
For disobedience to my sovereign lord : 
Revolt, or I'll in piecemeal tear thy flesh. 



10 



THE GREAT TEADITION 



Faust. Sweet Mephistophilis, entreat thy 

lord 
To pardon my unjust presumption, 
And with my blood again I will confirm 
My former vow I made to Lucifer. 
Meph. Do it, then, quickly, with unfeigned 

heart, 
Lest greater danger do attend thy drift. 
Faust. Torment, sweet friend, that base and 

crooked age, 
That durst dissuade me from thy Lucifer, 
"With greatest toi-ments that our hell affords. 
Meph. His faith is great ; I cannot touch his 

soul; 
But what I may afflict his body with 
I will attempt, which is but little worth. 
Faust. One thing, good servant, let me 

crave of thee. 
To glut the longing of my heart's desire, — 
That I might have unto my paramour 
That heavenly Helen which I saw of late, 
Whose sweet embraeings may extinguish 

.clean 
Those thoughts that do dissuade me from my 

vow. 
And keep mine oath I made to Lucifer. 
Meph. Faustus, this, or what else thou shalt 

desire. 
Shall be perf orm'd in twinkling of an eye. 

Be-enter Helen 
Faust. Was this the face that launch'd a 

thousaiad ships, 
And burnt the topless towers of Ilium 1 — 
Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a 

kiss. — [Kisses her. 

Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it 

flies !— 
Come, Helen, come, give me my soul again. 
Here will I dwell, for heaven is in these lips, 
And all is dross that is not Helena. 
I will be Paris, and for love of thee, 
Listead of Troy, shall Wertenberg be sack'd ; 
And I will combat with weak Menelaus, 
And wear thy colors on my plumed crest ; 
Yes, I will wound Achilles in the heel. 
And then return to Helen for a kiss. 
0, thou art fairer than the evening air 
Clad in the beauty of a thousand stars ; 
Brighter art thou than flaming Jupiter 
When he appear'd to hapless Semele ; 
More lovely than the monarch of the sky 
In wanton Arethusa's azur'd arms; 
And none but thou shalt be my paramour! 

[Exeunt. 
Enter the Old Man 
Old Man. Accursed Faustus, miserable 

man, 



That from thy soul exelud'st the grace of 

heaven. 
And fly'st the throne of his tribunal-seat ! 

Enter Devils 

Satan begins to sift me with his pride : 
As in this furnace God shall try my faith, 
My faith, vile hell, shall triumph over thee ; 
Ambitious fiends, see how the heavens smile 
At your repulse, and laugh your state to 

scorn ! 
Hence, hell ! for hence I fly unto my God. 
[Exeunt — on one side, Devils, on the other, 
Old Man. 

Enter Faustus, with Scholars 

Faust. Ah, gentlemen ! 

First Schol. What ails Faustus? 

Faust. Ah, my sweet chamber-fellow, had 
I lived with thee, then had I lived still ! 
but now I die eternally. Look, comes 
he not? comes he not? 

Sec. Schol. What means Faustus? 

Third Schol. Belike he is grown into some 
sickness by being over-solitary. 

First Schol. If it be so, we'll have physi- 
cians to cure him. — 'Tis but a surfeit; 
never fear, man. 

Faust. A surfeit of deadly sin, that hath 
damned both body and soul. 

Sec. Schol. Yet, Faustus, look up to heaven; 
remember God's mercies are infinite. 

Faust. But Faustus' offence can ne'er be 
pardoned : the serpent that tempted 
Eve may be saved, but not Faustus. 
Ah, gentlemen, hear me with patience, 
and tremble not at nay speeches! 
Though my heart pants and quivers to 
remember that I have been a student 
here these thirty years, 0, would I had 
never seen Wertenberg, never read 
book! and what wonders I have done, 
all Germany can witness, yea, all the 
world ; for which Faustus hath lost both 
Germany and the world, yea, heaven 
itself, heaven, the seat of God, the 
throne of the blessed, the kingdom of 
joy; and must remain in hell for ever, 
hell, ah, hell, for ever ! Sweet friends, 
what shall become of Faustus, being in 
hell for ever? 

Third Schol. Yet, Faustus, call on God. 

Faust. On God, whom Faustus hath ab- 
jured ! on God, whom Faustus hath 
blasphemed! Ah, my God, I would 
weep ! but the devil draws in my tears. 
Gush forth blood, instead of tears ! yea, 



THE EENAISSANCE 



11 



life and soul ! 0, he stays my tongue ! 
I would lift up my hands ; but see, they 
hold them, they hold them ! 

All. Who, Faustus? 

Faust. Lucifer and Mephistophilis. Ah, 
gentlemen, I gave them my soul for my 
cunning ! 

All. God forbid! 

Faust. God forbade it, indeed ; but Faustus 
hath done it : for vain pleasure of twen- 
ty-four years hath Faustus lost eternal 
joy and felicity. I writ them a bill with 
mine own blood; the date is expired; 
the time will come, and he will fetch me. 

First Schol. Why did not Faustus tell us 
of this before, that divines might have 
prayed for thee? 

Faust. Oft have I thought to have done so ; 
but the devil threatened to tear me in 
pieces, if I named God, to fetch both 
body and soul, if I once gave ear to 
divinity : and now 'tis too late. Gentle- 
men, away, lest you perish with me. 

Sec. Schol. 0, what shall we do to save 
Faustus ? 

Faust. Talk not of me, but save yourselves, 
and depart. 

Third Schol. God will strengthen me; I 
will stay with Faustus. 

First Schol. Tempt not God, sweet friend ; 
but let us into the next room, and there 
pray for him. 

Faust. Ay, pray for me, pray for me ; and 
what noise soever ye hear, come not 
unto me, for nothing can rescue me. 

Sec. Schol. Pray thou, and we will pray 
that God may have mercy upon thee. 

Faust. Gentlemen, farewell: if I live till 
morning, I'll visit you; if not, Faustus 
is gone to hell. 

All. Faustus, farewell. 

[Exeunt Scholars — The clock strikes eleven. 

Faust. Ah, Faustus. 

Now hast thou but one bare hour to live, 

And then thou must be damn'd perpetually ! 

Stand still, you ever-moving spheres of 
heaven. 

That time may cease, and midnight never 
come; 

Fair Nature's eye, rise, rise again, and make 

Perpetual day ; or let this hour be but 

A year, a month, a week, a natural day, 

That Faustus may repent an.d save his soul ! 

lente, lente cur rite ^ noctis equi! 

The stars move still, time runs, the clock 
will strike. 

The devil will come, and Faustus must be 
damn'd. 



0, I'll leap up to my God ! — Who pulls me 

down ? — 
See, see, where .Christ's blood streams in the 

firmament ! 
One drop would save my soul, half a drop : 

ah, my Christ ! — 
Ah, rend not my heart for naming of my 

Christ ! 
Yet will I call on him : 0, spare me, Luci- 
fer!— 
Where is it now? 'tis gone: and see, where 

God 
Stretcheth out his arm, and bends his ireful 

brows ! 
Mountains and hills, come, come, and fall 

on me. 
And hide me from the hea^^ wrath of God? 
No, No ! 

Then will I headlong run into the earth : 
Earth, gape ! 0, no, it will not harbor me I 
You stars that reign'd at my nativity. 
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell 
Now draw up Faustus, like a foggy mist. 
Into the entrails of yon laboring clouds. 
That, when you vomit forth into the air. 
My limbs may issue from your smoky 

mouths. 
So that my soul may but ascend to heaven ! 
[The clock strikes the half -hour. 
Ah, half the hour is past! 'twill all be past 

anon. 
God, 

If thou wilt not have mercy on my soul. 
Yet for Christ's sake, whose blood hath ran- 

som'd me. 
Impose some end to my incessant pain ; 
Let Faustus live in hell a thousand years, 
A hundred thousand, and at last be sav'd. 
0, no end is limited to damned souls! 
Why wert thou not a creature wanting soul? 
Or why is this immortal that thou hast? 
Ah, Pythagoras' metempsychosis, were that 

true. 
This soul should fly from me, and I be 

chang'd 
Unto some brutish beast! all beasts are 

happy, 
For, when they die. 

Their souls are soon dissolv'd in elements; 
But mine must live still to be plagu'd in hell. 
Curs'd be the parents that engender'd me ! 
No, Faustus, curse thyself, curse Lucifer 
That hath depriv'd thee of the joys of 

heaven, 

[The clock strikes twelve. 
0, it strikes, it strikes ! Now, body, turn to 

air. 
Or Lucifer will bear thee quick to hell ! 



12 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



[Thunder and lightning. 
soul, be ehang'd into little water-drops, 
And fall into the ocean, ne'er be found ! 

Enter Devils 

My God, my God, look not so fierce on me ! 
Adders and serpents, let me breathe a while ! 
Ugly hell, gape not ! come not, Lucifer ! 
I'll burn my books ! — Ah, Mephistophilis ! 

[Exeunt Devils with Faustus. 

Enter Chorus 

Chor. Cut is the branch that might have 

grown full straight, 
And burned is Apollo's laurel-bough, 
That sometime grew within this learned man. 
Faustus is gone : regard his hellish fall. 
Whose fiendf ul fortune may exhort the wise. 
Only to wonder at unlawful things, 
Whose deepness doth entice such forward 

wits 
To practice more than heavenly power per- 
mits. [Exit. 

Terminat hora diem; terminai auctor opus 

Selections from Tamburlaine 
christopher marlowe 
1. The Will to Power 

Meander {to the Persian Prince). Your 
majesty shall shortly have your wish, 

And ride in triumph through Persepolis. 

[Exeunt all except Tamburlaine and his 
three Captains. 

Tamb. And ride in triumph through Per- 
sepolis ! — 

Is it not brave to be a king, Techelles ! — 

Usumcasane and Theridamas, 

Is it not passing brave to be a king. 

And ride in triumph through Persepolis? 

Tech. 0, my lord, it is sweet and full of 
pomp ! 

TJsum. To be a king, is half to be a god. 

Ther. A god is not so glorious as a king : 

I think the pleasure they enjoy in heaven. 

Cannot compare with kingly joys in earth ; — 

To wear a croAvn enchas'd with pearl and 
gold. 

Whose virtues carry with it life and death ; 

To ask and have, command and be obey'd; 

When looks breed love, with looks to gain 
the prize, 
^ Such power attractive shines in princes' 
eyes. 

Tamb. Why, say, Theridamas, wilt thou be 
a king? 



Ther. Nay, though I praise it, I can live 

without it. 
Tamb. What say my other friends? will you 

be kings? 
Tech. I, if I could, with all my heart, my 

lord. 
Tamb. Why, that's well said, Techelles: so 

would I : — 
And so would you, my masters, would you 

not? 
Usum. What, then, my lord? 
Tamb. Why, then, Casane, shall we wish for 

aught 
The world affords in greatest novelty, 
And rest attemptless, faint, and destitute? 
Methinks we should not. I am strongly 

mov'd. 
That if I should desire the Persian crown, 
I could attain it with a wondrous ease : 
And would not all our soldiers soon consent. 
If we should aim at such a dignity ? 
Ther. I know they would with our persua- 
sions. 
Tamb. Why, then, Theridamas, I'll first 

assay 
To get the Persian kingdom to myself; 
Then thou for Parthia; they for Seythia 

and Media; 
And, if I prosper, all shall be as sure 
As if the Turk, the Pope, Afric, and Greece, 
Came creeping to us with their crowns 

a-pieee. 

[From Act. II, Sc. v.] 

2. Infinite Desire 

Tamburlaine (to the Persian Prince, whom 
he has conquered). The thirst of reign 
and sweetness of a crown. 
That caus'd the eldest son of heavenly Ops 
To thrust his doting father from his chair. 
And place himself in the empyreal heaven, 
Mov'd me to manage arms against thy state. 
What better precedent than mighty Jove? 
Nature, that fram'd us of four elements 
Warring within our breasts for regiment, 
Doth teach us all to have aspiring minds : 
Our souls, whose faculties can comprehend 
The wondrous architecture of the world, 
And measure every wandering planet's 

course, 
Still climbing after knowledge infinite. 
And always moving as the restless spheres. 
Will us to wear ourselves, and never rest, 
Until we reach the ripest fruit of all. 
That perfect bliss and sole felicity. 
The sweet fruition of an earthly crown. 

[From Act II, Sc. vii.] 



THE EENAISSANCE 



13 



3. In Praise of Beauty 
Ah, fair Zenocrate ! — divine Zenoerate ! 
Fair is too foul an epithet for thee, — 
That in thy passion for thy country's love, 
And fear to see thy kingly father's harm, 
With hair dishevel'd wip'st thy watery 

cheeks ; 
And, like to Flora in her morning's pride, 
Shaking her silver tresses in the air, 
Rain'st on the earth resolved jaearl in show- 
ers, 
And sprinklest sapphires on thy shining 

face. 
Where Beauty, mother to the Muses, sits, 
And comments volumes with her ivory pen. 
Taking instructions from thy flowing eyes; 
Eyes, when that Ebena steps to heaven. 
In silence of thy solemn evening's walk. 
Making the mantle of the richest night, 
The moon, the planets, and the meteors, 

liglit; 
There angels in their crystal armors fight 
A doubtful battle with my tempted thoughts 
For Egypt's freedom and the Soldan's life. 
His life that so consumes Zenocrate ; 
Whose sorrows lay more siege unto my soul 
Than all my army to Damascus' walls ; 
And neither Persia's sovereign nor the Turk 
Troubled my senses with conceit of foil 
So much by much as doth Zenoerate. 
What is beauty, saith my sufferings, then ? 
If all the pens that ever poets held 
Had fed the feeling of their masters' 

thoughts. 
And every sweetness that inspir'd their 

hearts. 
Their minds, and muses on admired themes ; 
If all the heavenly quintessence they still 
From their immortal flowers of poesy. 
Wherein, as in a mirroi', we perceive 
The highest reaches of a human wit ; 
If these had made one poem's period. 
And all eombin'd in beauty's worthiness, 
Yet should there hover in their restless heads 
One thought, one grace, one wonder, at the 

least, 
Which into words no virtue can digest. 
But how unseemly is it for my sex. 
My discipline of arms and chivalry. 
My nature, and the terror of my name. 
To harbor thoughts effeminate and faint ! 
Save only that in beauty's just applause, 
With whose instinct the soul of man is 

touched ; 
And every warrior that is rapt with love 
Of fame, of valor, and of victory. 
Must needs have beauty beat on his conceits : 



I thus conceiving, and subduing both. 
That which hath stoop'd the chiefest of the 

gods. 
Even from the fiery-spangled veil of heaven. 
To feel the lovely warmth of shepherds' 

flames, 
And mask in cottages of strowed reeds, 
Shall give the world to note, for all my birth, 
That virtue solely is the sum of glory, 
And fashions men with true nobility. — 

[From Act V, Sc. i.] 

"All Knowledge to Be My Province" 
francis bacon 

[A Letter to Lord Chancellor Burghley] 
My Lord — With as much confidence as 
mine own honest and faithful devotion unto 
your service and your honorable correspond- 
ence unto me and my poor estate can breed 
in a man, do I commend myself unto your 
Lordship. I wax now somewhat ancient; 
one and thirty years is a great deal of 
sand in the hour glass. My health, I thank 
God, I find confirmed; and I do not fear 
that action shall impair it, because I ac- 
count my ordinary course of study and 
meditation to be more painful than most 
parts of action are. I ever bare a mind (in 
some middle place that I could discharge) 
to serve her majesty, not as a man born 
under Sol, that loveth honor; nor under 
Jupiter, that loveth business (for the con- 
templative planet carrieth me away wholly) ; 
but as a man born under an excellent 
sovereign, that deserveth the dedication of 
all men's abilities. Besides, I do not find 
in myself so much self-love, but tha. the 
greater parts of my thoughts are to de- 
serve well (if I be able) of my friends, and 
namely of your Lordship; who, being the 
Atlas of this commonwealth, the honor of 
my house, and the second founder of my 
poor estate, I am tied by all duties, both 
of a good patriot and of an unworthy kins- 
man, and of an obliged servant, to employ 
whatsoever I am to do you service. Again, 
the meanness of my estate doth somewhat 
move me: for, though I cannot accuse my- 
self that I am either prodigal or slothful, 
yet my health is not to spend, nor my course 
to get. 

Lastly, I confess that I have as vast con- 
templative ends as I have moderate civil 
ends: for I have taken all knowledge to be 
my province ; and if I could purge it of two 
sorts of rovers, whereof the one with frivol- 
ous disputations, confutations, and verbosi- 



14 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



ties, the other with blind experiments and 
auricular traditions and impostures, hath 
committed so many spoils, I hope I should 
bring in industrious observations, grounded 
conclusions, and profitable inventions and 
discoveries ; the best state of that province. 
This, whether it be curiosity or vain glory, 
or nature, or (if one take it favorably), 
pMlanthropia, is so fixed in my mind as it 
cannot be removed. And I do easily see, 
that place of any reasonable countenance 
doth bring commandment of more wits than 
of a man's own ; which is the thing I greatly 
affect. And for your Lordship, perhaps 
you shall not find more strength and less 
encounter in any other. And if your Lord- 
ship shall find now, or at any time, that I 
do seek or affect any place whereunto any 
that is nearer unto your Lordship shall be 
concurrent, say then that I am a most dis- 
honest man. And if your Lordship will 
not carry me on, I will not do as Anaxagoras 
did, who reduced himself with contempla- 
tion unto voluntary poverty, but this I will 
do — I will sell the inheritance I have, and 
purchase some lease of quick revenue, or 
some office of gain that shall be executed by 
deputy, and so give over all care of service, 
and become some sorry book-maker, or a 
true pioneer in that mine of truth, which 
(he said) lay so deep. This which I have 
writ unto your Lordship is rather thoughts 
than words, being set down without all art, 
disguising, or reservation. Wherein I have 
done honor both to your Lordship's wisdom, 
in judging that that will be best believed of 
your Lordship which is truest, and to your 
Lordship's good nature, in retaining noth- 
ing from you. And even so I wish your 
Lordship all happiness, and to myself means 
and occasions to be added to my faithful 
desire to do you service. From my lodgings 
at Gray's Inn. 

A More Divine Perfection" 

RICHARD hooker 

[From Ecclesiastical Polity^ Book 1, cli. xi.] 

Now if men had not naturally this de- 
sire to be happy, how were it possible that 
all men should have it? All men have. 
Therefore this desire in man is natural. It 
is not in our power not to do the same ; how 
should it then be in our power to do it 
coldly or remissly"? So that our desire being 
natural is also in that degree of earnestness 
whereunto nothing can be added. And is it 
probable that God should frame the hearts 



of all men so desirous of that which no man 
may obtain? It is an axiom of Nature that 
natural desire cannot utterly be frustrate. 
This desire of ours being natural should 
be frustrate, if that which may satisfy the 
same were a thing impossible for man to 
aspire unto. Man doth seek a triple per- 
fection : first a sensual, consisting in those 
things which very life itself requireth either 
as necessary supplements, or as beauties and 
ornaments thereof; then an intellectual, 
consisting in those things which none under- 
neath man is either capable of or acquainted 
with; lastly a spiritual and divine, consist- 
ing in those things whereunto we tend by 
supernatural means here, but cannot here 
attain unto them. They who make the first 
of these three the scope of their whole life, 
are said by the Ajjostle to have no god but 
only their belly, to be earthly-minded men. 
Unto the second they bend themselves, who 
seek especially to excel in all such knowl- 
edge and virtue as doth most commend men. 
To this branch belongeth the law of moral 
and civil perfection. That there is some- 
what higher than either of these two, no 
other proof doth need than the very process 
of man's desire, which being natural should 
be frustrate, if there were not some farther 
thing wherein it might rest at the length 
contented, which in the former it cannot do. 
For man doth not seem to rest satisfied, 
either with fruition of that wherewith his 
life is preserved, or with jDerformance of 
such actions as advance him most deservedly 
in estimation; but doth further covet, yea 
oftentimes manifestly pursue with great 
sedulity and earnestness, that which cannot 
stand him in any stead for vital use; that 
which exceedeth the reach of sense; yea 
somewhat above capacity of reason, some- 
what divine and heavenly, which with hid- 
den exultation it rather surmiseth than con- 
ceiveth ; somewhat it seeketh, and what that 
is directly it knoweth not, yet very intentive 
desire thereof doth so incite it, that all other 
known delights and pleasures are laid aside, 
they give place to the search of this but only 
suspected desire. If the soul of man did 
serve only to give him being in this life, 
then things appertaining unto this life would 
content him, as we see they do other crea- 
tures; which creatures enjoying what they 
live by seek no further, but in this contenta- 
tion do show a kind of acknowledgment that 
there is no higher good which doth any way 
belong unto them. With us it is otherwise. 



THE EENAISSANCE 



15 



For although the beauties, riches, honors, 
sciences, virtues, and perfections of all men 
living, were in the j^resent possession of one ; 
yet somewhat beyond and above all this 
there would still be sought and earnestly 
thirsted for. So that Nature even in this 
life doth iDlainly claim and call for a more 
divine perfection than either of these two 
that have been mentioned. 

Self-Discipline: The Story of Guyon 

edmund spenser 
[The Faerie Queene, Book II, Canto VII] 

1 

As Pilot well expert in perilous wave. 
That to a stedfast starre his course hath 

bent, 
When foggy mistes or cloudy tempests have 
The faithfull light of that faire lampe 

yblent. 
And cover'd heaven with hideous dreriment. 
Upon his card and compas firmes his eye, 
TJie maysters of his long experiment, 
And to them does the steddy helme apply, 
Bidding his winged vessell fairely forward 

fly; 

2 

So Guyon having lost his trustie guyde, 
Late left beyond that Ydle lake, proceedes 
Yet on his way, of none accompanyde; 
And evermore himself e with comfort f eedes 
Of his own vertues and praise-worthie dedes. 
So, long he yode, yet no adventure found. 
Which fame of her shrill trompet worthy 

reedes ; 
For still he traveild through wide wastefull 

ground. 
That nought but desert wildernesse shewed 

all around. 

3 

At last he came unto a gloomy glade, 
Cover'd with boughes and shrubs from heav- 
ens light. 
Whereas he sitting found in secret shade 
An uncouth, salvage, and uncivile wight. 
Of griesly hew and f owie ill f avour'd sight ; 
His face with smoke was tand, and eies were 

bleard. 
His head and beard with sout were ill 

bedight, 
His cole-blacke hands did seem to have been 

seard 
In smythes fire-spitting forge, and nayles 
like clawes appeard. 



His yron cote, all overgrowne with rust. 
Was underneath enveloped with gold ; 
Whose glistring glosse, darkned with filthy 

dust, 
Well yet appeared to have beene of old 
A worke of rich entayle and curious mould, 
Woven with antickes and wyld ymagery; 
And in his lap a masse of coyne he told. 
And turned ujDside downe, to f eede his eye 
And covetous desire with his huge threas- 

ury. 



And round about him lay on every side 
Great heapes of gold that never could be 

spent ; 
Of which some were rude owre, not purifide 
Of Mulcibers devouring element; 
Some others were new driven, and distent 
Into great Ingowes and to wedges square; 
Some in round plates withouten moniment ; 
But most were stamjDt, and in their metal 

bare 
The antique shapes of kings and kesars 

straunge and rare. 



Soone as he Guyon saw, in great affright 
And haste he rose for to remove aside 
Those pretious hils from straungers envious 

sight, 
And downe them poured through an hole 

full wide 
Into the hollow earth, them there to hide. 
But Guyon, lightly to him leaping, stayd 
His hand that trembled as one terrifyde; 
And though himselfe were at the sight 

dismayd. 
Yet him perforce restraynd, and to him 

doubtfuU sayd: 



"What art thou, man, (if man at all thou 

art) 
That here in desert hast thine habitaunee, 
And these rich hils of welth doest hide apart 
From the worldes eye, and from her right 

usaunce ?" 
Thereat, with staring eyes fixed askaunce. 
In great disdaine he answerd: "Hardy 

Elfe, 
That darest view my direful eountenaunce, 
I read thee rash and heedlesse of thy selfe, 
To trouble my still seate, and heapes of pre- 
tious pelfe. 



16 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



"God of the world and worldlings I me call, 
Great Mammon, greatest god below the skye, 
That of my plenty poure out unto all, 
And unto none my graces do envye: 
Riches, renowme, and principality, 
Honour, estate, and all this worldes good. 
For which men swinck and sweat inces- 
santly, 
Fro me do flow into an ample flood, 
And in the hollow earth have their eternall 
brood. 

9 

"Wherefore, if me thou deigne to serve and 

sew. 
At thy command lo! all these mountaines 

bee: 
Or if to thy great mind, or greedy vew. 
All these may not sufiftse, there shall to thee 
Ten times so much be nombred francke and 

free." 
"Mammon," (said he) "thy godheads vaunt 

is vaine, 
And idle offers of thy golden fee; 
To them that covet such eye-glutting gaine 
Proffer thy gif tes, and fitter servaunts enter- 

taine. 

10 

"Me ill besits, that in der-doing armes 
And honours suit my vowed dales do spend. 
Unto thy bounteous baytes and pleasing 

charmes. 
With which weake men thou witchest, to at- 
tend; 
Regard of worldly mucke doth fowly blend. 
And low abase the high heroicke spright. 
That joyes for crownes and kingdom es to 

contend ; 
Faire shields, gay steedes, bright armes be 

my delight; 
Those be the riches fit for an advent'rous 
knight." 

11 

"Vaine glorious Elfe" (saide he) "doest not 
thou weet, 
That money can thy wantes at will sup- 
ply? 

Sheilds, steeds, and armes, and all things 
for thee meet. 

It can purvay in twinckling of an eye; 

And crownes and kingdomes to thee mul- 
tiply. 

Do not I kings create, and throw the 
crowne 

Sometimes to him that low in dust doth ly. 



And him that raignd into his rowme thrust 

downe, 
And whom I lust do heape with glory and 

renowne?" 

12 

"All otherwise" (saide he) "I riches read, 
And deeme them roote of all disquietnesse ; 
First got with guile, and then preserv'd 

with dread, 
And after spent with pride and lavishnesse, 
Leaving behind them grief e and heavinesse : 
Infinite mischiefes of them doe arize. 
Strife and debate, bloodshed and bitter- 

nesse, 
Outrageous wrong, and hellish eovetize, 
That noble heart as great dishonour doth 

despize. 

13 

"Ne thine be kingdomes, ne the scepters 

thine ; 
But realmes and rulers thou doest both con- 
found. 
And loyall truth to treason doest incline : 
Witnesse the guiltlesse blood pourd oft on 

ground, 
The crowned often slaine, the slayer cround ; 
The sacred Diademe in jaeeces rent, 
And purple robe gored with many a wound. 
Castles surprizd, great ciities sackt and 

brent : 
So mak'st thou kings, and gaynest wrong- 
full government. 

14 

"Long were to tell the troublous stormes that 

tosse 
The private state, and make the life un- 

sweet : 
Who swelling sayles in Caspian sea doth 

crosse. 
And in frayle wood on Adrian gulf doth 

fleet, 
Doth not, I weene, so many evils meet." 
Then Mammon wexing wroth, "And why 

then," sayd, 
"Are mortall men so fond and undiscreet 
So evill thing to seeke unto their ayd, 
And having not complaine, and having it 

upbrayd?" 

15 

"Indeede," (quoth he) "through fowle in- 

temperaunce, 
Frayle men are oft captiv'd to covetise; 
But would they thinke with how small al- 

lowaunce 



THE EENAISSANCE 



17 



Untroubled Nature doth her selfe suffise, 
Such superfluities they would despise, 
Which with sad cares empeach our native 

joyes. 
At the well-head the purest streames arise; 
But mucky filth his braunching armes an- 

noyes, 
And with uncomely weedes the gentle wave 

accloyes. 

16 

"The antique world, in his first flowring 

youth, 
Fownd no defect in his Creators grace; 
But with glad thankes, and unreproved 

truth, 
The gifts of soveraine bounty did em- 
brace : 
Like Angels life was then mens happy eace ; 
But later ages pride, like corn-fed steed, 
Abusd her plenty and fat swolne encrease 
To all licentious lust, and gan exceed 
The measure of her meane and naturall first 
need. 

17 

"Then gan a cursed hand the quiet wombe 
Of his great Grandmother with Steele to 

wound. 
And the hid treasures in her sacred tombe 
With Sacriledge to dig. Therein he found 
Fountaines of gold and silver to abound. 
Of which the matter of his huge desire 
And pompous pride eftsoones he did com- 
pound ; 
Then avarice gan through his veines inspire 
His greedy flames and kindled life-devour- 
ing fire." 

18 

"Sonne," (said he then) "lett be thy bitter 

seorne. 
And leave the rudenesse of that antique age 
To them that liv'd therin in state forlorne: 
Thou, that doest live in later times, must 

wage 
Thy workes for wealth, and life for gold 

engage. 
If then thee list my offred grace to use, 
Take what thou please of all this surplus- 
age; 
If thee list not, leave have thou to refuse: 
But thing refused doe not afterward ac- 
cuse." 

19 

"Me list not" (said the Elfin knight) "re- 

ceave 
Thing offred, till I know it well be got ; 



Ne wote I but thou didst these goods be- 
reave 
From rightf ull owner by unrighteous lot. 
Or that bloodguiltinesse or guile them blot." 
"Perdy," (quoth he) "yet never eie did vew, 
Ne tong did tell, ne hand these handled not ; 
But safe I have them kept in secret mew 
From hevens sight, and powre of al which 
them poursew." 

20 

"What secret place" (quoth he) "can safely 
hold 

So huge a masse, and hide from heavens eie"? 

Or where hast thou thy wonne, that so much 
gold 

Thou canst preserve from wrong and rob- 
bery?" 

"Come thou," (quoth he) "and see." So by 
and by 

Through that thick covert he him led, and 
fownd 

A darkesome way, which no man could des- 
cry, 

That deep descended through the hollow 
ground, 

And was with dread and horror compassed 
arownd. 

21 

At length they came into a larger space. 
That stretcht itself e into an ami^le playne; 
Through which a beaten broad high way did 

trace, 
That streight did lead to Plutoes griesly 

rayne. 
By that wayes side there sate internall 

Payne, 
And fast beside him sat tumultuous Strife : 
The one in hand an yron whip did strayne, 
The other brandished a bloody knife; 
And both did gnash their teeth, and both 

did threten life. 

22 

On thother side in one consort there sate 
Cruell Revenge, and rancorous Despight, 
Disloyall Treason, and hart-burning Hate; 
But gnawing Gealosy, out of their sight 
Sitting alone, his bitter lips did bight; 
And trembling Feare still to and fro did 

fly, 

And found no place wher safe he shroud him 

might : 
Lamenting Sorrow did in darknes lye, 
And shame his ugly face did hide from 

living eye. 



18 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



23 

And over them sad horror with grim hew 
Did alwaies sore, beating his yron wings; 
And after him Owles and Night-ravens flew, 
The hatefull messengers of heavy things. 
Of death and dolor telhng sad tidings; 
Whiles sad Celeno, sitting on a clifte, 
A song of bale and bitter sorrow sings, 
That hart of flint asonder could have rif te ; 
Which having ended after him she flyeth 
swifte. 

24 

All these before the gates of Pluto lay. 
By whom they passing spake unto them 

nought ; 
But th' Elfin knight with wonder all the way 
Did feed his eyes, and flld his inner thought. 
At last him to a litle dore he brought, 
That to the gate of Hell, which gained wide. 
Was next adjoyning, ne them parted ought : 
Betwixt them both was but a litle stride, 
That did the house of Richesse from hell- 
mouth divide. 

25 

Before the dore sat self e-consuming Care, 
Day and night keeping wary watch and 

ward. 
For feare least Force or Fraud should un- 
aware 
Breake in, and spoile the treasure there in 

gard: 
Ne would he suffer Sleepe once thither-ward 
Approch albe his drowsy den were next; 
For next to death is Sleepe to be compard ; 
Therefore his house is unto his annext : 
Here Sleep, ther Richesse, and Hel-gate 
them both betwext. 

26 

So soon as Mammon there arrivd, the dore 
To him did open and affoorded way: 
Him followed eke Sir Guyon evermore, 
Ne darkenesse him, ne daunger might dis- 
may. 
Soone as he entred was, the dore streight 

way 
Did shutt, and from behind it forth there 

lept 
An ugly feend, more fowle then dismall 

day. 
The which with monstrous stalke behind him 

stept, 
And ever as he went dew watch upon him 
kept. 



27 

Well hoped hee, ere long that hardy guest. 
If ever covetous hand, or lustfuU eye. 
Or lips he layd on thing that likte him best, 
Or ever sleepe his eie-strings did untye, 
Should be his pray. And therefore still on 

hye 
He over him did hold, his cruell elawes, 
Threatning with greedy gripe to doe him 

dye, 
And rend in peeces with his ravenous pawes, 
If ever he transgrest the fatall Stygian 

lawes. 

28 

That houses forme within was rude and 

strong, 
Lyke an huge cave hewne out of rocky clifte. 
From whose rough vaut the ragged breaches 

hong 
Embost with massy gold of glorious gifte, 
And with rich metall loaded every rifte, 
That heavy ruine they did seeme to threatt ; 
And over them Arachne high did lifte 
Her cunning web, and spred her subtile 

nett. 
Enwrapped in fowle smoke and clouds more 

black then Jett. 

29 

Both roofe, and floore, and walls, were all 

of gold, 
But overgTowne with dust and old decay, 
And hid in darkenes, that none could behold 
The hew thereof; for vew of cherefuU day 
Did never in that house it selfe display, 
But a faint shadow of uncertein light : 
Such as a lamp, whose life does fade away, 
Or as the Moone, eloathed with clowdy 

night. 
Does show to him that walkes in feare and 

sad a&ight. 

30 

In all that rowme was nothing to be seene 
But huge great yron chests, and coffers 

strong. 
All bard with double bends, that none could 

weene 
Them to efforce by violence or wrong : 
On every side they placed were along ; 
But all the grownd with sculs was scattered, 
And dead mens bones, which round about 

were flong ; 
Whose lives, it seemed, whilome there were 

shed, 
And their vile carcases now left unburied. 



THE EENAISSANCE 



19 



31 

They forward passe; ne Guyon yet spoke 

word, 
Till that they came unto an yron dore, 
Which to them opened of his owne accord, 
And shewd of richesse such exceeding store. 
As eie of man did never see before, 
Ne ever could within one place be fownd. 
Though all the wealth which is, or was of 

yore, 
Could gathered be through all the world 

arownd, 
And that above were added to that under 

grownd. 

32 

The charge thereof unto a covetous Spright 
Commaunded was, who thereby did attend. 
And warily awaited day and night, 
From other covetous feends it to defend, 
Who it to rob and ransacke did intend. 
Then Mammon, turning to that warriour, 

said: 
"Loe ! here the worldes blis : loe ! here the 

end, 
To which al men doe ayme, rich to be made : 
Such grace now to be happy is before 

thee laid." 

33 

"Certes," (sayd he) "I n'ill thine off red 

grace, 
Ne to be made so happy doe intend: 
Another blis before mine eyes I jalace. 
Another happines, another end. 
To them that list these base regardes I lend ; 
But I in armes, and in atchievements brave. 
Do rather choose my flitting houres to spend, 
And to be Lord of those that riches have. 
Then them to have my selfe, and be their 

servile sclave." 

34 

Thereat the feend his gnashing teeth did 

grate, 
And griev'd so long to laeke his greedie 

pray. 
For well he weened that so glorious bayte 
Would tempt his guest to take thereof 

assay ; 
Had he so doen, he had him snateht away. 
More light then Culver in the Faulcons fist. 
Eternall God thee save from such decay! 
But, whenas Mammon saw his purpose mist. 
Him to entrap unwares another way he 

wist. 



35 

Thence forward he him ledd, and shortly 

brought 
Unto another rowme, whose dore forthright 
To him did open, as it had beene taught. 
Therein an hundred raunges weren pig'ht, 
And hundred f ournaces all burning bright : 
By every fournaee many feendes did byde, 
Deformed creatures, horrible in sight; 
And every feend his busie paines applyde 
To melt the golden metall, ready to be tryde. 

36 

One with great bellowes gathered filling 

ayre, 
And with f orst wind the f ewell did inflame ; 
Another did the dying bronds repayre 
With yron tongs, and sprinckled ofte the 

same 
With liquid waves, fiers Vuleans rage to 

tame, 
Who, maystring them, renewd his former 

heat: 
Some seumd the drosse that from the metall 

came; 
Some stird the molten owre with ladles 

great ; 
And every one did swincke, and every one 

did sweat. 

37 

But, when an earthly wight they present 

saw 
Glistring in armes and battailous aray. 
From their whot work they did themselves 

withdraw 
To wonder at the sight ; for till that day 
They never creature saw that cam that way : 
Their staring eyes sparckling with fervent 

iyre 
And ugly shapes did nigh the man dismay. 
That, were it not for shame, he would re- 
tyre; 
Till that him thus bespake their soveraine 
Lord and syre : 

38 

'^Behold, thou Faeries sonne, with mortall 

eye, 
That living eye before did never see. 
The thing, that thou didst crave so earnestly. 
To weet whence all the wealth late shewd 

by mee 
Proceeded, lo! now is reveald to thee. 
Here is the fountaine of the worldes good: 
Now, therefore, if thou wilt enriched bee, 



20 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



Avise thee well, and chaunge thy wilfuU 

mood, 
Least thou perhaps hereafter wish, and be 

withstood." 

39 

"Suffise it then, thou Money God," (quoth 

hee) 
"That all thine ydle offers I refuse. 
All that I need I have: what needth mee 
To covet more then I have cause to use! 
With such vaine shewes thy worldings vyle 

abuse ; 
But give me leave to follow mine emprise." 
Mammon Avas much displeased, yet no'te he 

chuse 
But beare the rigour of his bold mesprise; 
And thence him forward ledd him further 

to entise. 

40 

He brought him, through a darksom nar- 
row strayt, 
To a broad gate all built of beaten gold : 
The gate was open ; but therein did Avayt 
A sturdie villein, stryding stiffe and bold. 
As if the highest God defy he would : 
In his right hand an yron club he held, 
But he himselfe was al of golden mould, 
Yet had both life and sence, and well could 

weld 
That cursed weapon, when his cruell foes 
he queld. 

41 

Disdayne he called was, and did disdayne 
To be so eald, and who so did him call : 
Sterne was his looke, and full of stomaeke 

vayne ; 
His portaunee terrible, and stature tall. 
Far passing th' hight of men terrestriall, 
Like an huge Gyant of the Titans race ; 
That made him scorne all creatures great 

and small. 
And with his pride all others jDowre deface : 
More fitt emongst black fiendes then men to 

have his place. 

42 

Soone as those giitterand armes he did 

espye. 
That with their brightnesse made that dark- 

nes light. 
His harmefull club he gan to hurtle hye, 
And threaten batteill to the Faery knight; 
Who likewise gan himselfe to batteill dight, 
Till Mammon did his hasty hand withhold, 
And counseld him abstaine from perilous 

fight; 



For nothing might abash the villein bold, 
Ne mortall Steele emperce his miscreated 
mould. 

43 

So having him with reason paeifyde, 

And that fiers Carle commaunding to for- 

beare. 
He brought him in. The rowme was large 

and wyde. 
As it some Gyeld or solemne Temple weare. 
Many great golden pillours did upbeare 
The massy roof e, and riches huge sustayue ; 
And every pillour decked with full deare 
With crownes, and Diademes, and titles 

vaine. 
Which mortall Princes Avore whiles they on 

earth did rayne. 

44 

A route of people there assembled were, 
Of every sort and nation under skye. 
Which with great uprore preaeed to draw 

nere 
To th' upper part, where was advaunced hye 
A stately siege of soveraine majestye; 
And thereon satt a woman, gorgeous gay 
And richly cladd in robes of royaltye, 
That never earthly Prince in such aray 
His glory did enhaunce, and pompous pryde 

display. 

45 

Her face right wondrous f aire did seeme to 

bee. 
That her broad beauties beam great bright- 

nes threw 
Through the dim shade, that all men might 

it see: 
Yet was not that same her owne native hew, 
But wrought by art and counterfetted shew, 
Thereby more lovers unto her to call: 
Nath'lesse most hevenly faire in deed and 

veAV 
She by creation was, till she did fall ; 
Thenceforth she sought for helps to cloke 

her crime withall. 

46 

There, as in glistring glory she did sitt. 
She held a great gold chaine ylincked well, 
Whose upper end to highest heven was knitt, 
And lower part did reach to lowest Hell ; 
And all that preace did rownd about her 

swell 
To catchen hold of that long chaine, thereby 
To climbe aloft, and others to excell; 



THE EENAISSANCE 



21 



That was Ambition, rash desire to sty, 
And every linck thereof a step of dignity. 

47 

Some thought to raise themselves to high 

degree 
By riches and unrighteous reward; 
Some by close shouldring; some i)y flat- 

teree ; 
Others through friendes; others for base 

regard, 
And all by wrong waies for themselves pre- 

pard : 
Those that were up themselves kept others 

low; 
Those that were low themselves held others 

- hard, 
Ne suffred them to ryse or greater grow ; 
But every one did strive his fellow downe 

to throw. 

48 

Which whenas Guyon saw, he gan inquire, 
What meant that preace about that Ladies 

throne, 
And what she was that did so high aspyre 1 
Him Mammon answered ; "That goodly one. 
Whom all that folke with such contention 
Doe flock about, my deare, my daughter is : 
Honour and dignitie from her alone 
Derived are, and all this Avorldes blis. 
For which we men doe strive; few gett, but 

many mis : 

49 

"And fayre Philotime she rightly hight. 
The fairest wight that wonneth under skie. 
But that this darksom neather world her 

light 
Doth dim with horror and deformity; 
Worthie of heven and hye felicitie. 
From whence the gods have her for envy 

thrust : 
But, sith thou hast found favour in mine 

eye, 
Thy spouse, I will her make, if that thou 

lust. 
That she may thee advance for works and 

merits just." 

50 

"Gramercy, Mammon," (said the gentle 

knight) 
''For so great grace and ofPred high estate ; 
But I, that am f raile flesh and earthly Avight, 
Unworthy match for such immortall mate 
My self e well wote, and mine unequall fate : 
And were I not, yet is my trouth yplight, 



And love avowd to other Lady late. 
That to remove the same I have no might : 
To chaunge love causelesse is reproch to war- 
like knight," 

51 

Mammon emmoved was with inward wrath ; 
Yet, forcing it to fayne, him forth thence 

ledd. 
Through griesly shadowes by a beaten path, 
Into a gardin goodly garnished. 
With hearbs and fruits, whose kinds mote 

not be redd : 
Not such as earth out of her fruitful woomb 
Throwes forth to men, sweet and well 

savored. 
But direfuU deadly black, both leafe and 

bloom, 
Fitt to adorne the dead, and deck the drery 

toombe. 

52 

There mournfull Cypress grew in greatest 

store. 
And trees of bitter Gall, and Heben sad; 
Dead sleeping Poppy, and black Hellebore; 
Cold Coloquintida and Tetra mad; 
Mortall Samnitis, and Cicuta bad. 
With which th' unjust Atheniens made to 

. dy 

Wise Socrates; who, thereof quaffing glad, 
Pourd out his life and last Philosophy 
To the fayre Critias, his dearest Belamy. 

53 

The Gardin of Proserpina this hight; 
And in the midst thereof a silver seat, 
With a thick Arber goodly over-dight, 
In which she often usd from open heat 
Her selfe to shroud, and pleasures to en- 
treat : 
Next thereunto did grow a goodly tree. 
With braunches broad dispredd and body 

great, _ 
Clothed with leaves, that none the wood 

mote see. 
And loaden all with fruit as thick as it 
might bee. 

54 

Their fruit were golden apples glistring 

bright. 
That goodly was their glory to behold; 
On earth like never grew, ne living wight 
Like ever saw, but they from hence were 

sold; 
For those which Hercules, with conquest 

bold 



22 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Got from great Atlas daughters, hence be- 
gan, 
And planted there did bring forth fruit of 

gold; 
And those with which th' Eubcean young 

man wan 
Swift Atalanta, when through craft he her 

out ran. 

55 
Here also sprong that goodly golden fruit, 
With which Acontius got his lover trew, 
Whom he had long time sought with fruit- 

lesse suit; 
Here eke that famous golden Apple gTew, 
The which emongst the gods false Ate 

threw ; 
For which th' Idsean Ladies disagreed, 
Till partiall Paris dempt it Venus dew, 
And had of her fayre Helen for his meed, 
That many noble Greekes and Trojans made 

to bleed. 

56 
The warlike Elfe much wondred at this tree, 
So fayre and great that shadowed all the 

ground. 
And his broad braunches, laden with rich 

fee, 
Did stretch themselves without the utmost 

bound 
Of this great gardin, compast with a mound; 
Which over-hanging, they themselves did 

steep e 
In a blacke flood, which flow'd about it 

round. 
That is the river of Cocytus deepe, 
In which full many soules do endlesse wayle 

and weepe. 

57 
Which to behold he clomb up to the bancke, 
And looking downe saw many damned 

wightes 
In those sad waves, which direfull deadly 

stancke, 
Plonged continually of cruell Sprightes. 
That with their piteous cryes, and yelling 

shrightes, 
They made the further shore resounden 

wide. 
Emongst the rest of those same ruefull 

sightes. 
One cursed creature he by chaunee espide, 
That drenched lay full deepe under the 

Garden side. 

58 

J)eepe was he drenched to the upmost chin. 
Yet gaped still as coveting to drinke 



Of the cold liquor which he waded in ; 
And stretching forth his hand did often 

thinke 
To reach the fruit which grew upon the 

brincke ; 
But both the fruit from hand, and flood 

from mouth. 
Did fly abacke, and made him vainely 

swincke ; 
The whiles he sterv'd with hunger, and with 

drouth, 
He daily dyde, yet never throughly dyen 

couth. 

59 

The knight, him seeing labour so in vaine, 
Askt who he was, and what he ment thereby? 
Who, groning deepe, thus answerd him 

againe ; 
"Most cursed of all creatures under skye, 
Lo ! Tantalus, I here tormented lye : 
Of whom high Jove wont whylome feasted 

bee; 
Lo ! here I now for want of food doe dye : 
But, if that thou be such as I thee see. 
Of gxace I pray thee, give to eat and drinke 

to mee !" 

60 

''Nay, nay, thou greedy Tantalus," (quoth 

he) 
"Abide the fortune of thy present fate; 
And unto all that live in high degree, 
Ensample be of mind intemiDerate, 
To teach them how to use their present 

state." 
Then gan the cursed wretch alowd to cry, 
Accusing highest Jove and gods ingrate; 
And eke blaspheming heaven bitterly, 
As author of un justice, there to let him dye. 

61 

He lookt a litle further, and espyde 
Another wretch, whose earcas deepe was 

drent 
Within the river, which the same did hyde; 
But both his handes, most filthy feculent. 
Above the water were on high extent. 
And faynd to wash themselves incessantly, 
Yet nothing cleaner were for such intent. 
But rather fowler seemed to the eye; 
So lost his labour vaine and ydle industry. 

62 

The knight him calling asked who he was? 
Who, lifting up his head, him answerd thus ; 
"I Pilate am, the falsest Judge, alas! 



THE RENAISSANCE 



23 



And most unjust; that, by unrighteous 
And wicked doome, to Jewes despiteous 
Delivered up the Lord of life to dye, 
And did aequite a murdrer f elonous ; 
The whiles my handes I washt in purity, 
The whiles my soule was soyld with fowle 
iniquity." 

63 

Infinite moe tormented in like paine 

He there beheld, too long here to be told: 

Ne Mammon would there let him long 

remayne. 
For terrour of the tortures manifold. 
In which the damned soules he did behold, 
But roughly him bespake: ''Thou fearefuU 

foole. 
Why takest not of that same f ruite of gold f 
Ne sittest downe on that same silver stoole. 
To rest thy weary person in the shadow 

eoolef 

64 

All which he did to do him deadly fall 

In frayle intemperaunee through sinful! 

bayt ; 
To which if he inelyned had at all. 
That dreadful feend, which did behinde him 

wayt. 
Would him have rent in thousand peeces 

strayt : 
But he was wary wise in all his way. 
And well perceived his deceiptf nil sleight, 
Ne suffred lust his safety to betray. 
So goodly did beguile the Guyler of his 

pray. 

65 

And now he has so long remained theare. 
That vitall powres gan wexe both weake 

and wan 
For want of food and sleepe, which tAVo 

upbeare. 
Like mightie pillours, this frayle life of man. 
That none without the same enduren can : 
For now three dayes of men were full out- 
wrought. 
Since he this hardy enterpinze began : 
Forthy great Mammon fayrely he besought 
Into the world to guyde him backe, as he 
him brought. 

66 

The God, though loth, yet was eonstraynd 

t' obay; 
For lenger time then that no living wight 
Below the earth might suffred be to stay : 
So backe againe him brought to living light. 
But all so soone as his enfeebled spright 



Gan sucke this vitall ayre into his brest, 
As overcome with too exceeding might, 
The life did flit away out of her nest, 
And all his sences were with deadly fit 
opprest. 

The Gospel of Beauty 

edmund spenser 

[From An Hymn in Honor of Beauty] 

What time this world's great Workmaster 

did cast 
To make all things such as we now behold. 
It seemS that he before his eyes had placed 
A goodly iDattern, to whose perfect mould 
He fashioned them as comely as he could. 
That now so fair and seemly they appear 
As nought may be amended anywhere. 

That wondrous pattern, whereso'er it be. 
Whether in earth laid up in secret store. 
Or else in heaven, that no man may it see 
With sinful eyes, for fear it to deflore, 
Is jDcrfect Beauty, which all men adore; 
Whose face and feature doth so much excel 
All mortal sense, that none the same may 
tell. 

Thereof as every earthly thing partakes 
Or more or less, by influence divine, 
So it more fair accordingly it makes, 
And the gross matter of this earthly mine 
Which clotheth it, thereafter doth refine, 
Doing away the dross which dims the light 
Of that fair beam which therein is empight. 

For, through infusion of celestial power, 
The duller earth it quickeneth with delight. 
And life-full spirits privily doth pour 
Through all the parts, that to the looker's 

sight 
They seem to please. That is thy sovereign 

might, 
Cyprian queen ! which, flowing from the 

beam 
Of thy bright star, thou into them dost 

stream. 

That is the thing which giveth pleasant 

■ grace 
To all things fair, that kindleth lively fire. 
Light of thy lamp; which, shining in the 

face. 
Thence to the soul darts amorous desire. 
And robs the hearts of those which it ad- 
mire ; 
Therewith thou pointest thy son's poisoned 



24 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



That wounds the life, and wastes the inmost 
marrow. 

How vainly then do idle wits invent, 
That beauty is nought else but mixture made 
Of colors fair, and goodly temp'rament 
Of pure complexions, that shall quickly fade 
And pass away, like to a summer's shade; 
Or that it is but comely composition 
Of parts well measured, with meet disposi- 
tion ! 

Hath white and red in it such wondrous 

power, 
That it can pierce through th' eyes unto the 

heart, 
And therein stir such rage and restless 

stour, 
As nought but death can stint his dolor's 

smart ? 
Or can proportion of the outward part 
Move such affection in the inward mind, 
That it can rob both ^ense, and reason 

blind? 

Why do not then the blossoms of the field, 
Which are arrayed with much more orient 

hue. 
And to the sense most dainty odors yield, 
Work like impression in the looker's view? 
Or why do not fair pictures like power 

shew, 
In which ofttimes we nature see of art 
Excelled in perfect limning every part? 

But ah! believe me there is more than so, 
That works such wonders in the minds of 

men; 
I, that have often prov'd, too well it know, 
And whoso list the like assays to ken, 
Shall find by trial, and confess it then. 
That Beauty is not, as fond men misdeem, 
An outward show of things that only seem. 

For that same goodly hue of white and red, 
With which the cheeks are sprinkled, shall 

decay. 
And those sweet rosy leaves, so fairly spread 
Upon the lips, shall fade and fall away 
To that they were, even to corrupted clay : 
That golden wire, those sparkling stars so 

bright. 
Shall turn to dust, and lose their goodly 

light. 

But that fair lamp, from whose celestial ray 
That light proceeds, which kindleth lover's 
fire, 



Shall never be extinguished nor decay; 
But, when the vital spirits do expire, 
Unto her native planet shall retire; 
For it is heavenly born and cannot die, 
Being a parcel of the purest sky. 



So every spirit, as it is most pure, 

And hath in it the more of heavenly light. 

So it the fairer body doth procure 

To habit in, and it more fairly dight 

With cheerful grace and amiable sight; 

For of the soul the body form doth take; 

For soul is form, and doth the body make. 

Therefore wherever that thou dost behold 
A comely corps, with beauty fair endued, 
Know this for certain, that the same doth 

hold 
A beauteous soul, with fair conditions 

thewed, 
Fit to receive the seed of virtue strewed; 
For all that fair is, is by nature good ; 
That is a sign to know the gentle blood. 

Yet oft it falls that many a gentle mind 
Dwells in deformed tabernacle drowned. 
Either by chance, against the course of 

kind. 
Or through unaptness in the substance 

found. 
Which it assumed of some stubborn ground. 
That will not yield unto her form's direc- 
tion, 
But is deformed with some foul imperfec- 
tion. 

And oft it falls, (ay me, the more to rue!) 
That goodly beauty, albe heavenly born, 
Is foul abused, and that celestial hue. 
Which doth the world with her delight 

adorn. 
Made but the bait of sin, and sinners' scorn. 
Whilst every one doth seek and sue to have 

it. 
But every one doth seek but to deprave it. 

Yet nathemore is that fair beauty's blame. 
But theirs that do abuse it unto ill : 
Nothing so good, but that through guilty 

shame 
May be corrupt, and wrested unto will : 
Natheless the soul is fair and beauteous 

still, 
However flesh's fault it filthy make; 
For things immortal no corruption take. 



THE RENAISSANCE 



25 



II. A GREATER BRITAIN 



The Character of Elizabeth 

john richard green 

[From A Short History of the English 
People] 

Never had the fortunes of England sunk 
to a lower ebb than at the moment when 
Elizabeth mounted the throne. The country 
was humiliated by defeat and brought to the 
verge of rebellion by the bloodshed and mis- 
government of Mary's reign. The old social 
discontent, tramjaled down for a time by the 
horsemen of Somerset, remained a menace 
to public order. The religious strife had 
passed beyond hope of reconciliation, now 
that the reformers were parted from their 
opponents by the fires of Smithfield and 
the party of the New Learning all but dis- 
solved. The more earnest Catholics were 
bound helplessly to Rome. The temper of 
the Protestants, burned at home or driven 
into exile abroad, had become a fiercer thing, 
and the Calvinistie refugees were pouring- 
back from Geneva with dreams of revolu- 
tionary change in Church and State. Eng- 
land, dragged at the heels of Philip into a 
useless and ruinous war, was left without an 
ally save Spain; while Prance, mistress of 
Calais, became mistress of the Channel. Not 
only was Scotland a standing danger in the 
north, through the French marriage of its 
Queen Mary Stuart and its consequent bond- 
age to French policy; but Mary Stuart and 
her husband now assumed the style and 
arms of English sovereigns, and threatened 
to rouse every Catholic throughout the 
realm against Elizabeth's title. In pres- 
ence of this host of dangers the country 
lay heliDless, without army or fleet, or the 
means of manning one, for the treasury, 
already drained by the waste of Edward's 
reign, had been utterly exhausted by Mary's 
restoration of the Church-lands in posses- 
sion of the Crown, and by the cost of her 
war with France. 

England's one hope lay in the character of 
her Queen. Elizabeth was now in her 
twenty-fifth year. Personally she had more 
than her mother's beauty; her figure was 
commanding, her face long but queenly and 
intelligent, her eyes quick and fine. She had 
grown up amidst the liberal culture of 
Henry's court a bold horsewoman, a good 



shot, a graceful dancer, a skilled musician, 
and an accomplished scholar. She studied 
every morning the Greek Testament, and 
followed this by the tragedies of Sophocles 
or orations of Demosthenes, and could "rub 
up her rusty Greek" at need to bandy 
pedantry with a Vice-Chancellor. But she 
was far from being a mere pedant. The 
new literature which was springing up 
around her found constant welcome in her 
court. She spoke Italian and French as 
fluently as her mother-tongue. She was 
familiar with Ariosto and Tasso. Even 
amidst the affection and love of anagrams 
and puerilities which sullied her later 
years, she listened with delight to the 
"Faery Queen," and found a smile for 
"Master Spenser" when he appeared in her 
presence. Her moral temper recalled in 
its strange contrasts the mixed blood within 
her veins. She was at once the daughter of 
Henry and of Anne Boleyn. From her 
father she inherited her frank and hearty 
address, her love of popularity and of free 
intercourse with the people, her dauntless 
courage and her amazing self-confidence. 
Her harsh, manlike voice, her impetuous 
will, her pride, her furious outbursts of 
anger came to her with her Tudor blood. 
She rated great nobles as if they were 
schoolboys; she met the insolence of Essex 
with a box on the ear ; she would break now 
and then into the gravest deliberations to 
swear at her ministers like a fishwife. But 
strangely in contrast with the violent out- 
lines of her Tudor temper stood the sen- 
suous, self-indulgent nature she derived 
from Anne Boleyn. Splendor and pleasure 
were with Elizabeth the very air she 
breathed. Her delight was to move in per- 
petual progresses from castle to castle 
through a series of gorgeous pageants, fan- 
ciful and extravagant as a caliph's dream. 
She loved gaiety and laughter and wit. A 
happy retort or a finished compliment never 
failed to win her favor. She hoarded jewels. 
Her dresses were innumerable. Her vanity 
remained, even to old age, the vanity of a 
coquette in her teens. No adulation was 
too fulsome for her, no flattery of her beauty 
too gross. "To see her was heaven," Hatton 
told her, "the lack of her was hell." She 
would play with her rings that her courtiers 
might note the delicacy of her hands; or 



26 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



dance a coranto that the French ambassador, 
hidden dexterously behind a curtain, 
might report her sprightliness to his mas- 
ter. Her levity, her frivolous laughter, 
her unwomanly jests gave color to a thou- 
sand scandals. Her character in fact, like 
her portraits, was utterly without shade. 
Of womanly reserve or self-restraint she 
knew nothing. No instinct of delicacy veiled 
the voluptuous temper which had broken out 
in the romps of her girlhood and showed 
itself almost ostentatiously throughout her 
later life. Pei'sonal beauty in a man was a 
sure passport to her liking. She patted hand- 
some young squires on the neck when they 
knelt to kiss her hand, and fondled her 
"sweet Robin/' Lord Leicester, in the face 
of the court. 

It was no wonder that the statesmen 
whom she outwitted held Elizabeth almost 
to the last to be little more than a frivolous 
woman, or that Philip of Spain wondered 
how "a wanton" could hold in check the 
policy of the Escurial. But the Elizabeth 
whom they saw was far from being all of 
Elizabeth. The wilfulness of Henry, the 
triviality of Anne Boleyn played over the 
surface of a nature hard as steel, a temper 
purely intellectual, the very type of reason 
untouched by imagination or passion. Lux- 
urious and pleasure-loving as she seemed, 
Elizabeth lived simply and frugally, and she 
worked hard. Her vanity and caprice had 
no weight whatever with her in state affairs. 
The coquette of the presence-chamber be- 
came the coolest and hardest of politicians 
at the council-board. Fresh from the flat- 
tery of her courtiers, she would tolerate no 
flattery in the closet; she was herself plain 
and downright of speech with her coun- 
selors, and she looked for a corresponding 
plainness of speech in return. If any trace 
of her sex lingered in her actual statesman- 
ship, it was seen in the simplicity and 
tenacity of purpose that often underlies a 
woman's fluctuations of feeling. It was 
this in part which gave her her marked 
superiority over the statesmen of her time. 
No nobler group of ministers ever gathered 
round a council-board than those who gath- 
ered round the council-board of Elizabeth. 
But she was the instrument of none. She 
listened, she weighed, she used or put by 
the counsels of each in turn, but her policy 
as a whole was her own. It was a policy, 
not of genius, but of good sense. Her aims 
were simple and obvious: to preserve her 



throne, to keep England out of war, to re- 
store civil and religious order. Something of 
womanly caution and timidity perhaps 
backed the passionless indifference with 
which she set aside the larger schemes of 
ambition which were ever opening before 
her eyes. She was resolute in her refusal 
of the Low Countries. She rejected with a 
laugh the offers of the Protestants to make 
her "head of the religion" and "mistress of 
the seas." But her amazing success in the 
end sprang mainly from this wise limitation 
of her aims. She had a finer sense than any 
of her counselors of her real resources; she 
knew instinctively how far she could go, and 
what she could do. Her cold, critical intel- 
lect was never swayed by enthusiasm or by 
panic either to exaggerate or to under- 
estimate her risks or her power. 

Of political wisdom indeed in its larger 
and more generous sense Elizabeth had lit- 
tle or none; but her political tact was un- 
erring. She seldom saw her course at a 
glance, but she played with a hundred 
courses, fitfully and discursively, as a 
musician runs his fingers over the key- 
board, till she hit suddenly upon the right 
one. Her nature was essentially prac- 
tical and of the present. She distrusted a 
plan in fact just in proportion to its 
speculative range or its outlook into the 
future. Her notion of statesmanship lay 
in watching how things turned out around 
her, and in seizing the moment for making 
the best of them. A policy of this limited, 
practical, tentative order was not only best 
suited to the England of her day, to its 
small resources, and the transitional char- 
acter of its religious and political belief, 
but it was one eminently suited to Eliza- 
beth's pecuhar powers. It was a policy 
of detail, and in details her wonderful 
readiness and ingenuity found scope for 
their exercise. "No War, my Lords," the 
Queen used to cry imperiously at the coun- 
cil-board, "No War!" but her hatred of 
war sprang less from her aversion to blood 
or to expense, real as was her aversion to 
both, than from the fact that peace left the 
field open to the diplomatic maneuvers and 
intrigvies in which she excelled. Her de- 
light in the consciousness of her ingenuity 
broke out in a thousand puckish freaks, 
freaks in which one can hardly see any 
purpose beyond the purpose of sheer mys- 
tification. She revelled in "bye-ways" and 
"crooked ways." She played with grave 



THE EENAISSANCE 



27 



cabinets as a cat plays with a mouse, and 
with much of the same feline delight in the 
mere embarrassment of her victims. When 
she was weary of mystifying foreign states- 
men she turned to find fresh sport in mys- 
tifying her own ministers. Had Elizabeth 
written the story of her reign she would 
have prided herself, not on the triumph of 
England or the ruin of Spain, but on the 
skill with which she had hoodwinked and 
outwitted every statesman in Europe, dur- 
ing fifty years. Nor was her trickery with- 
out political value. Ignoble, inexpressibly 
wearisome as the Queen's diplomacy seems 
to us now, tracing it as we do through a 
thousand despatches, it succeeded in its 
main end. It gained time, and every year 
that was gained doubled Elizabeth's 
strength. Nothing is more revolting in the 
Queen, but nothing is more characteristic, 
than her shameless mendacity. It was an 
age of political lying, but in the profusion 
and recklessness of her lies Elizabeth stood 
without a peer in Christendom. A false- 
hood was to her simply an intellectual means 
of meeting a difficulty; and the ease with 
which she asserted or denied whatever suited 
her purpose was only equaled by the 
cynical indifference with which she met 
the exposure of her lies as soon as their 
purpose was answered. The same purely 
intellectual view of things showed itself in 
the dexterous use she made of her very 
faults. Her levity carried her gaily over 
moments of detection and embarrassment 
where better women would have died of 
shame. She screened her tentative and 
hesitating statesmanship under the natural 
timidity and vacillation of her sex. She 
turned her very Itixury and sports to good 
account. There were moments of grave 
danger in her reign when the country re- 
mained indifferent to its perils, as it saw the 
Queen give her days to hawking and hunt- 
ing, and her nights to dancing and plays. 
Her vanity and affectation, her womanly 
fickleness and caprice, all had their part in 
the diplomatic comedies she played with 
the successive candidates for her hand. If 
political necessities made her life a lonely 
one, she had at any rate the satisfaction of 
averting war and conspiracies by love son- 
nets and romantic interviews, or of gain- 
ing a year of tranquillity by the dexterous 
spinning out of a flirtation. 

As we track Elizabeth through her tor- 
tuous mazes of lying and intrigue, the sense 



of her greatness is almost lost in a sense 
of contempt. But wrapped as they were 
in a cloud of mystei'y, the aims of her policy 
were throughout temperate and simple, and 
they were pursued with a singular tenacity. 
The sudden acts of energy which from time 
to time broke her habitual hesitation proved 
that it was no hesitation of weakness. Eliza- 
beth could wait and finesse; but when the 
hour was come she could strike, and strike 
hard. Her natural temper indeed tended 
to a rash self-confidence rather than to 
self-distrust. She had, as strong natures 
always have, an unbounded confidence in her 
luck. "Her Majesty counts much on For- 
tune," Walsingham wrote bitterly; "I wish 
she would trust more in Almighty God." 
The diplomatists who censured at one 
moment her irresolution, her delay, her 
changes of front, censure at the next her 
"obstinacy," her iron will, her defiance of 
what seemed to them inevitable ruin. "This 
woman," Philip's envoy wrote after a 
wasted remonstrance, "this woman is pos- 
sessed by a hundred thousand devils." To 
her own subjects, indeed, who knew noth- 
ing of her maneuvers and retreats, of her 
"bye-ways" and "crooked ways," she 
seemed the embodiment of dauntless reso- 
lution. Brave as they were, the men who 
swept the Spanish Main or glided between 
the icebergs of Baffin's Bay never doubted 
that the palm of bravery lay with their 
Queen. Her steadiness and courage in the 
pursuit of her aims was equaled by the 
wisdom with which she chose the men to 
accomplish them. She had a quick eye for 
merit of any sort, and a wonderful power 
of enlisting its whole energy in her service. 
The sagacity which chose Cecil and Wal- 
singham was just as unerring in its choice 
of the meanest of her agents. Her success 
indeed in securing from the beginning of 
her reign to its end, with the single excep- 
tion of Leicester, precisely the right men 
for the work she set them to do sprang in 
great measure from the noblest character- 
istic of her intellect. If in loftiness of aim 
her temper fell below many of the tempers 
of her time, in the breadth of its range, in 
the universality of its sympathy it stood far 
above them all. Elizabeth could talk poetry 
with Spenser and philosophy with Bruno; 
she could discuss Euphuism with Lyly, and 
enjoy the chivalry of Essex ; she could turn 
from talk of the last fashions to pore with 
Cecil over despatches and treasury books; 



28 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



she could pass from tracking traitors with 
Walsingham to settle points of doctrine 
with Parker, or to calculate with Frobisher 
the chances of a north-west passage to the 
Indies. The versatility and many-sided- 
ness of her mind enabled her to understand 
every phase of the intellectual movement 
of her day, and to fix by a sort of instinct 
on its higher representatives. But the 
greatness of the Queen rests above all on 
her power over her people. We have had 
grander and nobler rulers, but none so 
popular as Elizabeth. The passion of love, 
of loyalty, of admiration which finds its 
most perfect expression in the "Faery 
Queen," throbbed as intensely through the 
veins of her meanest subjects. To England, 
during her reign of half a century, she was 
a virgin and a Protestant Queen ; and her 
immorality, her absolute want of religious 
enthusiasm, failed utterly to blur the 
brightness of the national ideal. Her worst 
acts broke fruitlessly against the general 
devotion. A Puritan, whose hand she cut 
off in a freak of tyrannous resentment, 
waved his hat with the hand that was left, 
and shouted "God save Queen Elizabeth!" 
Of her faults, indeed, England beyond the 
circle of her court knew little or nothing. 
The shiftings of her diplomacy were never 
seen outside the royal closet. The nation at 
large could only judge her foreign policy 
by its main outlines, by its temperance and 
good sense, and above all by its success. 
But evei'y Englishman was able to judge 
Elizabeth in her rule at home, in her love of 
peace, her instinct of order, the firmness and 
moderation of her government, the judi- 
cious spirit of conciliation and compro- 
mise among warring factions which gave 
the country an unexampled tranquillity at 
a time when almost every other country in 
Euroj^e was torn with civil war. Every 
sign of the growing prosperity, the sight of 
London as it became the mart of the world, 
of stately mansions as they rose on every 
manor, told, and justly told, in Elizabeth's 
favor. In one act of her civil administra- 
tion she showed the boldness and originality 
of a great ruler; for the opening of her 
reign saw her face the social difficulty 
which had so long impeded English prog- 
ress, by the issue of a commission of in- 
quiry which ended in the solution of the 
problem by the system of poor-laws. She 
lent a ready patronage to the new com- 
merce; she considered its extension and 



protection as a part of public policy, and 
her statue in the center of the London Ex- 
change was a tribute on the part of the mer- 
chant class to the interest with which she 
watched and shared personally in its enter- 
prises. Her thrift won a general grati- 
tude. The memories of the Terror and of 
the Martyrs threw into bright relief the 
aversion from bloodshed which was con- 
spicuous in her earlier reign, an-d never 
wholly wanting through its fiercer close. 
Above all there was a general confidence in 
her instinctive knowledge of the national 
temper. Her finger was always on the pub- 
lic pulse. She knew exactly when she could 
resist the feeling of her people, and when 
she must give way before the new senti- 
ment of freedom which her policy uncon- 
sciously fostered. But when she retreated, 
her defeat had all the grace of victory ; and 
the frankness and unreserve of her surrender 
won back at once the love that her re- 
sistance had lost. Her attitude at home in 
fact was that of a woman whose pride in the 
well-being of her subjects, and whose long- 
ing for their favor, was the one warm 
touch in the coldness of her natural temper. 
If Elizabeth could be said to love anything, 
she loved England. "Nothing," she said to 
her first Parliament in words of unwonted 
fire, "nothing, no worldly thing under the 
sun, is so dear to me as the love and good- 
will of my subjects." And the love and 
good-will which were so dear to her she 
fully won. 

The Menace of Spain" 

john richard green 

[From A Short History of the English 
People] 

But if a fierce religious struggle was at 
hand, men felt that behind this lay a yet 
fiercer political struggle. Philip's hosts 
were looming over sea, and the horrors of 
foreign invasion seemed about to be added 
to the horrors of civil war. Spain was at 
this moment the mightiest of European 
powers. The discoveries of Columbus had 
given it the New World of the West; the 
conquests of Cortes and Pizarro poured 
into its treasury the plunder of Mexico and 
Peru; its galleons brought the rich pro- 
duce of the Indies, their gold, their jewels, 
their ingots of silver, to the harbor of Cadiz. 
To the New World its King added the fair- 



THE EENAISSANCE 



29 



est and wealthiest portions of the Old; he 
was master of Naples and Milan, the rich- 
est and the most fertile districts of Italy; 
of the busy provinces of the Low Countries, 
of Flanders, the great manufacturing dis- 
trict of the time, and of Antwerp, which 
had become the central mart for the com- 
merce of the world. His native kingdom, 
poor as it was, supplied him with the stead- 
iest and the most daring soldiers that the 
world has seen since the fall of the Roman 
Empire. The renown of the Spanish in- 
fantry had been growing from the day 
when it flung off the onset of the French 
chivalry on the field of Ravenna; and the 
Spanish generals stood without rivals in 
their military skill, as they stood without 
rivals in their ruthless cruelty. The whole, 
too, of this enormous power was massed in 
the hands of a single man. Served as he 
was by able statesmen and subtle diplo- 
matists, Philip of Spain was his own sole 
minister; laboring day after day, like a 
clerk, through the long years of his reign, 
amidst the papers which crowded his 
closet; but resolute to let nothing pass 
without his supervision, and to suffer noth- 
ing to be done save by his express com- 
mand. It was his boast that everywhere 
in the vast compass of his dominions he was 
"an absolute King." It was to realize this 
idea of unshackled power that he crushed 
the liberties of Aragon, as his father had 
crushed the liberties of Castille, and sent 
Alva to tread under foot the constitutional 
freedom of the Low Countries. His bigo- 
try went hand in hand with his thirst for 
rule. Italy and Spain lay hushed beneath 
the terror of the Inquisition, while Flanders 
was being purged of heresy by the stake 
and the sword. The shadow of this gigantic 
power fell like a deadly blight over Europe. 
The new Protestantism, like the new spirit 
of political liberty, saw its real foe in Philip. 
It was Spain, rather than the Guises, 
against which Coligni and the Huguenots 
struggled in vain ; it was Spain with which 
William of Orange was wrestling for re- 
ligious and civil freedom; it was Spain 
which was soon to plunge Germany into the 
chaos of the Thirty Years' War, and to 
which the Catholic world had for twenty 
years been looking, and looking in vain, for 
a victory over heresy in England. Vast in 
fact as Philip's resources were, they were 
drained by the yet vaster schemes of ambi- 
tion into which his religion and his greed 



of power, as well as the wide distribution 
of his dominions, perpetually drew him. 
To coerce the weaker States of Italy, to 
command the Mediterranean, to preserve 
his influence in Germany, to support 
Catholicism in France, to crush heresy in 
Flanders, to despatch one Armada against 
the Turk and another against Elizabeth, 
were aims mighty enough to exhaust even 
the power of the Spanish Monarchy. But 
it was rather on the character of Philip than 
on the exhaustion of his treasury that Eliza- 
beth counted for success in the struggle 
which had so long been going on between 
them. The King's temper was slow, 
cautious even to timidity, losing itself con- 
tinually in delays, in hesitations, in an- 
ticipating remote perils, in waiting for dis- 
tant chances ; and on the slowness and hesi- 
tation of his temper his rival had been 
playing ever since she mounted the throne. 
The diplomatic contest between the two 
was like the fight which England was soon 
to see between the ponderous Spanish gal- 
leon and the light pinnace of the buc- 
caneers. The agility, the sudden changes 
of Elizabeth, her lies, her mystifications, 
though they failed to deceive Philip, puz- 
zled and impeded his mind. But amidst all 
this cloud of intrigue the actual course of 
their relations had been clear and simple. 
In her earlier days France rivaled Spain in 
its greatness, and Elizabeth simply played 
the two rivals off against one another. She 
hindered France from giving effective aid 
to Mary Stuart by threats of an alliance 
with Spain; while she induced Philip to 
wink at her heresy, and to discourage the 
risings of the English Catholics, by playing 
on his dread of her alliance with France. 
But as the tide of religious passion which 
had so long been held in check broke at 
last over its banks, the political face of 
Europe changed. The Low Countries, 
driven to despair by the greed and perse- 
cution of Alva, rose in a revolt which after 
strange alternations of fortune gave to 
Europe the Republic of the United Prov- 
inces. The opening which their rising af- 
forded was seized by the Huguenot lead- 
ers of France as a political engine to break 
the power which Catharine of Medicis exer- 
cised over Charles the Ninth, and to set 
aside her policy of religious balance by 
placing France at the head of Protestantism 
in the West. Charles listened to the coun- 
sels of Coligni, who pressed for war upon 



30 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Philip and promised the support of the 
Huguenots in an invasion of the Low Coun- 
tries. Never had a fairer prospect opened 
to French ambition. Catharine, hovfever, 
saw ruin for the monarchy in a France at 
once Protestant and free. She threw her- 
self on the side of the Guises, and ensured 
their triumph by lending herself to their 
massacre of the Protestants on St. Bartholo- 
mew's day. But though the long gathering 
clouds of religious hatred had broken, Eliza- 
beth trusted to her dexterity to keep out 
of the storm. France plunged madly back 
into a chaos of civil war, and the Low 
Countries were left to cope single-handed 
with Spain. Whatever enthusiasm the 
heroic struggle of the Prince of Orange ex- 
cited among her subjects, it failed to move 
Elizabeth even for an instant from the path 
of cold self-interest. To her the revolt of 
the Netherlands was simply "a bridle of 
Spain, which kept war out of our own gate." 
At the darkest moment of the contest, when 
Alva had won back all but Holland and 
Zealand, and even William of Orange de- 
spaired, the Queen bent her energies to pre- 
vent him from finding succor in France. 
That the Provinces could in the end with- 
stand Philip, neither she nor any English 
statesmen believed. They held that the 
struggle must close either in utter subjec- 
tion of the Netherlands, or in their selling 
themselves for aid to France; and the ac- 
cession of power which either result must 
give to one of her two Catholic foes the 
Queen was eager to avert. Her plan for 
averting it was by forcing the Provinces 
to accept the terms offered by Spain — a 
restoration, that is, of their constitutional 
privileges on condition of their submission 
to the Church. Peace on such a footing would 
not only restore English commerce, which 
suffered from the war; it would leave the 
Netherlands still formidable as a weapon 
against Philip. The freedom of the Prov- 
inces would be saved; and the religious 
question involved in a fresh submission to 
the yoke of Catholicism was one which 
Elizabeth was incapable of appreciating. 
To her the steady refusal of William the 
Silent to sacrifice his faith was as unintel- 
ligible as the steady bigotry of Philip in 
demanding such a sacrifice. It was of more 
imm^ediate consequence that Philip's anxiety 
to avoid provoking an intervention on the 
part of England which would destroy all 
hope of his success in Flanders, left her 



tranquil at home. Had revolt in England 
prospered he was ready to reap the fruits of 
other men's labors; and he made no objec- 
tion to plots for the seizure or assassination 
of the Queen. But his state was too vast to 
risk an attack while she sate firmly on her 
throne; and the cry of the English Catho- 
lics, or the pressure of the Pope, had as 
yet failed to drive the Spanish King into 
strife with Elizabeth. 

The control of events was, however, pass- 
ing from the hands of statesmen and dip- 
lomatists; and the long period of suspense 
which their policy had won was ending in 
the clash of national and political passions. 
The rising fanaticism of the Catholic world 
was breaking down the caution and hesita- 
tion of Philip; while England set aside the 
balanced neutrality of her Queen and pushed 
boldly forward to a contest which it felt to 
be inevitable. The public opinion, to which 
the Queen was so sensitive, took every day 
a bolder and more decided tone. Her cold 
indifference to the heroic struggle in Flan- 
ders was more than compensated by the en- 
thusiasm it excited among the nation at 
large. The earlier Flemish refugees found a 
refuge in the Cinque Ports. The exiled mer- 
chants of Antwerp were welcomed by the 
merchants of London. While Elizabeth 
dribbled out her secret aid to the Prince of 
Orange, the London traders sent him half-a- 
million from their own purses, a sum equal 
to a year's revenue of the Crown. Volun- 
teers stole across the Channel in increasing 
numbers to the aid of the Dutch, till the five 
hundred Englishmen who fought in the be- 
ginning of the struggle rose to a brigade of 
five thousand, whose bravery turned one of 
the most critical battles of the war. Dutch 
privateers found shelter in English ports, 
and English vessels hoisted the flag of the 
States for a dash to the Spanish traders. 
Protestant fervor rose steadily as "the best 
captains and soldiers" returned from the 
campaigns in the Low Countries to tell of 
Alva's atrocities, or as privateers brought 
back tales of English seamen who had been 
seized in Spain and the New World, to 
linger amidst the tortures of the Inquisition, 
or to die in its fires. In the presence of this 
steady drift of popular passion the diplo- 
macy of Elizabeth became of little moment. 
When she sought to put a check on Philip 
by one of her last matrimonial intrigues, 
which threatened England with a Catholic 
sovereign in the Duke of Anjou, a younger 



THE EENAISSANCE 



31 



son of the hated Catharine of Medieis, the 
popular indignation rose suddenly into a cry 
against "a Popish King" which the Queen 
dared not defy. If Elizabeth Avas resolute 
for peace, England was resolute for war. A 
new courage had arisen since the beginning 
of her reign, when Cecil and the Queen stood 
alone in their belief in England's strength, 
and when the diplomatists of Europe re- 
garded her obstinate defiance of Philip's 
counsels as "madness." The whole people 
had caught the self-confidence and daring of 
their Queen. The seamen of the southern 
coast had long been carrying on a half- 
piratical war on their own account. Four 
years after Elizabeth's accession the Chan- 
nel swarmed with "sea-dogs," as they were 
called, who sailed under letters of marque 
from the Prince of Conde and the Huguenot 
leaders, and took heed neither of the com- 
plaints of the French Court nor of Eliza- 
beth's own attempts at repression. Her 
efforts failed before the connivance of every 
man along the coast, of the very port-officers 
of the Crown who made profit out of the 
spoil, and of the gentry of the west, who 
were hand and glove with the adventurers. 
They broke above all against the national 
craving for open fight with Spain, and the 
Protestant craving for open fight with 
Catholicism. Young Englishmen crossed the 
sea to serve under Conde or Henry of 
Navarre. The war in the Netherlands drew 
hundreds of Protestants to the field. The 
suspension of the French contest only drove 
the sea-dogs to the West Indies; for the 
Papal decree which gave the New World to 
Spain, and the threats of Philip against any 
Protestant who should visit its seas, fell idly 
on the ears of English seamen. It was in 
vain that their trading vessels were seized, 
and the sailors flung into the dungeons of the 
Inquisition, "laden with irons, without sight 
of sun or moon." The profits of the trade 
were large enough to counteract its perils; 
and the bigotry of Philip was met by a bigo- 
try as merciless as his own. The Puritanism 
of the sea-dogs went hand in hand with their 
love of adventure. To break through the 
Catholic monopoly of the New World, to 
kill Spaniards, to sell negroes, to sack gold- 
ships, were in these men's minds a seemly 
work for the "elect of God." The name of 
Francis Drake became the terror of the 
Spanish Indies. In Drake a Protestant 
fanaticism was united with a splendid dar- 
ing. He conceived the design of penetrating 



into the Pacific, whose waters had never seen 
an English flag ; and backed by a little com- 
pany of adventurers, he set sail for the 
southern seas in a vessel hardly as big as a 
Channel schooner, with a few yet smaller 
companions who fell away before the storms 
and perils of the voyage. But Drake with 
his one shija and eighty men held boldly on ; 
and passing the Straits of Magellan, un- 
traversed as yet by any Englishman, swept 
the unguarded coast of Chili and Peru, 
loaded his bark with the gold-dust and sil- 
ver-ingots of Potosi, and with the pearls, 
emeralds, and diamonds which formed the 
cargo of the great galleon that sailed once a 
year from Lima to Cadiz. With spoils of 
above half-a-million in value the daring ad- 
venturer steered undauntedly for the Moluc- 
cas, rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and 
after completing the circuit of the globe 
dropped anchor again in Plymouth harbor. 

The Spirit of England 

1. "This England" 

[The speech of John of Gaunt, Shake- 
speare's Richard 77] 

Methinks I am a prophet new inspired 
And thus expiring do foretell of him : 
His rash fierce blaze of riot cannot last. 
For violent fires soon burn out themselves; 
Small showers last long, but sudden storms 

are short; 
He tires betimes that spurs too fast betimes ; 
With eager feeding food doth choke the 

feeder : 
Light vanity, insatiate cormorant. 
Consuming means, soon preys upon itself. 
This royal throne of kings, this scepter'd 

isle, 
This earth of majesty, this seat of Mars, 
This other Eden, demi-paradise, 
This fortress built by Nature for herself 
Against infection and the hand of war, 
This happy breed of men, this little world, 
This precious stone set in the silver sea. 
Which serves it in the office of a wall 
Or as a moat defensive to a house, 
Against the envy of less happier lands. 
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this 

England, 
This nurse, this teeming womb of royal 

kings, 
Fear'd by their breed and famous by their 

birth, 



32 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Renowned for their deeds as far from home, 
For Christian service and true chivalry, 
As is the sepulcher in stubborn Jewry 
Of the world's ransom, blessed Mary's Son, 
This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear 

land, 
Dear for her reputation through the world, 
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it. 
Like to a tenement or pelting farm: 
England, bound in with the triumphant sea, 
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious 

siege 
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with 

shame, 
With inky blots and rotten parchment 

bonds : 
That England, that was wont to conquer 

others, 
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself. 
Ah, would the scandal vanish with my life. 
How happy then were my ensuing death ! 

2. Unity Against the Foe 

[The speech of Faulconbridge, Shake- 
speare's King John] 

Bast. This England never did, nor never 

shall. 
Lie at the proud foot of a conqueror. 
But when it first did help to wound itself. 
Now these her princes are come home again, 
Come the three corners of the world in arms. 
And we shall shock them. Nought shall 

make us rue. 
If England to itself do rest but true. 

3. England at War 

[From Shakespeare's Henry V, Act III] 

Enter Chorus 

Chor. Thus with imagined wing our'swift 

scene flies 
In motion of no less celerity 
Than that of thought. Suppose that you 

have seen 
The well-appointed king at Hampton pier 
Embark his royalty; and his brave fleet 
With silken streamers the young Phoebus 

fanning : 
Play with your fancies, and in them behold 
Upon the hempen tackle ship-boys climbing ; 
Hear the shrill whistle which doth order give 
To sounds confused; behold the threaden 

sails. 
Borne with the invisible and creeping wind. 
Draw the huge bottoms through the fur- 

row'd sea, 



Breasting the lofty surge : 0, do but think 
You stand upon the rivage and behold 
A city on the inconstant billows dancing ; 
For so appears this fleet majestical. 
Holding due course to Harfleur. Follow, 

follow : 
Grapple your minds to sternage of this navy. 
And leave your England, as dead midnight 

still. 
Guarded with grandsires, babies, and old 

women, 
Either past or not arrived to pith and puis- 
sance ; 
For who is he, whose chin is but enrich'd 
With one appearing hair, that will not fol- 
low 
These cull'd and choice-drawn cavaliers to 

France ? 
Work, work your thoughts, and therein see 

a siege ; 
Behold the ordnance on their carriages. 
With fatal mouths gaping on girded Har- 
fleur. 
Suppose the ambassador from the French 

comes back; 
Tells Harry that the king doth offer him 
Katharine his daughter, and with her, to 

dowry. 
Some petty and unprofitable dukedoms. 
The offer likes not : and the nimble gunner 
With linstock now the devilish cannon 
touches, 

{^Alarum, and chambers go off 
And down goes all before them. Still be 

kind, 
And eke out our performance with your 
mind. [Exit 

ScEKE I. France. Before Harfleur 

Alarum. Enter King Henry, Exeter, Bed- 
ford^ Gloucester, and Soldiers, with scal- 
ing-ladders. 

K. Hen. Once more unto the breach, dear 
friends, once more ; 
Or close the wall up with our English dead. 
In peace there's nothing so becomes a man 
As modest stillness and humility ; 
But when the blast of war blows in our ears. 
Then imitate the action of the tiger; 
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood. 
Disguise fair nature with hard-f avor'd rage : 
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect ; 
Let it pry through the portage of the head 
Like the brass cannon; let the brow o'er- 

whelm it 
As fearfully as doth a galled rock 



THE EENAISSANCE 



33 



O'erhang and jutty his confounded base, 
Swiird with the wild and wasteful ocean. 
Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril 

wide, 
Hold hard the breath, and bend up every 

spirit 
To his full height. On, on, you noblest Eng- 
lish, 
Whose blood is fet from fathers of war- 
proof ! 
Fathers, that, like so many Alexanders, 
Have in these parts from morn till even 

fought 
And sheathed their swords for lack of argu- 
ment : 
Dishonor not your mothers ; now attest 
That those whom you call'd fathers did beget 

you. 
Be copy now to men of grosser blood, 
And teach them how to war. And you, good 

yeomen, 
Whose limbs were made in England, show 

us here 
The mettle of your pasture ; let us swear 
That you are worth your breeding ; which I 

doubt not ; 
For there is none of you so mean and base, 
That hath not noble luster in your eyes. 
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips, 
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot : 
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge 
Cry, "God for Harry, England, and Saint 
George !" 
[Exeunt. Alarum j, and chambers go off. 

[From Act IV] 

Enter Chorus 

Chor. Now entertain conjecture of a time 
When creeping murmur and the poring dark 
Fills the wide vessel of the universe. 
From camjD to camp through the foul womb 

of night 
The hum of either army stilly sounds, 
That the fixed sentinels almost receive 
The secret whispers of each other's watch: 
Fire answers fire, and through their paly 

flames 
Each battle sees the other's umber'd face; 
Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful 

neighs 
Piercing the night's dull ear, and from the 

tents 
The armorers, accomplishing the knights. 
With busy hammers closing rivets up. 
Give dreadful note of preparation: 



The country cocks do crow, the clocks do 

toll. 
And the third hour of drowsy morning 

name. 
Proud of their numbers and secure in soul, 
The confident and over-lusty French 
Do the low-rated English play at dice ; 
And chide the cripjDle tardy-gaited night 
Who, like a foul and ugly witch, doth limp 
So tediously away. The poor condemned 

English, 
Like sacrifices, by their watchful fires 
Sit patiently, and inly ruminate 
The morning's danger, and their gesture sad 
Investing lank-lean cheeks and war-worn 

coats 
Presenteth them unto the gazing moon 
So many horrid ghosts. now, who will 

behold 
The royal captain of this ruin'd band 
Walking from watch to watch, from tent to 

tent. 
Let him cry, "Praise and glory on his 

head !" 
For forth he goes and visits all his host, 
Bids them good morrow with a modest smile, 
And calls them brothers, friends, and coun- 
trymen. 
Upon his royal face there is no note 
How dread an army hath enrounded him ; 
Nor doth he dedicate one jot of color 
Unto the weary and all-watched night, 
But freshly looks and over-bears attaint 
With cheerful semblance and sweet majesty; 
That every wretch, pining and pale before. 
Beholding him, plucks comfort from his 

looks : 
A largess universal like the sun 
His liberal eye doth give to every one, 
Thawing cold fear, that mean and gentle all. 
Behold, as may unworthiness define, 
A little touch of Harry in the night. 
And so our scene must to the battle fly ; 
Where — for pity! — we shall much dis- 
grace 
With four or five most vile and ragged foils, 
Right ill-disposed in brawl ridiculous, 
The name of Agincourt. Yet sit and see, 
Minding true things by what their mockeries 
be. • [Exit 

Scene III. The English Camp 

Enter Gloucester, Bedford, Exeter^ Er- 
piNGHAM, with all his host; Salisbury 
and Westmoreland. 

Glou. Where is the king'? 



34 



THE GKEAT TRADITION 



Bed. The king himself is rode to view 

their battle. 
West. Of fighting men they have full 

three-score thousand. 
Exe. There's five to one ; besides, they all 

are fresh, 
Sal. God's arm strike with us ! 'tis a fear- 
ful odds. 
God be wi' you, princes all; I'll to my 

charge : 
If we no more meet till we meet in heaven. 
Then, joyfully, my noble Lord of Bedford, 
My dear Lord Gloucester, and my good Lord 

Exeter, 
And my kind kinsman, warriors all, adieu! 
Bed. Farewell, good Salisbury; and good 

luck go with thee ! 
Exe. Farewell, kind lord ; fight valiantly 
today : 
And yet I do thee wrong to mind thee of it, 
For thou art framed of the firm truth of 
valor. [Exit Salisbury 

Bed. He is as full of valor as of kind- 
ness ; 
Princely in both. 

Enter the King 

West. that we now had here 

But one ten thousand of those men in Eng- 
land 
That do no work today ! 

K. Ben. What's he that wishes so ? 

My cousin Westmoreland? No, my fair 

cousin : 
If we are mark'd to die, we are enow 
To do our country loss ; and if to live, 
The fewer men, the greater share of honor. 
God's will! I pray thee, wish not one man 

more. 
By Jove, I am not covetous for gold, 
Nor care I who doth feed upon my cost ; 
It yearns me not if men my garments wear ; 
Such outward things dwell not in my desires : 
But if it be a sin to covet honor, 
I am the most offending soul alive. 
No, faith, my coz, wish not a man from 

England : 
God's peace I I would not lose so great an 

honor 
As one man more, methinks, would share 

from me 
For the best hope I have. 0, do not wish 

one more ! 
Rather proclaim it, Westmoreland, through 

my host. 
That he which hath no stomach to this fight. 



Let him depart ; his passport shall be made, 
And crowns for convoy pvit into his purse: 
We would not die in that man's company, 
That fears his fellowship to die with us. 
This day is call'd the feast of Crispian : 
He that outlives this day, and comes safe 

home, 
Will stand a tip-toe when this day is named, 
And rouse him at the name of Crispian. 
He that shall live this day, and see old age, 
Will yearly on the vigil feast his neighbors, 
And say, "Tomorrow is Saint Crispian" ; 
Then will he strip his sleeve and show his 

scars, 
And say, "These wounds I had on Crispin's 

day." 
Old men forget; yet all shall be forgot, 
But he'll remember with advantages 
What feats he did that day : then shall our 

names, 
Familiar in his mouth as household words, 
Harry the king, Bedford and Exeter, 
Warwick and Talbot, Salisbury and Glou- 
cester, 
Be in their flowing cups freshly remem- 

ber'd. 
This story shall the good man teach his son : 
And Crispin Crispian shall ne'er go by, 
From this day to the ending of the world, 
But we in it shall be remembered; 
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers ; 
For he today that sheds his blood with me 
Shall be my brother : be he ne'er so vile. 
This day shall gentle his condition; 
And gentlemen in England now abed 
Shall think themselves accursed they were 

not here. 
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any 

speaks 
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's 



Ballad of Agincourt 
michael drayton 

1 

Fair stood the wind for France, 
When we our sails advance; 
Nor now to prove our chance 

Longer will tarry; 
But putting to the main. 
At Caux, the mouth of Seine, 
With all his martial train 

Landed King Harry. 



THE RENAISSANCE 



35 



And taking many a fort, 
Furnished in warlike sort, 
Marcheth towards Agincourt 

In happy hour; 
Skirmishing, day by day, 
With those that stopped his way, 
Where the French general lay 

With all his power. 



Which, in his height of pride. 
King Henry to deride, 
His ransom to provide. 

To the King sending; 
Which he neglects the while. 
As from a nation vile, 
Yet, with an angry smile, 

Their fall portending. 



And turning to his men. 
Quoth our brave Henry then; 
"Though they to one be ten 

. Be not amazed ! 
Yet have we well begun: 
Battles so bravely won 
Have ever to the sun 
By Fame been raised! 



"And for myself," quoth he, 
"This my full rest shall be: 
England ne'er mourn for me, 

Nor more esteem me ! 
Victor I will remain, 
Or on this earth lie slain; 
Never shall she sustain 

Loss to redeem me ! 



"Poitiers and Cressy tell, 
When most their pride did swell. 
Under our swords they fell. 

No less our skill is. 
Than when our Grandsire great, 
Claiming the regal seat. 
By many a warlike feat 

Lopped the French lilies." 



The Duke of York so dread 
The eager vanward led; 
With the main, Henry sped 



Amongst his henchmen; 
Exeter had the rear, 
A braver man not there ! 
Lord, how hot they were 

On the false Frenchmen! 



They now to fight are gone ; 
Armor on armor shone; 
Drum now to drum did groan : 

To hear, was wonder; 
That, with the cries they make, 
The very earth did shake; 
Trumpet to trumpet spake ; 

Thunder to thunder. 

9 

Well it thine age became, 
noble Erpingham, 
Which didst the signal aim 

To our hid forces ! 
When, from a meadow by. 
Like a storm suddenly. 
The English archery 

Stuck the French horses, 

10 

With Spanish yew so strong; 
Arrows a cloth-yard long, 
That like to serpents stung, 
. Piercing the weather. 
None from his fellow starts ; 
But playing manly parts, 
And like true English hearts, 
Stuck close together. 

11 

When down their bows they threw, 
And forth their bilboes drew, 
And on the French they flew : 

Not one was tardy. 
Arms were from shoulders sent. 
Scalps to the teeth were rent, 
Down the French peasants went : 

Our men were hardy. 

12 

This while our noble King, 
His broad sword brandishing, 
Down the French host did ding, 

As to o'erwhelm it. 
And many a deep wound lent ; 
His arms with blood besprent, 
And many a cruel dent 

Bruised his helmet. 



36 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



13 

Gloucester, that duke so good, 
Next of the royal blood, 
For famous England stood 

With his brave brother. 
Clarence, in steel so bright. 
Though but a maiden knight. 
Yet in that furious fight. 

Scarce such another! 

14 

Warwick in blood did wade ; 
Oxford, the foe invade. 
And cruel slaughter made, 

Still as they ran up. 
Suffolk his axe did ply ; 
Beaumont and Willoughby 
Bare them right doughtily ; 

Ferrers, and Fanhope. 

15 

Upon Saint Crispin's Day 
Fought was this noble fray; 
Which Fame did not delay 

To England to carry. 
0, when shall English men 
With such acts fill a pen? 
Or England breed again 

Such a King Harry? 



The Deeds of Elizabethan Seamen 

richard hakluyt 

[From the Voyages, 1589] 

To harp no longer upon this string, and 
to speak a word of that just commenda- 
tion which our nation do indeed deserve: it 
cannot be denied, but as in' all former ages 
they have been men full of activity, stirrers 
abroad, and searchers of the remote parts of 
the world, so in this most famous and peer- 
less government of her most excellent Ma- 
jesty, her subjects, through the special as- 
sistance and blessing of God, in searching 
the most opposite corners and quarters of 
the world, and to speak plainly, in com- 
passing the vast globe of the earth more 
than once, have excelled all the nations and 
people of the earth. For which of the kings 
of this land before her Majesty had their 
banners ever seen in the Caspian sea? which 
of them hath ever dealt with the emperor 
■of Persia as her Majesty hath done, and 
obtained for her merchants large and lov- 



ing privileges? who ever saw, before this 
regiment, an' English Ligier in the stately 
porch of the Grand Signor at Constanti- 
nople? who ever found English consuls and 
agents at Tripolis in Syria, at Aleppo, at 
Babylon, at Balsara, and which is more, who 
ever heard of Englishman at Goa before 
now? what English ships did heretofore 
ever anchor in the mighty river of Plate? 
pass and repass the unpassable (in former 
opinion) Strait of Magellan, range along the 
coast of Chili, Peru, and all the backside 
of Nova Hispania, further than any chris- 
tian ever passed, traverse the mighty 
breadth of the South Sea, land upon the 
Luzones in despite of the enemy, enter into 
alliance, amity, and traffic with the princes 
of the Moluccas and the isle of Java, double 
the famous cape of Bona Speranza, arrive 
at the isle of St. Helena, and last of all re- 
turn home most richly laden with the com- 
modities of China, as the subjects of this 
now flourishing monarchy have done ? 



To THE Virginian Voyage 

MICHAEL DRAYTON 



You brave heroic minds. 
Worthy your country's name. 

That honor still pursue; 

Go and subdue! 
Whilst loitering hinds 

Lurk here at home with shame. 



Britons, you stay too long; 

Quickly aboard bestow you ! 
And with a merry gale 
Swell your stretched sail, 

With vows as strong 

As the winds that blow you! 



Your course securely steer, 
West-and-by-south forth keep ! 

Rocks, lee-shores, nor shoals, 

When Eolus scowls. 
You need not fear. 
So absolute the deep. 



And, cheerfully at sea. 
Success you still entice. 
To get the pearl and gold ; 



THE EENAISSANCE 



37 



And ours to hold, 
Virginia, 
Earth's only Paradise. 



Where Nature hath in store 
Fowl, venison, and fish; 

And the fruitful'st soil, — 

Without your toil, 
Three harvests more, 
All greater than your wish. 



And the ambitious vine 
Crowns with his purple mass 

The cedar reaching high 

To kiss the sky, 
The cypress, pine. 
And useful sassafras. 



To whom, the Golden Age 
Still Nature's laws doth give: 

Nor other cares attend. 

But them to defend 
From winter's rage, 
That long there doth not live. 



When as the luscious smell 

Of that delicious land, 
Above the seas that flows, 
The clear wind throws. 

Your hearts to swell, 

Approaching the dear strand. 

9 

In kenning of the shore 
(Thanks to God first given!) 

you, the happiest men, 

Be frolic then ! 
Let cannons roar, 
Frightening the wide heaven! 

10 

And in regions far. 

Such heroes bring ye forth 

As those from whom we came! 

And plant our name 
Under that star 
Not known unto our North! 

11 

And where in plenty grows 
The laurel everywhere, 

Apollo's sacred tree 

Your days may see 



A poet's brows 

To crown, that may sing there. 

12 

Thy Voyages attend, 
Industrious Hakluyt! 

Whose reading shall inflame 

Men to seek fame; 
And much commend 
To after times thy wit. 



The Victory op England 

sir walter raleigh 

[From A Beport of the Fight betwixt the 

Revenge and an Armada of the 

King of Spain, 1591] 

Because the rumours are diversly spred, 
as well in Englande as in the lowe countries 
and els where, of this late encounter between 
her maiesties ships and the Armada of 
Spain; and that the Spaniardes according 
to their usual maner, fill the woi'ld with their 
vaine glorious vaunts, making great appar- 
ance of victories: when on the contrary, 
themselves are most commonly and shame- 
fully beaten and dishonoured ; therby hoping 
to possesse the ignorant multitude by an- 
ticipating and forerunning false reports : It 
is agreeable with all good reason, for mani- 
festation of the truth to overcome falsehood 
and untruth; that the beginning, continu- 
ance, and suecesse of this late honourable en- 
counter of Syr Richard Grinvile, and other 
her maiesties Captaines, with the Armada of 
Spaine; should be truly set downe and pub- 
lished without parcialltie or false imagina- 
tions. And it is no marvell that the Span- 
iard should seeke by false and slandrous 
Pamphlets, advisoes and Letters, to cover 
their owne losse, and to derogate from others 
their due honours especially in this fight 
beeing performed farre of; seeing they were 
not ashamed in the yeare 1588, when they 
purposed the invasion of this land, to pub- 
lish in sundrie languages in print, great vic- 
tories in wordes, which they pleaded to have 
obteined against this Realme, and spredde 
the same in a most false sort over all partes 
of France, Italie, and elsewhere. When 
shortly after it was happily manifested in 
verie deed to all Nations, how their Navy 
which they termed invincible, consisting of 
240 saile of ships, not onely of their own 
kingdom, but strengthened with the greatest 



38 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Argosies, Portugall Caractes, Florentines, 
and huge Hulkes of other countries; were 
by thirtie of her Maiesties' owne shippes of 
warre, and a few of our owne Marchants, by 
the wise, valiant, and most advantagious 
conduction of the L. Charles Howard, high 
Admirall of England, beaten and shuffeled 
togither, even from the Lizard in Cornwall: 
first to Portland, where they shamefully left 
Bon Pedro de Valdes, with his mightie 
shippe : from Portland to Cales, where they 
lost Hugo de Moncado, with the Gallias of 
which he was Captain, and from Cales, 
driven with squibs from their anchors : were 
chased out of the sight of England, round 
about Scotland and Ireland. Where for the 
sympathie of their barbarous religion, hop- 
ing to flnde succour and assistance : a great 
part of them were erusht against the rocks, 
and thos6 other that landed, • being verie 
manie in number, were not withstanding 
broken, slaine, and taken, and so sent from 
village to village coupled in halters to be 
shipped into Engla [n] d. Where her Maiestie 
of her Princely and invincible disposition, 
disdaining to put them to death, and scorn- 
ing either to retaine or entertaine them: 
[they] were all sent baeke againe to theire 
countries, to witnesse and recount the 
worthy achievements of their invincible and 
dreadfuU Navy. Of which the number of 
souldiers, the fearefull burtiien of their 
shippes, the commanders names of everie 
squadron, with all other their magasines of 
provision, were put in print, as an Army 
and Navy unresistible, and disdaining pre- 
vention. With all which so great and ter- 
rible an ostentation, they did not in all their 
sailing rounde about England, so much as 
sinke, or take one ship, Barke, Pinnes, or 
Cockbote of ours: or ever burnt so much 
as one sheep-cote of this land. When as on 
the contrarie, Syr Francis Drake, with only 
800 souldiers not long before, landed in 
their Indies, and forced Santiago, Santa 
Domingo, Cartagena, and the Fortes of 
Florida. 

And after that, Syr loJin Norris marched 
from Peniche in Portugall, with a handfull 
of souldiers, to the gates of Lisbone, being 
above 40 English miles. Where the Earle of 
Essex himself e and other valiant Gentlemen, 
braved the Cittie of Lisbone, encamped at 
the verie gates; from whence after many 
dales abode, finding neither promised partie, 
nor provision to batter: made retrait by 
land, in despite of all their Garrisons, both 



of Horse and f oote. In this sort I have a 
little digressed from my first purpose, only 
by the necessarie comparison of theirs and 
our actions : the one covetous of honor 
without vaunt or ostentation; the other so 
greedy to purchase the opinion of their own 
affaires, and by false rumors to resist the 
blasts of their owne dishonors, as they wil 
not only not blush to spread all maner of 
untruthes : but even for the least advantage, 
be it but for the taking of one poore ad- 
venturer of the English, will celebrate the 
vietorie with bonefiers in everie town, 
alwaies spending more in faggots, then the 
purchase was worth they obtained. When 
as we never yet thought it worth the con- 
sumption of two billets, when we have taken 
eight or ten of their Indian shippes at one 
time, and twentie of the Brasill fleet. 
Such is the difference between true val- 
ure, and ostentation : and betweene hon- 
ourable actions, and frivolous vaine- 
glorious vaunts. But now to returne to 
my first purpose. 

The L. Thomas Howard, with sixe of her 
Maiesties ships, sixe victualers of London, 
the barke Ralegh, and two or three Pinnasses 
riding at anchor nere unto Flores, one of 
the Westerlie Hands of the Azores, the last 
of August in the after noone had intelligence 
by one Captaine Midleton, of the approach 
of the Spanish Armada. Which Midleton 
being in a. verie good Sailer, had kept them 
companie three dales before, of good pur- 
pose, both to discover their forces the more, 
as also to give advice to my L. Thomas of 
their approch. He had no sooner delivered 
the newes but the Fleet was in sight : manie 
of our shippes companies were on shore in 
the Hand; some providing balast for their 
ships ; others filling of water and refreshing 
themselves from the land with such thinges 
as they coulde either for money, or by force 
recover. By reason whereof our ships being 
all pestered and romaging everie thing out 
of order, verie light for want of balast. And 
that which was most to our disadvantage, the 
one halfe part of the men of every shippe 
sicke, and utterly unserviceable. For in the 
Revenge there were ninetie diseased : in the 
Bonaventure, not so many in health as could 
handle her maine saile. For had not twentie 
men beene taken out of a Barke of Sir 
George Caryes, his being commanded to be 
sunke, and those appointed to her, she had 
hardly ever recovered England, The rest 
for the most part, were in little better state. 



THE EENAISSANCE 



39 



The names of her Maiesties shippes were 
these as followeth: the Defiaunce, which 
was Admiral!, the Revenge Vieeadmirall, 
the Bonaventure, commanded by Captaine 
Crosse, the Lion by George Fenner, the 
Foresight by M. Thomas Vavisour, and the 
Crane by Duffeild. The Foresight and the 
Crane being but small shijDS ; onely the other 
were of the middle size; the rest, besid[e]s 
the Barke Ralegh, commanded by Captaine 
•Thin, were victualers, and of small force or 
none. The Spanish fleete having shrouded 
their approch by reason of the Hand ; were 
now so soone at hand, as our ships had 
scarce time to waye their anchors, but some 
of them were driven to let slippe their 
Cables, and set sayle. Sir Richard Grinvile 
was the last waied, to recover the men that 
were upon the Hand, which otherwise had 
beene lost. The L. Thomas with the rest 
verie hardly recovered the winde, which Sir 
Richard Grinvile not being able to do, was 
perswaded by the maister and others to cut 
his maine saile, and east about, and to trust 
to the sailing of his shippe : for the squadron 
of Sivil were on his weather bow. But Sir 
Richard utterly refused to turne from the 
enimie, alledging that he would rather chose 
to dye, then to dishonour him self e, his eoun- 
trie, and her Maiesties shippe, perswading 
his companie that he would passe through 
the two Squadrons, in despight of them : and 
enforce those of Sivill to give him way. 
Which he performed upon diverse of the 
formost, who as the Marriners terme it, 
sprang their luffe, and fell under the lee of 
the Revenge. But the other course had beene 
the better, and might right well have beene 
answered in so great an impossibilitie of 
prevailing. Notwithstanding out of the 
greatnesse of his minde, he could not bee 
persAvaded. In the meane while as hee at- 
tended those whiehjwere nearest him, the 
great San Philip being in the winde of him, 
and comming towards him, becalmed his 
sailes in such sort, as the shippe could 
neither way nor feele the helme: so huge 
and high carged was the Spanish ship, being 
of a thousand and five hundredth tuns. Who 
afterlaid the Revenge aboord. When he was 
thus bereft of his sailes, the ships that wer 
under his lee luffing up, also laid him 
aborde : of which the next was the Admirall 
of the Biseaines, a verie mightie and puysant 
shippe commanded by Brittan Dona. The 
said Philip carried three tire of ordinance on 
a side, and eleven jDeeces in everie tire. She 



shot eight forth right out of her chase, be- 
sides those of her Sterne portes. 

After the Revenge was intangled with this 
Philip, f oure other boorded her ; two on her 
larboord, and two on her starboord. The 
fight thus beginning at three of the elocke 
in the after noone, continued verie terrible 
all that evening. But the great San Philip 
having receyved the lower tire of the Re- 
venge, discharged with crossebarshot, shifted 
hir selfe with all diligence from her sides, 
utterly misliking hir first entertainment. 
Some say that the shippe f oundred, but wee 
cannot report it for truth, unlesse we were 
assured. The Spanish ships were filled with 
companies of souldiers, in some two hun- 
dred besides the Marriners ; in some five, in 
others eight hundred. In ours there were 
none at all, beside the Marriners, but the 
servants of the commanders and some fewe 
voluntarie Gentlemen only. After many en- 
ter changed voleies of great ordinance and 
small shot, the Spaniards deliberated to 
enter the Revenge, and made divers at- 
tempts, hoping to force her by the multi- 
tudes of their armed souldiers and Mus- 
ketiers, but were still repulsed againe and 
againe, and at all times beaten backe, into 
their owne shippes, or into the seas. In the 
beginning of the fight, the George Noble of 
London, having received some shot thorow 
her by the armados, fell under the Lee of 
the Revenge, and asked Syr Richard what 
he would command him, being one of the 
victulers and of small force: Syr Richard 
bid him save himselfe, and leave him to his 
fortune. After the fight had thus without 
intermission, continued while the day lasted 
and some houres of the night, many of our 
men were slaine and hurt, and one of the 
great Gallions of the Armada, and the 
Admirall of the Hulkes both sunke, and in 
many other of the Spanish ships great 
slaughter was made. Some write that sir 
Richard was verie dangerously hurt almost 
in the beginning of the fight, and laie speech- 
less for a time ere he recovered. But two 
of the Revenges owne companie, brought 
home in a ship of Lime from the Ilandes, 
examined by some of the Lordes, and others : 
affirmed that he was never so wounded as 
that hee forsooke the upper decke, til an 
houre before midnight ; and then being shot 
into the bodie with a Musket as hee was a 
dressing, was againe shot into the head, 
and withall his Chirugion wounded to death. 
This agreeth also with an examination taken 



40 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



by Syr Frances Godolphin, of 4 other Mar- 
riners of the same shippe being returned, 
which examination, the said Syr Frances 
sent unto maister William Killigrue, of her 
Majesties privie Chamber, 

But to return to the fight, the Spanish 
ships which attempted to board tlie Revenge, 
as they were wounded and beaten of, so 
alwaies others came in their places, she hav- 
ing never lesse than two mightie Gallions by 
her sides and aboard her. So that ere the 
morning, from three of the eloeke the day 
before, there had flfteene several! Armados 
assailed her; and all so ill approved their 
entertainment, as they were by the breake 
of day, far more willing to barken to a com- 
position, then hastily to make any more 
assaults or entries. But as the day en- 
creased, so our men decreased: and as the 
light grew more and riiore, by so much more 
grew our discomforts. For none appeared 
in sight but enemies, saving one small ship 
called the Pilgrim, commanded by lacoh 
Whiddon, who hovered all night to see the 
successe: but in the mornyng bearing with 
the Revenge, was hunted like a hare amongst 
many ravenous houndes, but escaped. 

All the powder of the Revenge to the last 
barrell was now spent, all her pikes broken, 
fortie of her best men slaine, and the most 
part of the rest hurt. In the beginning of 
the fight she had but one hundred free from 
sieknes, and f ourescore and ten sicke, laid in 
hold upon the Ballast. A small troupe to 
man such a ship, and a weake Garrison to 
resist so mighty an Army. By those hun- 
dred all was sustained, the voleis, bourdings, 
and entrings of fifteene shippes of warre,. 
besides those which beat her at large. On 
the contrarie, the Spanish were.alwaies sup- 
plied with souldiers brought from every 
squadron: all maner of Armes and pouder 
at will. Unto ours there remained no com- 
fort at all, no hope, no supply either of 
ships, men, or weapons; the mastes all 
beaten over board, all her tackle cut asunder, 
her upper worke altogither rased, and in 
effect evened shee was with the water, but 
the verie foundation or bottom of a ship, 
nothing being left over head either for 
flight or defence. Syr Richard finding him- 
selfe in this distresse, and unable anie longer 
to make resistance, having endured in this 
fifteene houres fight, the assault of fifteene 
several Armadoes, all by tornnes aboorde 
him, and by estimation eight hundred shot 
of great artillerie, besides manie assaults 



and entries. And that himself and the 
shippe must needes be possessed by the 
enemie, who were not all cast in a ring 
round about him; The Revenge not able to 
move one way or other, but as she was 
moved with the waves and billow of the 
sea : commanded the maister Gunner, whom 
he knew to be a most resolute man, to split 
and sinke the shippe; that thereby nothing 
might remaine of glorie or victorie to the 
Spaniards : seeing in so manie houres fight^ 
and with so great a Navie they were not able 
to take her, having had fifteene houres time, 
fifteene thousand men, and fiftie and three 
saile of men of warre to perf orme it withall. 
And perswaded the companie, or as manie 
as he could induce, to yeelde themselves unto 
God, and to the mercie of none els; but as 
they had like valiant resolute men, repulsed 
so ' manie enimies, they should not now 
shorten the honour of their nation, by pro- 
longing their owne lives for a few houres, or 
a few dales. The maister Gunner readilie 
condescended and divers others; but the 
Captaine and the Maister were of an other 
opinion, and besought Sir Richard to have 
care of them: alleaging that the Spaniard 
would be as readie to entertaine a composi- 
tion, as they were willing to otf er the same : 
and that there being diverse sufficient and 
valiant men yet living, and whose woundes 
were not mortall, they might doe their coun- 
trie and prince acceptable service hereafter. 
And (that where Sir Richard had alleaged 
that the Spaniards should never glorie to 
have taken one shippe, of her Maiesties, see- 
ing that they had so long and so notably de- 
fended them selves) they answered, that the 
shippe had sixe foote water in hold, three 
shot under water which were so weakly 
stopped, as with the first working of the 
sea, she must needes sinke, and was besides 
so crusht and brused, as she could never be 
removed out of the place. 

And as the matter was thus in dispute, 
and Sir Richard refusing to hearken to any 
of those reasons : the maister of the Revenge 
(while the Captaine wan unto him the 
greater party) was convoy de aborde the 
Generall Don Alfonso Bassan. Who finding 
none over hastie to enter the Revenge againe, 
doubting least S. Richard ^f^o^a\^i have blowne 
them up and himself e, and perceiving by the 
report of the maister of the Revenge his 
daungerous disposition: yeelded that all 
their lives should be saved, the companie 
sent for England, and the better sorte to 



THE EENAISSANCE 



41 



pay such reasonable ransome as their estate 
would beare, and in the meane season to be 
free from Gaily or imprisonment. To this 
he so much the rather condescended as well 
as I have saide, for f eare of further loss and 
mischief e to them selves, as also for the de- 
sire hee had to recover Sir Richard Grinvile; 
whom for his notable valure he seemed 
greatly to honour and admire. 

When this answere was returned, and that 
safetie of life was promised, the common 
sort being* now at the end of their perill, the 
most drew backe from Sir Richard and the 
maister Gunner, being- no hard matter to 
diswade men from death to life. The maister 
Gunner finding him selfe and Sir Richard 
thus prevented and maistered by the greater 
number, would have slaine himselfe with a 
sword, had he not beene by force withheld 
and locked into his Cabben. Then the Gen- 
erall sent manie boates abord the Revenge, 
and diverse of our men fearing Sir Richards 
disposition, stole away aboord the Generall 
and other shippes. Sir Richard thus over- 
matched, was sent unto by Alfonso Bassan 
to remove out of the Revenge, the shippe 
being marvellous unsaverie, filleft with bloud 
and bodies of deade, and wounded men like 
a slaughter house. Sir Richard answered 
that he might do with his bodie what he list, 
for he esteemed it not, and as he was carried 
out of the shippe he swounded, and reviv- 
ing againe desired the eompanie to pray for 
him. The Generall used Sir Richard with all 
humanitie, and left nothing unattempted 
that tended to his recoverie, highly com- 
mending his valour and worthines, and 
greatly bewailed the daunger wherein he 
was, beeing unto them a rare spectacle, and 
a resolution sildome approved, to see one 
ship turne toward so many enemies, to en- 
dure the charge and boording of so many 
huge Armados, and to resist and repell the 
assaults and entries of so many souldiers. 
All which and more, is confirmed by a Span- 
ish Captaine of the same Armada, and a 
present actor in the fight, who being sev- 
ered from the rest in a storm, was by the 
Lyon of London a small ship taken, and is 
now prisoner in London. 

The generall commander of the Armada, 
was Don Alphonso Bassan, brother to the 
Marquesse of Santa Cruce. The Admirall 
of the Biscaine squadron, was Britan Dona. 
Of the squadron of Sivil, Marques otiArum- 
burch. The Hulkes and Flyboates were com- 
maunded by Luis Cutino. There were slaine 



and drowned in this fight, well neere two 
thousand of the enemies, and two especiall 
commanders Don Luis de Sant lohn, and 
Don George de Prunaria de Mallaga, as the 
Spanish Captain eonfesseth, besides divers 
others of es^Decial account, whereof as yet 
report is not made. 

The Admirall of the Hulkes and the 
Ascention of Sivill, were both suncke by 
the side of the Revenge; one other recovered 
the rode of Saint Michels, and sunke also 
there; a fourth ranne her selfe with the 
shore to save her men. Syr Richard died 
as it is said, the second or third day aboard 
the Generall, and was by them greatly be- 
wailed. What became of his bodie, whether 
it were buried in the sea or on the lande wee 
know not : the comfort that remaineth to 
his friendes is, that he hath ended his life 
honourably in respect of the reputation 
wonne to his nation and country, and of the 
same to his posteritie, and that being dead, 
he hath not outlived his owne honour. 

For the rest of her Majesties ships that 
entred not so far into the fight as the 
Revenge, the reasons and causes were these. 
There Avere of them but six in all, whereof 
two but small ships; the Revenge ingaged 
past recoverie : The Hand of Flores was on 
the one side, 53 saile of the Spanish, divided 
into squadrons on the other, all as full filled 
with soldiers as they could containe. Almost 
the one halfe of our men sicke and not able 
to serve : the ships growne f oule, unroom- 
aged, and scarcely able to beare anie saile 
for want of ballast, having beene sixe 
moneths at the sea before. If al the rest 
had entred, all had ben lost. For the verie 
hugenes of the Spanish fieet, if no other 
violence had been offred, would have crusht 
them between them into shivers. Of which 
the dishonour and losse to the Queene had 
been far greater than the spoile or harme 
that the enemy could any way have received. 
Notwithstanding it is veiie true, that the 
Lord Thomas would have entred betweene 
the squadi'ons, but the rest wold not con- 
descend; and the maister of his owne ship 
offred to leape into the sea, rather than to 
conduct that her Maiesties ship and the rest 
to be a praie to the enemy, where there was 
no hope nor possibilitie either of defence or 
victorie. Which also in my opinion had il 
sorted or answered the discretion and trust 
of a Generall, to commit himselfe and his 
charge to an assured destruction, without 
hojDe or any likelihood of prevailing : therby 



42 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



to diminish the strength of her Maiesties 
Navy, and to enrich' the pride and glorie of 
the enemie. The Foresight of the Queenes 
commanded by M.. Th. Vavisor, performed 
a verie great fight, and stayd two houres as 
neere the Revenge as the wether wold per- 
mit him, not forsaking the fight, till hee was 
like to be encompassed by the squadrons, 
and with great difflcultie cleared himselfe. 
The rest gave divers voleies of shot, and 
entred as far as the place permitted and 
their own necessities, to keep the weather 
gage of the enemy, untill they were parted 
by night. A f ewe dales after the fight was 
ended, and the English prisoners dispersed 
into the Spanish and Indy ships, there arose 
so great a storme from the West and North- 
west, that all the fleet was dispersed, as well 
the Indian fleet which were then come unto 
them as the rest of the Armada that at- 
tended their arrival!, of which 14 saile 
togither with the Revenge, and in her 200 
Spaniards, were cast away upon the Isle of 
S. Michaels. So it pleased them to honor 
the buriall of that renowned ship the Re- 
venge, not suffring her to perish alone, for 
the great honour she achieved in her life 
time. On the rest of the Ilandes there were 
cast away in this storme, 15 or 16 more of 
the ships of war ; and of a hundred and odde 
saile of the Indie fleet, expected this yeere 
in Spaine, what in this tempest, and what 
before in the bay of Mexico, and about the 
Bermudas there were 70 and odde consumed 
and lost, with those taken by our ships of 
London, besides one verie rych Indian 
shippe, which set her selfe on fire, beeing 
boorded by the Pilgrim, and five other 



taken by Master Wats his ships of London, 
between the Havana and Cape S. Antonio. 
The 4 of this month of November, we re- 
ceived letters from the Tercera, affirming 
yat there are 3000 bodies of men remaining 
in that Hand, saved out of the perished 
ships : and that by the Spaniards own con- 
fession, there are 10000 cast away in this 
storm, besides those that are perished be- 
tweene the Hands and the maine. Thus it 
hath pleased God to fight for us, and to 
defend the iustice of our cause, against the 
ambicious and bloudy pretenses of the Span- 
iard, who seeking to devour all nations, are 
themselves devoured. A manifest testimonie 
how iniust and how displeasing their at- 
tempts are in the sight of God, who hath 
pleased to witnes by the successe of their 
affaires, his mislike of their bloudy and 
iniurious designes, purposed and practised 
against all Christian Princes, over whom 
they seeke unlawful and ungodly rule and 
Empery. . . . 

To conclude, it hath ever to this day 
pleased God, to prosper and defend her 
Maiestie, to breake the purposes of malicious 
enimies, of foresworne traitours, and of 
unjust practises and invasions. She hath 
ever beene honoured of the worthiest Kinges, 
served by faithfuU subjects, and shall by 
the favor of God, resist, repell, and con- 
found all what soever attempts against her 
sacred Person or kingdome. In the meane 
time, let the Spaniard and traitour vaunt of 
their successe ; and we her true and obedient 
vassalles guided by the shining light of her 
vertues, shall alwaies love her, serve her, 
and obey her to the end of our lives. 



. III. TEAINING FOR EMPIRE 



The Education of Men Who Are to Rule 

sir thomas elyot 

[From The Boke of the Governour, 1534] 

Nowe wyll I somwhat declare of the chiefe 
causes why, in our tyme, noble men be nat 
as excellent in lernying as they were in olde 
tyme amonge the Romanes and grekes. 
Surely, as I haue diligently marked in dayly 
experience, the principall causes be these. 
The pride, avarice, and negligence of par- 
entes, and the lacke or fewenesse of suffy- 
cient maysters or teachers. 



As I sayd, pride is the first cause of this 
inconuenienee. For of those persons be 
some, which, without shame, dare afflrme, 
that to a great gentilman it is a notable 
reproche to be well lerned and to be called a 
great clerke : whiche name they aecounte to 
be of so base estymation, that they neuer 
haue it in their mouthes but when they speke 
any thynge in derision, whiche perchaunee 
they wolde nat do if they had ones layser 
to rede our owne cronicle of Englande, 
where they shall fynde that kynge Henry the 
first, Sonne of willyam conquerour, and one 
of the moste noble princes that euer reigned 



THE RENAISSANCE 



43 



in this realme, was openly called Henry 
beau clerke, wliiche is in engiysslie, fayre 
clerke, and is yet at this day so named. And 
wheder that name be to his honour or to his 
reproche, let them iuge that do rede and 
compare his lyfe with his two bretherne, 
William called Rouse, and Robert le courtoise, 
they both nat hauyng semblable lernyng 
with the sayd Henry, the one for his dis- 
solute lyuyng and tyranny beynge hated of 
all his nobles and people, finally was 
sodaynely slayne by the shotte of an arowe, 
as he was huntynge in a forest, whiche to 
make larger and to gyue his deere more 
lybertie, he dyd cause the houses of lii 
parisshes to be pulled downe, the people 
to be expelled, and all beyng- desolate to be 
tourned in to desert, and made onely pasture 
for beestes sauage; whiche he wolde neuer 
haue done if he had as moche delyted in 
good lerning as dyd his brother. 

The other brother, Robert le Courtoise, 
beyng duke of Normandie, and the eldest 
Sonne of wylliam Conquerour, all be it that 
he was a man of moehe prowesse, and right 
expert in martial affayres, Avherfore he was 
electe before Godfray of Boloigne to haue 
ben kyng' of Hierusalem; yet natwith- 
standynge whan he inuaded this realme with 
sondrie puissaunt armies, also dyuers noble 
men aydinge hym, yet his noble brother 
Henry beau clerke, more by wysdome than 
power, also by lernynge, addyng polycie to 
vertue and courage, often tymes vayn- 
quisshed hym, and dyd put him to flyght. 
And after sondry victories finally toke him 
and kepte hym in prison, hauyng none other 
meanes to kepe his realme in tranquillitie. 

It was for no rebuke, but for an excellent 
honour, that the emperour Antonine was 
surnamed philosopher, for by his moste 
noble example of lyuing, and industrie in- 
comparable, he during all the tyme of his 
reigne kept the publike weale of the 
Romanes in suche a perfecte astate, that by 
his actes he confirmed the sayeng of Plato, 
That blessed is that publike weale wherin 
either philosophers do reigne, or els kinges 
be in philosophic studiouse. 

These persones that so moche eontemne 
lernyng, that they wolde that gentilmen's 
children shulde haue no parte or very litle 
therof, but rather shulde spende their youth 
alway (I saye not onely in huntynge and 
haukyng, whiche moderately used, as solaces 
ought to be, I intende nat to disprayse) but 
in those ydle pastymes, whiche, for the vice 



that is therin, the commaundement of the 
prince, and the uniuersall consent of the 
people, expressed in statutes and lawes, do 
prohibite, I meane, playeng at dyce, and 
other games named unlefuU. These per- 
sones, I say, I wolde shulde remembre, or 
elles nowe lerne, if they neuer els herde it, 
that the noble Philip kyng of Macedonia, 
Avho subdued al Greece, aboue all the gocd 
fortunes that euer he hadde, most reioysed 
that his Sonne Alexander was borne in 
the tyme that Aristotle the philosopher 
flourisshed, by whose instruction he mought 
attaine to most excellent lernynge. 

Also the same Alexander often tymes sayd 
that he was equally as moche bounden to 
Aristotle as to his father kyng Philip, for 
of his father he receyued lyfe, but of 
Aristotle he receyued the waye to lyue 
nobly. 

Who dispraysed Epaminondas, the moost 
valiant capitayne of Thebanes, for that he 
was excellently lerned and a great philoso- 
pher? Who euer discommended Julius 
Cesar for that he was a noble or at our, and, 
nexte to Tulli, in the eloquence of the latin 
tonge excelled al other ? Wlio euer reproued 
the emi^erour Hadriane for that he was so 
exquisitely lerned, nat onely in greke and 
latine, but also in all sciences liberall, that 
openly at Athenes, in the uniuersall assem- 
bly of the greatteste clerkes of the worlde, 
he by a longe tyme disputed with philoso- 
phers and Rhetoriciens, Avhiche were estemed 
mooste excellent, and by the iugement of 
them that were present had the palme or 
rewarde of victories And yet, by the 
gouernance of that noble emperour, nat only 
the publik weale flourisshed but also diners 
rebellions were siippressed, and the maiesty 
of the empire hugely increased. Was it any 
reproche to the noble Germanicus (who by 
the assignement of Augustus shulde haue 
succeeded Tiberius in the empire, if traitor- 
ous enuy had nat in his flourysshynge youth 
bireft hym his lyfe) that he was equall to 
the moost noble poetes of his time, and, to 
the increase of his honour and moost worthy 
commendation, his image was set up at 
Rome, in the habite that poetes at those 
dayes used? Fynally howe moche excellent 
lernynge commendeth, and nat dispraiseth, 
nobilitie, it shal playnly appere unto them 
that do rede the lyfes of Alexander called 
Seuerus, Tacitus, Probus Aurelius, Con- 
stantine, Theodosius, and Charles the gret, 
surnamed Charlemaine, all being emjDerours, 



44 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



and do compare them with other, whiche 
lacked or had nat so moche of doctrine. 
Verily they be ferre from good raison, in 
myne opinion, whiche couaite to haue their 
children goodly in stature, stronge, deliuer, 
well synging, wherin trees, beastes, fysshes, 
and byrdes, be nat only with them equall, 
but also ferre do exeede them. And 
eonnynge, wherby onely man excelleth all 
other creatures in erthe, they reiecte, and 
accounte unworthy to be in their children. 
What unkinde appetite were it to desyre to 
be father rather of a peee of flesshe, that 
can onely meue and feele, than of a ehilde 
that shulde have the perfecte fourme of a 
man? What so perfectly expresseth a man 
as doctrine? Diogines the philosopher seing 
one without lernynge syt on a stone, sayde 
to them that were with him, beholde where 
one stone sytteth on an other; whiche 
wordes, well considered and tried, shall ap- 
pere to contayne in it wonderfull matter for 
the approbation of doctrine, wherof a wyse 
man maye accumulate ineuitable argu- 
mentes, whiche I of necessite, to auoide 
tediousnes, must nedes passe ouer at this 
tyme. 

The seeonde occasion wherf ore gentylmens 
children seldome haue sufficient lernynge is 
auarice. For where theyr parentes wyll nat 
aduenture to sende them farre out of theyr 
propre • countrayes, partely for f eare of 
dethe, whiche perchance dare nat approche 
them at home with theyr father ; partely for 
expence of money, whiche they suppose 
wolde be lesse in theyr owne houses or in a 
village, with some of theyr tenantes or 
frendes; hauyng seldome any regarde to 
the teacher, whether he be well lerned or 
ignorant. For if they hiare a schole maister 
to teche in theyr houses, they chiefely en- 
quire with howe small a salary he will be 
contented, and neuer do inserche howe 
moche good lernynge he hath, and howe 
amonge well lerned men he is therin es- 
temed, usinge therin lasse diligence than in 
takynge seruantes, whose seruice is of moche 
lasse importance, and to a good schole mais- 
ter is nat in profite to be compared. A 
gentilman, er he take a cooke in to his 
seruice, he wyll firste diligently examine 
hym, howe many sortes of meates, potages, 
and sauces, he can perfectly make, and howe 
well he can season them, that they may be 
bothe pleasant and nourishynge ; yea and if 
it be but a fauconer, he wyll scrupulously 
enquire what skyll he hath in f eedyng, called 



diete, and kepyng of his hauke from all 
sickenes, also how he can reclaime her and 
prepare her to flyght. And to suche a cooke 
or fauconer, whom he flndeth expert, he 
spareth nat to gyue moche wages with other 
bounteous rewardes. But of a schole 
maister, to whom he will committe his ehilde, 
to be fedde with lernynge and instructed in 
vertue, whose lyfe shall be the prineipall 
monument of his name and honour, he neuer 
maketh further enquirie but where he may 
haue a schole maister; and with howe litel 
charge; and if one be perchance founden, 
well lerned, but he will nat take paynes to 
teache without he may haue a great salary, 
he than si^eketh nothing more, or els saith. 
What shall so moche wages be gyuen to a 
schole maister whiche wolde kepe me two 
seruantes? to whom maye be saide these 
wordes, that by his Sonne being wel lerned 
he shall receiue more commoditie and also 
worship than by the seruice of a hundred 
cokes and fauconers. 

The thirde cause of this hyndrance is neg- 
ligence of parentes, Avhiche I do specially 
note in this poynt; there haue bene diuers, 
as well gentillmen as of the nobilitie, that 
deliting to haue their sonnes excellent in 
lernynge haue prouided for them eonnynge 
maysters, who substancially haue taught 
them gramer, and very wel instructed them 
to speake latine elegantly, wherof the par- 
entes haue taken moche delectation; but 
whan they haue had of grammer sufficient 
and be comen to the age of xiiii yeres, and 
do approche or drawe towarde the astate of 
man, whiche age is called mature or ripe, 
(wherin nat onely the saide lernyng con- 
tinued by moche experience shal be perfectly 
digested, and confirmed in perpetnall re- 
membrance, but also more seriouse lernyng 
contayned in other lyberall sciences, and also 
philosophy, wolde than be lerned) the par- 
entes, that thinge nothinge regarding, but 
being suffised that their children can onely 
speke latine proprely, or make verses with 
out mater or sentence, they from thens forth 
do suffre them to line in idelnes, or els, put- 
ting them to seruice, do, as it were, banisshe 
them from all vertuous study or exercise of 
that whiche they before lerned; so that we 
may beholde diuers yonge gentill men, who 
in their infancie and childehode were won- 
dred at for their aptness to lerning and 
prompt speakinge of elegant latine, whiche 
nowe, beinge men, nat onely haue forgotten 
their congi'uite, (as in the commune worde), 



THE EENAISSANCE 



45 



and unneth can speake one hole sentence in 
true latine, but, that wars is, hath all 
lernynge in derision, and in skorne therof 
wyll, of wantonnesse, sjjeake the moste bar- 
berously that they can imagine. 

Nowe some man will require me to shewe 
myne opinion if it be necessary that gentil- 
men shulde after the age of xiiii yeres con- 
tinue in studie. And to be playne and trewe 
therein, I dare affirme that, if the elegant 
speking of latin be nat added to other doe- 
trine, litle frute may come of the tonge; 
sens latine is but a naturall speche, and the 
frute of speche is wyse sentence, whiehe is 
gathered and made of sondry lernynges. 

And who that hath nothinge but langage 
only may be no more praised than a 
popiniay, a pye, or a stare, whan they s^Deke 
featly. There be many nowe a dayes in 
famouse scholes and uniuersities whiehe be 
so moche gyuen to the studie of tonges onely, 
that whan they write epistles, they seme to 
the reder 'that, like to a trumpet, they make 
a soune without any purpose, where unto 
men do herken more for the noyse than for 
any delectation that therby is meued. Where- 
fore they be moche abused that suppose elo- 
quence to be only in wordes or coulours of 
Rhetorike, for, as Tulli saith, what is so 
furiouse or mad a thinge as a vaine soune 
of wordes of the best sort and most ornate, 
contayning neither connj^nge nor sentence? 
Undoubtedly very eloquence is in euery 
tonge where any mater or acte done or to be 
done is expressed in wordes clene, propise, 
ornate, and comely : whereof sentences be so 
aptly compact that they by a vertue inex- 
plicable do drawe unto them the mindes and 
consent of the herers, they beinge therwith 
either perswaded, meued, or to delectation 
induced. Also euery man is nat an oratour 
that can write an epistle or a flatering ora- 
tion in latin: where of the laste, (as god 
helpe me,) is to moche used. For a right 
oratour may nat be without a moche better 
furniture. Tulli saienge that to him be- 
longeth the explicating or unfoldinge of sen- 
tence, with a great estimation in gyuing 
counsaile concerninge maters of great im- 
portaunce, also to him appei'taineth the 
steringe and quickning of people languis- 
shinge or dispeiringe, and to moderate them 
that be rasshe and unbridled. Wherfore 
noble autours do affirme that, in the firste 
infancie of the worlde, men wandring like 
beastes in woddes and on mountaines, re- 
gar din ge neither the religion due unto god. 



nor the office pertaining unto man, ordred 
all thing by bodily strength: untill Mer- 
curius (as Plato supposeth) or some other 
man holpen by sapience and eloquence, by 
some apt or propre oration, assembled them 
to geder and perswaded to them what com- 
modite was in mutual conuersation and hon- 
est maners. But yet Cornelius Tacitus de- 
scribeth an oratour to be of more excellent 
qualities, saynge that, an oratour is he that 
can or may sijeke or raison in euery ques- 
tion sufficiently elegantly : and to persuade 
proprely, accordyng to the dignitie of the 
thyng that is spoken of, the oportunitie of 
time, and pleasure of them that be herers. 
Tulli, before him, affirmed that, a man may 
nat be an oratour heaped with praise, but 
if he haue gotten the knowlege of all thynges 
and artes of greatest importaunce. And 
howe shall an oratour speake of that thynge 
that he hath nat lerned ? And bicause there 
may be nothynge but it may happen to come 
in praise or dispraise, in consultation or 
iugement, in accusation or defence : ther- 
fore an oratour, by others instruction per- 
fectly furnisshed, may, in euery mater and 
lernynge, commende or dispraise, exhorte 
or dissuade, accuse or defende eloquently, 
as occasion hapneth. Wherfore in as moche 
as in an oratour is required to be a heape of 
all maner of lernyng: whiehe of some is 
called the worlde of science, of other the 
circle of doctrine, whiehe is in one worde of 
■greke Encyclopedia: therfore at this day 
may be founden but a very few oratours. 
For they that come in message from princes 
be, for honour, named nowe oratours, if they 
be in any degre of worshyp : onely poore 
men hauyng equall or more of lernyng beyng 
called messagers. Also they whiehe do onely 
teache rhetorike, whiehe is the science 
wherby is taught an artifyciall fourme of 
speykng, wherin is the power to persuade, 
moue, and delyte, or by that science onely 
do speke or write, without any adminieula- 
tion ^ of other sciences, ought to be named 
rhetoriciens, deelamatours, artificiall spekers, 
(named in Greeke Logodedali), or any other 
name than oratours. Semblably they that 
make verses, expressynge therby none other 
lernynge but the craft of versifyeng, be nat 
of auncient writers named poetes, but onely 
called versifyers. For the name of a poete, 
wherat nowe, (specially in this realme,) men 
haue suche indignation, that they use onely 
poetes and poetry in the contempte of elo- 
1 prop, support 



46 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



quence, was in auneient tyme in hygh esti- 
mation : in so moche that all wysdome was 
supposed to be therin included, and i^oetry 
was the first philosoiDhy that euer was 
knowen: wherby men from their ehildhode 
were brought to the raison howe to lyue 
well, lernynge therby nat onely maners and 
naturall affections, lout also the wonderfull 
werkes of nature, mixting serious mater 
with thynges that Avere pleasaunt : as it shall 
be manifest to them that shall be so fortu- 
nate to rede the noble warkes of Plato and 
Aristotle, wherin he shall fynde the autoritie 
of poetes frequently alleged: ye and that 
more is, in poetes was supposed to be 
science mistieall and inspired, and therfore 
in latine they were called Vates, which worde 
signifyeth as moche as prophetes. And 
therfore Tulli in his Tusculane questyons 
supposeth that a poete can nat abundantly 
expresse verses sufficient and complete, or 
that his eloquence may flowe without labour 
wordes wel sounyng and plentuouse, withoiit 
celestiall instinetion, whiche is also by Plato 
ratified. 

"The Eank^Is but the Guinea's Stamp" 

sir thomas elyot 
[From The Boke of the Governour, 1534] 

Nowe it is to be feared that where maies- 
tie approeheth to excesse, and the mynde is 
obsessed with inordinate glorie, lest pride, 
of al vices most horrible, shuld sodainely 
entre and take prisoner the harte of a gen- 
tilman called to autoritie. Wherf ore in as 
moche as that pestilence corruptethe all 
sences, and makethe them incurable by any 
persuation or doctrine, therfore suche per- 
sones from their adolesceneie (which is the 
age nexte to the state of man) oughte to be 
persuaded and taughte the true knowlege of 
very nobilitie in f ourme f olowing or like. 

Fyrst, that in the begynnyng, whan pri- 
uate possessions and dignitie were gyuen by 
the consent of the people, who than had all 
thinge in commune, and equalitie in degree 
and condition, undoubtedly they gaue the 
one and the other to him at whose vertue 
they meruailed, and by whose labour and 
industrie they received a commune benefite, 
as of a commune father that with equall 
affection loued them. And that promptitude 
or redinesse in employinge that benefite was 
than named in engiisshe gentilnesse, as it 
was in latine henignitas, and in other tonges 



after a semblable signification, and the per- 
sones were called gentilmen, more for the 
remembraunce of their vertue and benefite, 
than for discrepance of astates. Also it 
fortuned by the prouidence of god that of 
those good men Avere engendred good chil- 
dren, who beinge brought up in vertue, and 
perceiuinge the cause of the aduauncement 
of their progenitours, endeuoured them 
selfes by imitation of vertue, to be equall to 
them in honour and autoritie ; by good emu- 
lation they retained stille the fauour and 
reuerence of people. And for the good- 
nesse that proceded of suche generation the 
state of them was called in greke Eugenia, 
whiche signifiethe good kinde or lignage, 
but in a more briefe maner it was after 
called nobilitie, and the persones noble, 
whiche signifieth excellent, and in the analo- 
gie or signification it is more ample than 
gentill, for it eontaineth as well all that 
whiche is in gentilnesse, as also the honour 
or dignitie therefore received, whiche be so 
annexed the one to the other that they can 
nat be seperate. 

It wold be more oner declared that where 
vertue ioyned with great possessions or dig- 
nitie hath longe continued in the bloode or 
house of a gentilman, as it were an inherit- 
aunee, there nobilitie is mooste shewed, and 
these noble men be most to be honored ; for 
as moche as eontinuaunce in all thinge that 
is good hath euer preeminence in praise and 
comparison. But yet shall it be necessary 
to aduertise those persones, that do tliinke 
that nobilitie may in no wyse be but onely 
where men can auaunte them of auneient 
lignage, an auneient robe, or great posses- 
sions, at this daye very noble men do sup- 
pose to be moche errour and f olye. Wherof 
there is a f amiliare example, whiche we beare 
euer with us, for the bloode in our bodies 
beinge in youthe warme, pure, and lustie, it 
is the occasion of beautie, whiche is euery 
where commended and loued; but if in age 
it be putrified, it leseth his praise. And the 
g'outes, carbuncles, kankers, lepries, and 
other lyke sores and sickenesses, whiche do 
procede of bloode corrupted, be to all men 
detestable. 

And this persuasion to any gentilman, in 
whom is apte disposition to very nobilitie, 
wyll be sufficient to withdrawe hym from 
suche vice, wherby he maye empayre his 
owne estimation, and the good renoume of 
his amicetours. 

If he haue an auneient robe lefte by his 
auncetor, let him consider that if the first 



THE EENAISSANCE 



47 



owner were of more vertue than he is that 
suecedeth, the robe beinge worne, it min- 
issheth his praise to them whiche knewe or 
haue herde of the vertue of him that firste 
owed it. If he that weareth it be vieiouse, 
it more deteeteth howe moehe he is unworthy 
to weare it, the remembraunee of his noble 
auncetour makynge men to abhorre the re- 
proche gyuen by an iuell sueeessoiir. If the 
firste owner were nat vertuouse, hit eon- 
demneth him that weareth it of moehe fol- 
ishenesse, to glorie in a thinge of so base 
estimation, whiche lacking beautie or glosse, 
can be none ornament to hym that weareth 
it, nor honorable remembrance to hym that 
first owed it. 

But nowe to confirme by true histories, 
that aecordynge as I late affirmed, nobilitie 
is nat onely in dignitie, auncient lignage, 
nor great reuenues, landes, or possessions. 
Lete yonge gentilmen haue often times tolde 
to them, and (as it is vulgarely spoken) 
layde in their lappes, how Numa Pompilius 
was taken from husbandry, whiche he exer- 
cised, and was made kynge of Romanes by 
election of the people. What caused it sup- 
pose you but his wisedome and vertue f 
whiche in hym was very nobilitie, and that 
nobilitie broughte hym to dignitie. And if 
that were nat nobilitie, the Romanes were 
meruailousely abused, that after the dethe 
of Romulus their kynge, they hauynge 
amonge them a hundred senatours, whom 
Romulus did sette in autoritie, and also the 
blode roiall, and olde gentilmen of the Sa- 
bynes, who, by the procurement of the wiues 
of the Romanes, beinge their doughters, in- 
habited the citie of Rome, they wolde nat of 
some of them electe a kynge, rather than 
aduance a ploughman and stranger to that 
ftutoritie. 

Quintius hauyng but xxx acres of lande, 
and beinge ploughman therof, the Senate 
and people of Rome sent a messager to 
shewe him that they had chosen him to be 
dictator, whiche was at that time the highest 
dignitie amonge the Romanes, 'and. for thre 
monethes had autoritie roiall. Quintius 
herynge the message, lette his ploughe 
stande, and wente in to the citie and pre- 
pared his hoste againe the Samnites, and 
vainquisshed them valiauntly. And that 
done, he surrendred his office, and beinge 
discharged of the dignitie, he repaired 
agayne to his ploughe, and applied it dili- 
gently. 

I wolde demaunde nowe, if nobilitie were 
only in the dignitie, or in his prowesse, 



whiche he shewed agayne his enemies'? If 
it were only in his dignitie, it therwith 
cessed, and he was (as I mought say) eft- 
sones unnoble; and than was his prowesse 
unrewarded, whiche was the chief e and origi- 
nall cause of that dignitie : whiche were in- 
congruent and without reason. If it were 
in his prowesse, prowesse consistynge of 
valiant courage and martiall policie, if they 
styll remaine in the persone, he may neuer 
be without nobilitie, whiche is the commenda- 
tion, and as it were, the surname of vertue. 

The two Romanes called bothe Deeii, were 
of the base astate of the people, and nat of 
the great blode of the Romanes, yet for the 
preseruation of their eountray they auowed 
to die, as it were in a satisfaction for all 
their eountray. And so with valiant hartes 
they perced the hoste of their enemies, and 
valiuntly fightynge, they died there honor- 
ably, and by their example gaue suehe au- 
dacitie and courage to the residue of the 
Romanes, that they employed so their 
strengthe agayne their enemies, that with 
litle more losse they optained victoria. 
Ought nat these two Romanes, whiche by 
their deth gaue occasion of victorie, be called 
noble? I suppose no man that knoweth 
what reason is will denie it. 

More ouer, we haue in this realme coynes 
which be called nobles; as longe as they be 
seene to be golde, they be so called. But if 
they be counterfaicted, and made in brasse, 
coper, or other vile metal, who for the print 
only calleth them nobles'? Wherby it ap- 
pereth that the estimation is in the metall, 
and nat in the printe or figure. And in a 
horse or good grehounde we prayse that we 
se in them, and nat the beautie or goodnesse 
of their progenie. Whiche proueth that in 
estemyng of money and catell we be ladde 
by wysedome, and in approuynge of man, 
to whom beastis and money do serue, we be 
only induced by custome. 

Thus I conclude that nobilitie is nat after 
the vulgare opinion of men, but is only the 
prayse and surname of vertue; whiche the 
lenger it continueth in a name or lignage, 
the more is nobilitie extolled and meruailed 
at. 

Of Virtuous and Gentle Discipline 

edmund spenser 

[The Letter to Sir Walter Raleigh, setting 
forth the purpose of The Faerie Queene] 

Sir, knowing how doubtfully all Allego- 
ries may be construed, and this booke of 



48 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



mine, which I have entituled the Faery 
Queene, being a continued Allegory, or 
darke conceit, I haue thought good, as well 
for avoyding of gealous opinions and mis- 
constructions, as also for your better light 
in reading thereof, (being so by you com- 
manded,) to discover unto you tHe general 
intention and meaning, which in the whole 
course thereof I have fashioned without ex- 
pressing of any particular purposes, or by 
accidents, therein occasioned. The generall 
end therefore of all the booke is to fashion 
a gentleman or noble person in vertuous 
and gentle discipline: Which for that I 
conceived shoulde be most plausible and 
pleasing, being coloured with an historicall 
fiction, the which the most part of men de- 
light to read, rather for variety of matter 
then for profite of the ensample. I chose 
the historye of Kmg Arthure, as most fitte 
for the excellency of his person, being made 
famous by many mens former workes, and 
also furthest from the daunger of envy, and 
suspition of present time. In which I have 
followed all the antique Poets historicall; 
first Homer'e, who in the Persons of Aga- 
memnon and Ulysses hath ensampled a good 
governour and a vertuous man, the one in 
his Ilias, the other in his Odysseis; then 
Virgil, whose like intention was to doe in 
the person of Aeneas: after him Ariosto 
comprised them both- in his Orlando: and 
lately Tasso dissevered them againe, and 
formed both parts in two persons, namely 
that part which they in Philosophy call 
Eihice, or vertues of a private man, coloured 
in his Rinaldo ; the other named Politiee in 
his Godfredo. By ensample of which excel- 
lente Poets, I labour to pourtraict in Ar- 
thure, before he was king, the image of a 
brave knight, perfected in the twelve private 
morall vertues, as Aristotle hath devised; 
the which is the purpose of these first twelve 
bookes : which if I finde to be well accepted, 
I may be perhaps eneoraged to frame the 
other part of polliticke vertues in his per- 
son, after that hee came to be king. 

To some, I know, this Methode will seeme 
displeasaunt, which had rather have good dis- 
cipline delivered plainly in way of precepts, 
or sermoned at large, as they use, then thus 
clowdily enwrapped in Ar.egoricall devises. 
But such, me seeme, should be satisfide with 
the use of these dayes, seeing all things iae- 
counted by their showes, and nothing es- 
teemed of, that is not delightfull and pleas- 
ing to commune senee. For this cause is 
Xenophon preferred before Plato, for that 



the one, in the exquisite depth of his judge- 
ment, formed a Commune welth, such as it 
should be; but the other in the person of 
Cyrus, and the Persians, fashioned a gov- 
ernement, such as might best be : So much 
more profitable and gratious is doctrine by 
ensample, then by rule. So have I laboured 
to doe in the person of Arthure : whome I 
conceive, after his long education by Timon, 
to whom he was by Merlin delivered to be 
brought up, so soone as he was borne of the 
Lady Igrayne, to have seene in a dream or 
vision the Faery Queen, with whose excel- 
lent beauty ravished, he awaking resolved 
to seeke her out; and so being by Merlin 
armed, and by Timon throughly instructed, 
he went to seeke her forth in Faerye land. 
In that Faei-y Queene I meane glory in my 
generall intention, but in my particular I 
conceive the most~excellent and glorious per- 
son of our soveraine the Queene, and her 
kingdome in Faery land. And yet, in some 
places els, I doe otherwise shadow h«r. For 
considering she beareth two persons, the one 
of a most royall Queene or Empresse, the 
other of a most vertuous and beautifutl 
Lady, this latter part in some places I doe 
expresse in Belphoebe, fashioning her name 
according to your owne excellent conceipt of 
Cynthia, (Phoebe and Cynthia being both 
names of Diana). So in the person of 
Prince Arthure I sette forth magnificence in 
particular; which vertue, for that (accord- 
ing to Aristotle and the rest) it is the per- 
fection of all the rest, and conteineth in it 
them all, therefore in the whole course I 
m.ention the deedes of Arthure applyable to 
that vertue, which I write of in that booke. 
But of the xii. other vertues, I make xii. 
other knights the patrones, for the more va- 
riety of the history : Of which these three 
bookes eontayn three. 

The first of the knight of the Rederosse, 
in whome I expresse Holynes : The seconde 
of Sir Guyon, in whome I sette forth Tem- 
peraunce : The third of Britomartis, a Lady 
Knight, in whome I picture Chastity. But, 
because the beginning of the whole worke 
seemeth abrui3te, and as depending upon 
other antecedents, it needs that ye know the 
occasion of these three knights seuerall ad- 
ventures. For the Methode of a Poet his- 
torical is not such, as of an Historiographer. 
For an Historiographer discourseth of af- 
fayres orderly as they were donne, account- 
ing as well the times as the actions; but a 
Poet thrusteth into the middest, even where 
it most coneerneth him, and there recours- 



THE EENAISSANCE 



49 



ing to the thinges forepaste, and divining 
of thinges to come, maketh a pleasing Anal- 
ysis of all. 

The beginning therefore of my history, 
if it were to be told by an Historiographer 
should be the twelfth booke, which is the 
last; where I devise that the Faery Queene 
kept her Annuall feaste xii. dayes; uppon 
which xii. severall dayes, the occasions of 
the xii. severall adventures hapned, which, 
being undertaken by xii. ■ severall knights, 
are m these xii. books severally handled and 
discoursed. The first was this. In the be- 
ginning of the feast, there presented him 
selfe a tall elownishe younge man, who fall- 
ing before the Queene of Faries, desired a 
boone (as the manner then was) which dur- 
ing that feast she might not refuse; which 
was that hee might have the atchievement of 
any adventure, which during that feaste 
should happen: that being graunted, he 
rested him on the floore, unfitte through his 
rusticity for a better place. Soone after 
entred a faire Ladye in mourning weedes, 
riding on a white Asse, with a dwarfe be- 
hind her leading a warlike steed, that bore 
the Armes of a knight, and his speare in the 
dwarfes hand. Shee, falling before the 
Queene of Faeries, eomplayned that her 
father and mother, an ancient King and 
Queene, had bene by an huge dragon many 
years shut up in a brasen Castle, who thence 
suffred them not to yssew; and therefore be- 
sought the Faery Queene to assygne her 
some one of her knights to take on him that 
exployt. Presently that clownish person, 
upstarting, desired that adventure : whereat 
the Queene much wondering, and the Lady 
much gainesajdng, yet he earnestly impor- 
tuned his desire. In the end the Lady told 
him, that imlesse that armour which she 
brought would serve him (that is, the ar- 
mour of a Christian man specified by Saint 
Paul, vi. Ephes.) that he could not succeed 
in that enterprise; which being forthwith 
put upon him, with dewe furnitures there- 
unto, he seemed the goodliest man in al that 
company, and was well liked of the Lady. 
And eftesoones taking on him knighthood, 
and momiting on that straunge Courser, he 
went forth with her on that adventure : 
where beginneth the first booke, viz. 

A gentle knight was pricking on the playne. 
&c. 

The second day ther came in a Palmer, 
bearing an Infant with bloody hands, whose 
Parents he complained to have bene slayn 



by an Enchaunteresse called Acrasia; and 
therfore craved of the Faery Queene, to ap- 
point him some knight to perfprme that 
adventure; which being assigned to Sir 
Guyon, he presently went forth with that 
same Palmer : which is the beginning of the 
second booke, and the whole subject thereof. 
The third day there came in a Groome, who 
comiDlained before the Faery Queene, that 
a vile Enchaunter, called Busirane, had in 
hand a most faire Lady, called Amoretta, 
whom he kejit in most grievous torment, be- 
cause she would not yield him the pleasure 
of her body. Whereupon Sir Scudamour, 
the lover of that Lady, presently tooke on 
him that adventure. But being vnable to 
perfoi^me it by reason of the hard Enehaunt- 
ments, after long sorrow, in the end met 
with BritomartiSj who succoured him, and 
reskewed his loue. 

But by occasion hereof many other ad- 
ventures are intermedled; but rather as Ac- 
cidents then intendments : As the love of 
Britomart, the overthrow of Marinell, the 
misery of Florimell, the vertuousnes of Bel- 
j)hoebe, the lasciviousness of Hellenora, and 
many the like. 

Thus much. Sir, I have briefly overronne 
to direct your understanding to the wel- 
head of the History ; that from thence gath- 
ering the whole intention of the conceit, ye 
may as irt a handfull gripe al the discourse, 
"which otherwise may happily seeme tedious 
and confused. So, humbly craving the con- 
tinuance of your honorable favour towards 
me, and th' eternall establishment of your 
happines, I humbly take leave. 

23. lanuary 15S9, 
Yours most humbly aifectionate, 

Ed. Spenser. 



"The Brave Courtier" 

edmund spe.nser 

[A portrait of Sir Philip Sidney, from 

Mother Hubherds Tale] 
Yet the brave Courtier, in whose beauteous 

thought 
Kegard of honour harbours more than 

ought. 
Doth loath such base condition, to backbite 
Anies good name for envie or despite : 
He stands on tearmes of honourable minde, 
Ne will be carried with the common winde 
Of Courts inconstant mutabiliti'e, 
Ne after everie tattling fable flie; 



50 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



But heares and sees the follies of the rest, 
And thereof gathers for himselfe the best. 
He will not creepe, nor crouche with f ained 

face, 
But walkes upright with comely stedfast 

pace. 
And unto all doth yeeld due curtesie; 
But not with kissed hand belowe the knee, 
As that same Ajiish crue is wont to doo : 
For he disdaines himselfe t' embase theretoo. 
He hates fowle leasings, and vile flatterie, 
Two filthie blots in noble gentrie; 
And lothefull idlenes he doth detest. 
The canker worme of everie gentle brest; 
The which to banish with f aire exercise 
Of knightly f eates, he daylie doth devise : 
Now menaging the mouthes of stubborne 

steedes. 
Now practising the proofe of warlike 

deedes, 
Now his bright armes assaying, now his 

speare, 
Now the nigh aymed ring away to beare. 
At other times he casts to sew the chace 
Of swift wilde beasts, or runne on foot a 

race, 
T' enlarge his breath, (large breath in armes 

most needfuU) 
Or els by wrestling to wex strong and heed- 
full. 
Or his stiffe armes to stretch with Eughen 

bowe. 
And manly legs, still passing too and fro, 
Without a gowned beast him fast beside, 
A vaine ensample of the Persian pride ; 
Who, after he had wonne th' Assyrian 

foe. 
Did ever after seorne on foote to goe. 

Thus when this Courtly Gentleman with 

toyle 
Himselfe hath wearied, he doth recoyle 
Unto his rest, and there with sweete delight 
Of Musicks skill revives his toyled spright; 
Or els with Loves, and Ladies gentle sports. 
The joy of youth, himselfe he recomforts; 
Or lastly, when the bodie list to pause, 
His minde unto the Muses he withdrawes: 
Sweete Ladie Muses, Ladies of delight, 
Delights of life, and ornaments of light ! 
With whom he close confers with wise dis- 
course. 
Of Natures workes, of heavens continuall 

course. 
Of forreine lands, of people different. 
Of kingdomes change, of divers gouvern- 

ment, 
Of dreadful! battailes of renowmed 

Knights] 



With which he kindleth his ambitious 

sprights 
To like desire and praise of noble fame, 
The onely upshot whereto he doth ayme: 
For all his minde on honour fixed is, 
To which he levels all his purposis, 
And in his Prhices service spends his dayes, 
Not so much for to gaine, or for to raise 
Himselfe to high degree, as for his grace, 
And in his liking to winne worthie place, 
Through due deserts and comely carriage, 
In whatso please employ his personage. 
That may be matter meete to gaine him 

praise : 
For he is fit to use in all 'assayes, 
Whether for Armes and warlike amenaunce, 
Or else for wise and civill governaunce. 
For he is praetiz'd well in polieie, 
And thereto doth his Courting most applie : 
To learne the enterdeale of Princes strange, 
To marke th' intent of Counsells, and the 

change 
Of states, and eke of private men somewhile, 
Supplanted by fine f alshood and f aire guile ; 
Of all the which he gathereth what is fit 
T' enrich the storehouse of his powerful! 

wit. 
Which through wise speaches and grave con- 
ference 
He daylie eekes, and brings to excellence. 
Such is the rightf ull Courtier in his kinds. 



Counsels of Experience ^ 

francis bacon 

[From Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral, 
published 1597, 1612, 1625] 

1. Of Truth 
"What is truth?" said jesting Pilate; and 
would not stay for an answer. Certainly 
there be that delight in giddiness, and count 
it a bondage to fix a belief, affecting free- 
will in thinking, as well as in acting. And 
though the sects of philosophers of that 
kind be gone, yet there remain certain dis- 
coursing wits which are of the same veins, 
though there be not so much blood in them 
as was in those of the ancients. But it is 
not only the difficulty and labor which men 
take in finding out of truth ; nor again, that 
when it is found, it imposeth upon men's 
thoughts, that doth bring lies in favor: but 

1 Bacon says of the Essays : "I have endeavored 
to make them not vulgar, but of a nature whereof 
a man shall find much in experience and little In 
Jbooks, so as they are neither repetitions nor 
fancies." 



THE EENAISSANCE 



51 



a natural though corrupt love of the lie 
itself. One of the later school of the Gre- 
cians examineth the matter, and is at a 
stand to think what should be in it, that 
men should love lies: where neither they 
make for pleasure, as with poets; nor for 
advantage, as with the merchant; but for 
the lie's sake. But I cannot tell: this same 
truth is a naked and open daylight, that 
doth not show the masques, and mummeries, 
and triumphs of the world half so stately 
and daintily as candle-lights. Truth may 
perhaps come to the price of a pearl that 
showeth best by day; but it will not rise to 
the price of a diamond or carbuncle, that 
showeth best in varied lights. A mixture 
of a lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any 
man doubt that if there were taken out of 
men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, 
false valuations, imaginations as one would, 
and the like, but it would leave the minds 
of a number of men poor shrunken things, 
full of melancholy and indisposition, and 
unpleasing to themselves? One of the 
fathers, in great severity, called poesy vinum 
daemonum ^ because it filleth the imagina- 
tion, and yet it is but with the shadow of a 
lie. But it is not the lie that passeth through 
the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and 
settleth in it that doth the hurt, such as we 
spake of before. But howsoever these things 
are thus in men's depraved judgments and 
affections, yet truth, which only doth judge 
itself, teacheth that the inquiry of truth, 
which is the love-making, or wooing of it; 
the knowledge of truth, which is the pres- 
ence of it; and the belief of truth, which 
is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good 
of human nature. The first creature of God, 
in the works of the days, was the light of 
the sense ; the last was the light of reason ; 
and his Sabbath work, ever since, is the illu- 
mination of his spirit. First he breathed 
light upon the face of the matter, or chaos ; 
then he breathed light into the face of man ; 
and still he breatheth and inspireth light 
into the face of his chosen. The poet, that 
beautified the sect that Avas otherwise in- 
ferior to the rest, saith yet excellently well, 
"It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, 
and to see ships tost upon the sea ; a pleas- 
ure to stand in the window of a castle, and 
to see a battle, and the adventures thereof 
below ; but no pleasure is comparable to the 
standing upon the vantage ground of truth 
(a hill not to be commanded, and where the 
air is always clear and serene), and to see 
* devil's wine 



the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and 
tempests, in the vale below" ; so always that 
this prospect be with pity, and not with 
swelling or pride. Certainly it is heaven 
upon earth to have a man's mind move m 
charity, rest in providence, and turn upon 
the poles of truth. 

To pass from theological and philosoph- 
ical truth to the truth of civil business, it 
will be acknowledged, even by those that 
practice it not, that clear and round dealing 
is the honor of man's nature, and that mix- 
ture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold 
and silver, which may make the metal work 
the better, but it embaseth it; for these 
winding and crooked courses are the goings 
of the serpent, which goeth basely upon 
the belly, and not upon the feet. There is 
no vice that doth so cover a man with shame 
as to be found false and perfidious; and 
therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when 
he inquired the reason why the word of the 
lie should be such a disgrace, and such an 
odious charge. "If it be well weighed, to 
say that a man lieth, is as much as to say 
that he is brave towards God, and a coward 
towards man." For a lie faces God, and 
shrinks from man. Surely the wickedness 
of falsehood and breach of faith cannot 
possibly be so highly expressed as in that 
it shall be the last peal to call the judgments 
of God upon the generations of men : it 
being foretold, that when Christ cometh, 
"he shall not find faith upon the earth." 

2. Of Travel 
Travel in the younger sort is a part of 
education ; in the elder a part of experience. 
He that traveleth into a country before he 
hath some entrance into the language, goeth 
to school, and not to travel. That young- 
men travel under some tutor or grave serv- 
ant, I allow well; so that he be such a one 
that hath the language, and hath been in 
the country before ; whereby he may be able 
to tell them what things are worthy to be 
seen m the country where they go, what ac- 
quaintances they are to seek, what exer- 
cises or discipline the place yieldeth. For 
else young men shall go hooded, and look 
abroad little. It is a strange thing, that in 
sea voyages, where there is nothing to be 
seen but sky and sea, men should make 
diaries, but in land travel, wherein so much 
is to be observed, for the most part they 
omit it : as if chance were fitter to be reg- 
istered than observation. Let diaries there- 
fore be brought in use. The things to be 



52 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



seen and observed are : the courts of princes, 
specially when they give audience to ambas- 
sadors : the courts of justice, while they sit 
and hear causes : and so of consistories ec- 
clesiastic: the churches and monasteries, 
with the monuments which are therein ex- 
tant: the walls and fortifications of cities 
and towns, and so the havens and harbors : 
antiquities and rviins ; libraries, colleges, dis- 
putations, and lectures, where any are ; ship- 
ping and navies: houses, and gardens of 
state and pleasure near great cities; ar- 
mories, • arsenals, -magazines, exchanges, 
burses, warehouses; exercises of horseman- 
ship, fencing, training of soldiers and the 
like; comedies, such whereunto the better 
sort of persons do resort ; treasuries of jew- 
els and robes, cabinets and rarities; and to 
conclude, whatsoever is memorable in the 
places where they go. After all which, the 
tutors or servants ought to make diligent 
inquiry. As for triumphs, masks, feasts, 
weddings, funerals, capital executions, and 
such shows, men need not to be put in mind 
of them; yet they are not to be neglected. 
If you will have a young man to put his 
travel into a little room, and in short time 
to gather much, this you must do : first, as 
was said, he must have some entrance into 
the language before he goeth. Then he 
must have such a servant, or tutor, as know- 
eth the country, as was likewise said. Let 
him carry with him also some card or book 
describing the country where he traveleth, 
which will be a good key to his inquiry. Let 
him keep also a diary. Let him not stay 
long in one city or town ; more or less as 
the place deserveth, but not long : nay, when 
he stayeth in one city or town, let him 
change his lodging from one end and part 
of the town to another, which is a great 
adamant of acquaintance. Let him seques- 
ter himself from the company of his coun- 
trymen, and diet in such places where tliere 
is good company of the nation where he 
traveleth. Let him, upon his removes from 
one place to another, procure recommenda- 
tion to some person of quality residing in 
the place whither he removeth, that he may 
use his favor in those things he desireth to 
see or know. Thus he may abridge his 
travel with much profit. 

As for the acquaintance which is to be 
sought in travel, that which is most of all 
profitable is acquaintance with the secre- 
taries and employed men of ambassadors; 
for so in traveling in one country, he shall 
suck the experience of many. Let him also ; 



see and visit eminent persons in all kinds, 
which are of great name' abroad; that he 
may be able to tell how the life agreeth 
with the fame. For quarrels, they are with' 
care and discretion to be avoided: they are 
commonly for mistresses, healths, place, and 
words. And let a man beware how he keep- 
eth company with choleric and quarrelsome 
persons; for they will engage him into their 
own quarrels. When a traveler returneth 
home, let him not leave the countries where 
he hath traveled altogether behind him, but 
maintain a correspondence by letters with 
those of his acquaintance which are of most 
worth. And let his travel appear rather in 
his discourse than in his apparel or gesture ; 
and in his discourse, let him be rather ad- 
vised in his answers than forward to tell 
stories;. and let it appear that he doth not 
change his country manners, for those of 
foreign parts ; but only prick in some flow- 
ers of that he hath learned abroad, into 
the customs of his own country. 

3. Of Studies 

Studies serve for delight, for ornament, 
and for ability. Their chief use for delight 
is i,n privateness and retiring; for ornament 
is in discourse ; and for ability is in the 
judgment and disposition of business. For 
expert men can execute, and perhaps judge 
of particulars, one by one; but the general 
counsels and the plots and marshaling of 
affairs come best from those that are 
learned. To spend too much time in studies 
is sloth; to use them too much for orna- 
ment is affectation; to make judgment 
wholly by their rules is the humor of a 
scholar. They perfect nature, and are per- 
fected by experience. For natural abilities 
are like natural plants, that need pruning 
by study; and studies themselves do give 
forth directions too much at large, except 
they be bounded in by experience. Crafty 
men contemn studies, simple men admire 
them, and wise men use them. For they 
teach not their own use; but that is a wis- 
dom without them, and above them, won by 
observation. Read not to contradict and 
confute; nor to believe and take for 
granted ; nor to find talk and discourse ; but 
to weigh and consider. Some books are to 
be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some 
few to be chewed and digested — that is, 
some books are to be read only in parts, 
others to be read, but not curiously, and 
some few to be read wholly, and with dili- 
gence and attention. Some books also may 



THE EENAISSANCE 



53 



be read by deputy, and extracts made of 
them by others; but that would be only in 
the less important arguments and the 
meaner sort of books; else distilled books 
are like common distilled waters, flashy 
things. Reading maketh a full man, con- 
ference a ready man, and writing an exact 
man. And therefore if a man write little 
he had need have a great memory; if he 
confer little he had need have a present wit ; 
and if he read little he had need have much 
cunning to seem to know that he doth not. 
Histories make men wise, jjoets witty, the 
mathematics subtle, natural philosophy 
deep, moral grave, logic and rhetoric able 
to contend, Abeunt studia in mores?- Nay, 
there is no stond or impediment in the wit 
but may be wrought out by fit studies, like 
as diseases of the body may have appropri- 
ate exercises. Bowling is good for the stone 
and reins, shooting for the lungs and breast, 
gentle walking for the stomach, riding for 
the head, and the like. So if a man's wit 
be wandering, let him study the mathemat- 
ics, for in demonstrations, if his wit be 
called away never so little, he must begin 
again; if his wit be not apt to disting-uish 
or find differences, let him study the school- 
men, for they are cymini sectores; - if he be 
not 'apt to beat over matters and to call up 
one thing to prove and illustrate another, 
let him study the lawyer's cases. So every 
defect of the mind may have a special re- 
ceipt. 

4. Of Nature in Men 

Nature is often hidden, sometimes over- 
come, seldom extinguished. Force maketh 
nature more violent in the return ; doctrine 
and discourse maketh nature less impor- 
tune ; but custom only doth alter and subdue 
nature. 

He that seeketh victory over his nature, 
let him not set himself too great nor too 
small tasks; for the first will make him de- 
jected by often failing, and the second will 
make him a small proeeeder, though by often 
prevailings. And, at the first, let him prac- 
tice with helps, as SAvimmers do with blad- 
ders or rushes; but after a time, let him 
practice with disadvantages, as dancers do 
with thick shoes ; for it breeds great perfec- 
tion if the practice he harder than the use. 

Where nature is mighty, and therefore 
the victory hard, the degrees had need be, 
first to stay and arrest nature in time (like 
to him that would say over the four-and- 

1 Studies develop into habits. 

2 Hair-splitters. 



twenty letters when he was angry) ; then to 
go less in quantity (as if one should, in for- 
bearing wine, come from drinking healths 
to a draught at a meal) ; and, lastly, to dis- 
continue altogether. But if a man have the 
fortitude and resolution to enfranchise him- 
self at once, that is the best: 

Optimus ille animi vindex Icsdentia pectus 
Vincula qui rupit, dedoluitque semel? 

Neither is the ancient rule amiss, to bend 
nature as a wand, to a contrary extreme, 
whereby to set it right; understanding it 
where the contrary extreme is no vice. 

Let not a man force a habit upon himself 
with a perpetual continuance ; but with 
some intermission. For both the pause re- 
inforceth the new onset; and if a man that 
is not perfect be ever in practice, he shall 
as well practice his errors as his abilities, 
and induce one habit of both : and there is 
no means to help this but by seasonable in- 
termissions. But let not a man trust his 
victory over his nature too far; 'for nature 
will lay buried a great time, and yet revive 
upon the occasion or temptation. Like as 
it was with iEsop's damsel, turned from a 
cat to a woman, who sat very demurely at 
the board's end till a mouse ran before her. 
Therefore, let a man either avoid the occa- 
sion altogether, or put himself often to it, 
that he may be little moved with it. 

A man's nature is best perceived in pri- 
vateness; for there is no affectation: in 
passion, for that putteth a man out of his 
precepts; and in a new case or experiment, 
for there custom leaveth him. 

They are happy men whose natures sort 
with their vocations; otherwise they may 
say, Multum incola fuit anima mea,- when 
they converse in those things they do not 
affect. In studies, whatsoever a man com- 
mandeth upon himself, let him set hours 
for it; but whatsoever is agreeable to his 
nature, let him take no care for any set 
times : for his thoughts will fly to it of them- 
selves, so as the spaces of other business or 
studies will suffice. 

A man's nature runs either to herbs or 
weeds; therefore let him seasonably water 
the one, and destroy the other. 

5. Of Great Place 

Men in Great Place are thrice servants; 
servants of the Sovereign or State, servants 

1 "He is the best vindicator of his mind, who 
breaks the chains that gall his breast and at the 
same moment ceases to grieve." 

2 "My soul has long been a sojourner." 



54 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



of fame, and servants of business. So as 
they have no freedom, neither in their per- 
sons, nor in their actions, nor in their times. 
It is a strange desire to seek power and to- 
lose liberty: or to seek power over others 
and to lose power over a man's self. The 
rising unto place is laborious ; and by pains 
men come to greater pains : and it is some- 
times base; and by indignities men come to 
dignities. The standing is slippery and the 
regress is either a downfall or at least an 
eelii^se, which is a melancholy thing. Cum 
non sis qui fueris, non esse cur velis vivere^ 
Nay, retire men cannot when they would, 
neither will they when it were reason, but 
are impatient of privateness, even in age 
and sickness, which require the shadow; 
like old townsmen, that will be still sitting 
at their street door, though thereby they 
offer age to scorn. Certainly great persons 
had need to borrow other men's opinions to 
think themselves happy. For if they judge 
by their own feeling, they cannot find it ; 
but if they think with themselves what other 
men think of them, and that other men 
would fain be as they are, then they are 
happy as it were by report, when, perhaps, 
they find the contrary within. For they are 
the first that find their own griefs, though 
they be the last that find their own faults. 
Certainly, men in great fortunes are stran- 
gers to themselves, and while they are in the 
puzzle of business, they have no time to tend 
their health, either of body or mind. Illi 
mors gravis incubat, qui notus nimis omni- 
bus, ignotus m.oritur sibi.^ 

In place there is license to do good and 
evil, whereof the latter is a curse; for in 
evil, the best condition is not to will, the 
second not to can. But power to do good 
is the true and lawful end of aspiring. For 
good thoughts, though God accept them, yet 
towards men are little better than good 
dreams, except they be put in act; and that 
cannot be without power and place, as the 
vantage and commanding ground. Merit 
and good works is the end of man's motion, 
and conscience of the same is the accom- 
plishment of man's rest. For if a man can 
be a partaker of God's theater, he shall like- 
wise be partaker of God's rest. Et conversus 
Deus, ut aspiceret opera quce fecerunt ma- 
nus sucB, vidit quod omnia essent bona 
nimis; ^ and then the Sabbath. 

1 "Since you are not what you were, there is no 
reason why you should wish to live." 

2 "Death presses heavily upon him who dies un- 
known to himself, though known to all others." 

2 Gen. i. 31. 



In the discharge of thy place set before 
thee the best examples; for imitation is a 
globe of precepts. And after a time set 
before thee thine own example, and exam- 
ine thyself strictly whether thou didst not 
best at first. Neglect not also the examples 
of those that have carried themselves ill in 
the same place ; not to set off thyself by 
taxing their memory, but to direct thyself 
what to avoid. Reform, therefore, without 
bravery, or scandal of former times and 
persons : but yet set it down to thyself, as 
well to create good precedents as to follow 
them. Reduce things to the first institution, 
and observe wherein and how they have de- 
generated : but yet ask counsel of both times ; 
of the ancient time, what is best ; and of the 
latter time, what is fittest. Seek to make 
thy course regular, that men may know be- 
forehand what they may expect ; but be not 
too positive and peremptory, and express 
thyself well when thou digressest from thy 
rule. Preserve the right of thy place, but 
stir not questions of jurisdiction; and 
rather assume thy right in silence and de 
facto than voice it with claims and chal- 
lenges. Preserve likewise the rights of in- 
ferior places, and think it more honor to 
direct in chief than to be busy in all. Em- 
brace and invite helps and advices touch- 
ing the execution of thy place; and do not 
drive away such as bring thee information, 
as meddlers, but accept of them in good 
part. 

The vices of authority are chiefly four: 
delays, corruption, roughness, and facility. 
For delays: give easy access; keep times 
Sappointed; go through with that which is 
in hand, and interlace not business but of 
necessity. For corruption : do not only bind 
thine own hands or thy servants' hands from 
taking, but bind the hands of suitors also 
from offering. For integrity used doth the 
one; but integrity professed, and with a 
manifest detestation of bribery, doth the 
other. And avoid not only the fault but 
the suspicion. Whosoever is found varia- 
ble and changeth manifestly without mani- 
fest cause, giveth suspicion of corruption. 
Therefore always when thou changest thine 
opinion or course, profess it plainly, and 
declare it, together with the reasons that 
move thee to change; and do not think to 
steal it. A servant or a favorite, if he be 
inward, and no other apparent cause of es- 
teem, is commonly thought but a by-way to 
close corruption. For roughness; it is a 
needless cause of discontent : severity breed- 



THE EENAISSANCE 



55 



eth fear, but roughness breedeth hate. Even 
reproofs from authority ought to be grave, 
and not taunting. As for facility, it is 
worse than bribery. For bribes come but 
now and then; but if importunity or idle 
respects lead a man, he shall never be with- 
out. As Solomon saith, To respect persons 
is not good, for such a man loill transgress 
for a piece of bread. 

It is most true that was anciently spoken, 
A place shoiccth the man. And it showeth 
some to the better, and some to the worse. 
Omnium consensu, capax im.perii, nisi imper- 
asset, saith Tacitus of Galba,^ but of Ves- 
pasian he saith. Solus imperantium Vespa- 
sianus mutatus in melius.^ Though the one 
was meant of sufficiency, the other of man- 
ners and affection. It is an assured sign 
of a worthy and generous spirit, whom 
honor amends. For honor is, or should be, 
the place of virtue : and as in nature things 
move violently to their place and calmly in 
their place, so virtue in ambition is violent, 
in authority settled and calm. 

All rising to great place is by a winding 
stair; and if there be factions, it is good to 
side a man's self whilst he is in the rising, 
and to balance himself when he is placed. 

Use the memory of thy predecessor fairly 
and tenderly; for if thou dost not, it is a 
debt will surely be paid when thou art gone. 
If thou have colleagues, respect them; and 
rather call them when they look not for it, 
than exclude them when they have reason 
to look to be called. Be not too sensible or 
too remembering of thy place in conversa- 
tion and private answers to suitors; but let 
it rather be said. When he sits in place he is 
another man. 

6. Of Dispatch 

Affected dispatch is one of the most dan- 
gerous things to business that can be. It is 
like that which the physicians call prediges- 
tion, or hasty digestion, which is sure to fill 
the body full of crudities and secret seeds 
of diseases. Therefore measure not dispatch 
by the times of sitting, but by the advance- 
ment of the business. And as in races, it is 
not the large stride, or high lift, that makes 
, the speed, so in business, the keeping close 
to the matter, and not taking of it too much 
at once, procureth dispatch. It is the care 

1 Had he never reigned he would always have 
been thought worthy to have been Emperor. 

2 Vespasian was the only one of the Roman Em- 
perors who was Improved by wearing the Imperial 
purple. 



of some, only to come off speedily for the 
time, or to contrive some false periods of 
business, because they may seem men of 
dispatch ; but it is one thing to abbreviate 
by contracting, another by cutting off; and 
business so handled at several sittings or 
meetings goeth commonly backward and for- 
ward in an unsteady manner. I knew a 
wise man that had it for a byword, when he 
saw men hasten to a conclusion, "Stay a 
little, that we may make an end the sooner." 

On the other side, true dispatch is a rich 
thing; for time is the measure of business, 
as money is of wares ; and business is bought 
at a dear hand where there is small dis- 
patch. The Spartans and Spaniards have 
been noted to be of small dispatch: Mi 
venga la muerte de Spagna, "Let my death 
come from Spain," for then it will be sure to 
be long in coming. 

Give good hearing to those that give the 
first information in business; and rather 
direct them in the beginning than interrupt 
them in the continuance of their speeches; 
for he that is put out of his own order will 
go forward and backward, and be more 
tedious while he waits upon his memory, 
than he could have been if he had gone on 
in his own course. But sometimes it is seen 
that the moderator is more troublesome than 
the actor. 

Iterations are commonly loss of time ; but 
there is no such gain of time as to iterate 
often the state of the question ; for it chas- 
eth away many a frivolous speech as it is 
coming forth. Long and curious speeches 
are as fit for dispatch as a robe or mantle 
with a long train is for a race. Prefaces, 
and passages, and excusations, and other 
speeches of reference to the person are great 
wastes of time; and though they seem to 
proceed of modesty, they are bravery. Yet 
beware of being too material when there is 
any impediment or obstruction in men's 
wills; for pre-oceupation of mind ever re- 
quireth preface of speech, like a fomenta- 
tion to make the unguent enter. 

Above all things, order and distribution 
and singling out of parts is the life of dis- 
patch, so as the distribution be not too 
subtle ; for he that doth not divide will never 
enter well into business, and he that divid- 
eth too much will never come out of it 
clearly. To choose time is to save time; 
and an unseasonable motion is but beating 
the air. There be three parts of business — 
the preparation, the debate or examination, 
and the perfection; whereof, if you look for 



56 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



dispatch, let the middle only be the work of 
many, and the first and last the work of 
few. The proceeding upon somewhat con- 
ceived in writnig doth for the most part fa- 
cilitate dispatch; for though it should be 
wholly rejected, yet that negative is more 
pregnant of direction than an indefinite, as 
ashes are more generative than dust. 

The Service of Learning to the State 

francis bacon 

[From The Advancement of Learning, 1605] 

1. In Praise of Learning 

And as for the disgraces which Learning 
receiveth from Politiques, they be of this 
nature; that Learning doth soften men's 
minds, and makes them more unapt for the 
honor and exercise of arms; that it doth 
mar and pervert men's dispositions for mat- 
ter of government and policy, in making 
them too curious and irresolute by variety of 
reading, or too peremptory or positive by 
strictness of rules and axioms, or too im- 
moderate and overweening by reason of the 
greatness of examples, or too incompatible 
and differing from the times by reason of 
the dissimilitude of examples; or at least, 
that it doth divert men's travails from action 
and business, and bringeth them to a love 
of leisure and privateness ; and that it doth 
bring into states a relaxation of discipline, 
whilst every man is more ready to argue 
than to obey and execute. Out of this con- 
ceit, Cato, surnamed the Censor, one of the 
wisest men indeed that ever lived, when 
Carneades the philosopher came in em- 
bassage to Rome, and that the young men 
of Rome began to flock about him, being 
allured with the sweetness and majesty of 
his eloquence and learning, gave counsel in 
open senate that they should give him his 
dispatch with all speed, lest he should infect 
and enchant the minds and affections of the 
youth, and at unawares bring in an altera- 
tion of the manners and customs of the state. 
Out of the same conceit or humor did Virgil, 
turning his pen to the advantage of his 
country, and the disadvantage of his own 
profession, make a kind of separation be- 
tween policy and government, and between 
arts and sciences, in the verses so much 
renowned, attributing and challenging the 
one to the Romans and leaving and yielding 
the other to the Grecians : 



Tu regere imperio populos, Romane, me- 
mento, 
Hse tibi erunt artes, etc. 

So likewise we see that Anytus, the ac- 
cuser of Socrates, laid it as an article of 
charge and accusation against him, that he 
did, with the variety and power of his dis- 
courses and disputations, withdraw young 
men from due reverence to the laws and cus- 
toms of their country, and that he did pro- 
fess a dangerous and pernicious science, 
which was, to make the worse matter seem 
the better, and to suppress truth by force 
of eloquence and speech. 

But these, and the like imputations, have 
rather a countenance of gravity than any 
ground of justice : for experience doth war- 
rant, that both in persons and in times, there 
hath been a meeting and concurrence in 
Learning and Arms, flourishing and excell- 
ing in the same men and the same ages. For, 
as for men, there cannot be a better nor the 
like instance, as of that pair, Alexander the 
Great and Julius Caesar the Dictator; 
whereof the one was Aristotle's scholar in 
philosophy, and the other was Cicero's jrival 
in eloquence : or if any man had rather call 
for scholars that were great generals, than 
generals that were great scholars, let him 
take Epaminondas the Theban, or Xenophon 
the Athenian ; whereof the one was the first 
that abated the power of Sparta, and the 
other was the first that made way to the 
overthrow of the monarchy of Persia. And 
this concurrence is yet more visible in times 
than in persons, by how much an age is a 
greater object than a man. For both in 
Egypt, Assyria, Persia, Graecia, and Rome, 
the same times that are most renowned for 
arms, are likewise most admired for learn- 
ing, so that the greatest authors and philoso- 
phers, and the greatest captains and gov- 
ernors have lived in the same ages. Neither 
can it otherwise be : for as in man the ripe- 
ness of strength of the body and mind 
Cometh much about an age, save that the 
strength of the body cometh the more early : 
so in states Arms and Learning, whereof the 
one correspondeth to the body, the other to 
the soul of man, have a concurrence or near 
sequence in times. 

And for matter of Policy and Govern- 
ment, that learning should rather hurt, than 
enable thereunto, is a thing very improba- 
ble : we see it is accounted an ei'ror to com- 
mit a natural body to empiric physicians, 



THE EENAISSANCE 



57 



wMeh commonly have a few pleasing 
receipts whereupon they are confident and 
adventurous, but know neither the causes of 
diseases, nor the complexions of patients, 
nor peril of accidents, nor the true method 
of cures : we see it is a like error to rely 
upon advocates or lawyers, which are only 
. men of practice and not grounded in their 
books, who are many times easily surprised 
when matter falleth out besides their ex- 
perience, to the prejudice of the causes they 
handle : so by like reason it cannot be but 
a matter of doubtful consequence if states 
be managed by empiric Statesmen, not well 
mingled with men grounded in learning. But 
contrariwise, it is almost without instance 
contradictory that ever any government was 
disastrous that was in the hands of learned 
governors. For howsoever it hath been 
ordinary with politic men to extenuate and 
disable learned men by the names of 
Pedantes; yet in the records of time it ap- 
peareth, in many particulars, that the gov- 
ernments of princes in minority (notwith- 
standing the infinite disadvantage of that 
kind of state) have nevertheless excelled the 
government of princes of mature age, even 
for that reason which they seek to traduce, 
which is, that by that occasion the state 
hath been in the hands of Pedantes; for so 
was the state of Rome for the first five years, 
which are so much magnified, during the 
minority of Nero, in the hands of Seneca, a 
Pedanti; so it was again, for ten years' 
space or more, during the minority of 
Gordianus the younger, with great applause 
and contentation in the hands of Misitheus, 
a Pedanti: so was it before that, in the 
minority of Alexander Severus, in like hap- 
piness, in hands not much unlike, by reason 
of the rule of the women, who were aided 
by the teachers and preceptors. Nay, let a 
man look into the government of the bishops 
of Rome, as, by name, into the government 
of Pius Quintus, and Sextus Quintus, in our 
times, who were both at their entrance es- 
teemed but as pedantical friars, and he 
shall find that such popes do greater things, 
and proceed upon truer principles of estate, 
than those which have ascended to the 
papacy from an education and breeding in 
affairs of estate and courts of princes; for 
although men bred in learning are perhaps 
to seek in points of convenience and ac- 
commodating for the present, which the 
Italians call Ragioni di stato, whereof the 
same Pius Quintus could not hear spoken 



with patience, terming them inventions 
against religion and the moral virtues; yet 
on the other side, to recomj^ense that, they 
are perfect in those same plain grounds of 
religion, justice, honor, and moral virtue, 
which if they be well and watchfully pur- 
sued, there will be seldom use of those 
other, no more than of physic in a sound or 
well dieted body. Neither can the expe- 
rience of one man's life furnish exami3les 
and precedents for the events of one man's 
life : for, as it haiDi^eneth sometimes that 
the grandchild, or other descendant, re- 
sembleth the ancestors more than the son ; so 
many times occurrences of present times 
may sort better with ancient examples than 
with those of the latter or immediate times.; 
and lastly, the wit of one man can no more 
countervail learning than one man's means 
can hold way with a common purse. 

And as for those particular seducements, 
or indispositions of the mind for policy and 
government, which Learning is pretended to 
insinuate; if it be granted that any such 
thing be, it must be remembered withal, that 
Learning ministereth in every of them 
greater strength of medicine or remedy than 
it offereth cause of indisposition or in- 
firmity. For if by a secret operation it 
make men perplexed and irresolute, on the 
other side by plain precept it teacheth them 
when and upon what ground to resolve ; yea, 
and how to carry things in susjoense without 
prejudice, till they resolve; if it make men 
positive and regular, it teacheth them what 
things are in their nature demonstrative, 
and what are conjectural, and as well 
the use of distinctions and exceptions, as 
the latitude of principles and rules. If it 
mislead by disproportion or dissimilitude 
of examples, it teacheth men the force of 
circumstances, the errors of comparisons, 
and all the. cautions of application ; so that 
in all these it doth rectify more effectually 
than it can pervert. And these medicines 
it conveyeth into men's minds much more 
forcibly by the quickness and penetration 
of examples. For let a man look into the 
errors of Clement the seventh, so lively de- 
scribed by Guicciardine, who served under 
him, or into the errors of Cicero, painted 
out by his own pencil in his Epistles to 
Atticus, and he will fly apace from being 
irresolute. Let him look into the errors of 
Phoeion, and he will beware how he be ob- 
stinate or inflexible. Let him but read the 
fable of Ixion, and it will hold him from 



58 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



being vaporous or imaginative. Let him 
look into the errors of Cato the second, 
and he will never be one of the Antipodes, 
to tread opposite to the present world. 

And for the conceit that Learning should 
dispose men to leisure and privateness, and 
make men slothful; it were a strange thing 
if that which aecustometh the mind to a 
perpetual motion and agitation should in- 
duce slothf ulness : whereas contrariwise it 
may be truly affirmed, that no kind of men 
love business for itself but those that are 
learned ; for other persons love it for profit, 
as a hireling, that loves the work for the 
wages; or for honor, as because it beareth 
them up in the eyes of men, and refresheth 
their reputation, which otherwise would 
wear; or because it putteth them in mind 
of their fortune, and giveth them occasion 
to pleasure and displeasure; or because it 
exerciseth some faculty wherein they take 
pride, and so entertaineth them in good 
humor and pleasing conceits towards them- 
selves; or because it advanceth any other 
their ends. So that, as it is said of untrue 
valors, that some men's valors are in the 
eyes of them that look on; so such men's 
industries are in the eyes of others, or at 
least in regard of their own designments : 
only learned men love business as an action 
according to nature, as agreeable to health 
of mind as exercise is to health of body, 
taking pleasure in the action itself, and not 
in the purchase : for that of all men they 
are the most indefatigable, if it be towards 
any business which can hold or detain their 
mind. 

And that Learning should take up too 
much time or leisure; I answer, the most 
active or busy man that hath been or can 
be, hath, no question, many vacant times of 
leisure, while he expecteth the times and re- 
turns of business (except he be either tedi- 
ous and of no dispatch, or lightly and un- 
worthily ambitious to meddle in things that 
may be better done by othets) : and then the 
question is but how these spaces and times 
of leisure shall be filled and spent ; whether 
in pleasures or in studies; as was well an- 
swered by Demosthenes to his adversary 
^schines, that was a man given to pleasure, 
and told him, That his orations did smell 
of the lamp: Indeed (said Demosthenes) 
there is a great difference between the 
things that you and I do hy lamp-light. So 
as no man need doubt that learning will ex- 
pulse business, but rather it will keep and 



defend the possession of the mind against 
idleness and pleasure, which otherwise at 
unawares may enter to the prejudice of 
both. 

Again for that other conceit that Learn- 
ing should undermine the reverence of laws 
and government, it is assuredly a mere de- 
pravation and calumny, without all shadow 
of truth. For to say that a blind custom 
of obedience should be a surer obligation 
than duty taught and understood, it is to 
affirm, that a blind man may tread surer 
by a guide than a seeing man can by a 
light. And it is without all controversy, 
that learning doth make the minds of men 
gentle, generous, maniable, and pliant to 
government ; whereas ignorance makes them 
churlish, thwart, and mutinous: and the 
evidence of time doth clear this assertion, 
considering that the most barbarous, rude, 
and unlearned times have been most subject 
to tumults, seditions, and changes 

It taketh away the wildness and barbar- 
ism and fierceness of men's minds. ... It 
taketh away all levity, temerity, and inso- 
leney, by copious suggestion of all doubts 
and difficulties, and acquainting the mind to 
balance reasons on both sides, and to turn 
back the first offers and conceits of the 
mind, and to accept of nothing but exam- 
ined and tried. It taketh away vain admi- 
ration of anything, which is the root of all 
weakness : for all things are admired either 
because they are new, or because they are 
great. For novelty, no man that wadeth in 
learning or contemplation thoroughly, but 
will find that printed in his heart Nil novi 
super terram. Neither can any man marvel 
at the play of puppets, that goeth behind 
the curtain, and adviseth well of the motion. 
And for magnitude, as Alexander the Great, 
after that he was used to great armies, and 
the great conquests of the spacious prov- 
inces in Asia, when he received letters out 
of Greece, of some fights and services there, 
which were commonly for a passage or a 
fort, or some walled town at the most, he 
said. It seemed to him that he was adver- 
tised of the Battle of the Frogs and the 
Mice, that the old tales went of. So cer- 
tainly, if a man meditate much upon the 
universal frame of nature, the earth with 
men upon it (the divineness of souls ex- 
cept,) will not seem much other than an 
ant-hill, whereas some ants carry corn, and 
some carry their young, and some go empty, 
and all to-and-fro a little heap of dust. It 
taketh away or mitigateth fear of death, or 



THE EENAISSANCE 



59 



adverse fortune; which is one of the great- 
est impediments of virtue, and imperfec- 
tions of manners. For if a man's mind be 
deeply seasoned with the consideration of 
the mortality and eorrui^tible nature of 
things, he will easily concur with Epictetus, 
who went forth one day and saw a woman 
weeping for her jjitcher of earth that was 
broken; and went forth the next day and 
saw a woman weeping for her son that was 
dead, and thereupon said : Heri vidi fra- 
gilem frangi, hodie vidi mortalem mori. . . . 
Lastly, leaving the vulgar arguments, that 
by learning man excelleth man m that 
wherein man excelleth beasts ; that by learn- 
ing man aseendeth to the heavens and their 
motions, where in body he cannot come, and 
the like; let us conclude with the dignity 
and excellency of knowledge and learning 
in that whereunto man's nature doth most 
aspire, which is, immortality or continu- 
ance : for to this tendeth generation, and 
raising of houses and families ; to this tend 
buildings, foundations, and monuments; to 
this tendeth the desire of memory, fame, and 
celebration, and in effect the strength of all 
other human desires. We see then how far 
the monuments of wit and learnmg are more 
durable than the monuments of power or of 
the hands. For have not the verses of 
Homer continued twenty-five hundred years, 
or more, without the loss of a syllable or 
letter; during which time, infinite palaces, 
temples, castles, cities, have been decayed 
and demolished? It is not possible to have 
the true pictures or statues of Cyrus, Alex- 
ander, Caesar; no, nor of the kings or great 
personages of much later years; for the 
originals cannot last, and the copies cannot 
but leese of the life and truth. But the 
images of men's wits and knowledges remain 
in books, exempted from the wrong of time, 
and capable of perpetual renovation. Nei- 
ther are they fitly to be called images, be- 
cause they generate still, and east their seeds 
in the minds of others, provoking and caus- 
ing infinite actions and opinions in succeed- 
ing ages: so that, if the invention of the 
ship was thought so noble, which carrieth 
riches and commodities from place to place, 
and consoeiateth the most remote regions in 
participation of their fruits, how much more 
are letters to be magnified, which, as ships, 
pass through the vast seas of time, and 
make ages so distant to participate of the 
wisdom, illuminations, and inventions the 
one of the other? Nay further, we see 
some of the philosophers which were least 



divine, and most immersed in the senses, 
and denied generally the immortality of the 
soul, yet came to this point, that whatsoever 
motions the spirit of man could act and per- 
form without the organs of the body, they 
thought might remain after death, which 
were only those of the understanding, and 
not of the affection : so immortal and incor- 
ruptible a thing did knowledge seem unto 
them to be. But we, that know by divine 
revelation that not only the understanding 
but the affections purified, not only the spirit 
but the body changed, shall be advanced to 
immortality, do disclaim in these rudiments 
of the senses. 

2. Some Defects in Learning 
Another error is an impatience of doubt 
and haste to assertion without due and ma- 
ture suspension of judgment. For the two 
v/ays of contemplation are not unlike the 
two ways of action commonly spoken of by 
the ancients; the one plain and smooth in 
the beginning, and in the end impassable ; 
the other rough and troublesome in the en- 
trance, but after a while fair and even. So 
it is in contemplation ; if a man will begin 
with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but 
if he will be content to begin with doubts, 
he shall end in certainties. 

Another error is in the manner of the 
tradition and delivery of knowledge, which 
is for the most part magistral and peremp- 
tory, and not ingenuous and faithful ; in a 
sort as may be soonest believed, and not 
easiliest examined. It is true, that in com- 
pendious treatises for practice that form 
is not to be disallowed : but in the true han- 
dling of knowledge, men ought not to fall 
either on the one side into the vein of Vel- 
leius the Epicurean : Nil tarn metuens, quam 
ne dubitare aliqua de re videretur; nor on 
the other side into Socrates his ironical 
doubting of all things; but to propound 
things sincerely with more or less assevera- 
tion, as they stand in a man's own judgment 
proved more or less. 

Other errors there are in the scope that 
men propound to themselves, whereunto 
they bend their endeavors ; for whereas the 
more constant and devote kind of profes- 
sors of any science ought to propound to 
themselves to make some additions to their 
science, they convert their labors to aspire 
to certain second prizes : as to be a profound 
interpreter or commenter, to be a sharp 
champion or defender, to be a methodical 
compounder or abridger; and so the patri- 



60 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



mony of knowledge cometh to be sometimes 
improved, but seldom augmented. 

But the greatest error of all the rest is 
the mistaking or misplacing of the last or 
farthest end of knowledge: for men have 
entered into a desire of learning and knowl- 
edge, sometimes upon a natural curiosity 
and inquisitive appetite; sometimes to en- 
tertain their minds with variety and de- 
light; sometimes for ornament and reputa- 
tion; and sometimes to enable them to vic- 
tory of wit and contradiction; and most 
times for lucre and profession; and seldom 
sincerely to give a true accoiint of their 
gift of reason, to the benefit and use of 
men: as if there were sought in knowledge 
a couch whereupon to rest a searching and 
restless spirit; or a tarrasse, for a wander- 
ing and variable mind to walk up and down 
with a fair prospect; or a tower of state, 
for a proud mind to raise itself upon ; or a 
fort or commanding ground, for strife and 
contention; or a shop, for profit or sale; 
and not a rich storehouse, for the glory of 
the Creator and the relief 'of man's estate. 
But this is that which will indeed dignify 
and exalt knowledge, if contemplation and 
action may be more nearly and straitly con- 
joined and united together than they have 
been; a conjunction like unto that of the 
two highest planets, Saturn, the planet of 
rest and contemplation, and Jupiter, the 
planet of civil society and action : howbeit, 
I do not mean, when I speak of use and 
action, that end before-mentioned of the 
applying of knowledge to lucre and pro- 
fession; for I am not ignorant how much 
that diverteth -and interrupteth the prose- 
cution and advancement of knowledge, like 
unto the golden ball thrown before Ata- 
lanta, which while she goeth aside and 
stoopeth to take up, the race is hindered; 

Deelinat eursus, aurumque volubile 

toUit. 

^Neither is my meaning, as was spoken 
of Socrates, to call philosophy down from 
heaven to converse upon the earth ; that is to 
leave natural philosophy aside, and to ap- 
ply knowledge only to manners and policy. 
But as both heaven and earth do conspire 
and contribute to the use and benefit of 
man; so the end ought to be, from both 
philosophies to separate and reject vain 
speculations, and whatsoever is empty and 
void, and to preserve and augment what- 
soever is solid and fruitful : that knowledge 
may not be as a courtesan, for pleasure and 



vanity only, or as a bondwoman, to acquire 
and gain to her master's use; but as a 
spouse, for generation, fruit, and com- 
fort 

Amongst so many great foundations of 
colleges in Europe, I find it strange that 
they are all dedicated to professions, and 
none left free to arts and sciences at large. 
For if men judge that learning should be 
referred to action, they judge well; but in 
this they fall into the error described in 
the ancient fable, in which the other parts 
of the body did suppose the stomach had 
been idle, because it neither performed the 
office of motion, as the limbs do, nor of 
sense, as the head doth; but yet, notwith- 
standing, it is the stomach that digesteth 
and distributeth to all the rest : so if any 
man think philosophy and universality to 
be idle studies, he doth not consider that all 
professions are from thence served and sup- 
plied. And this I take to be a great cause 
that hath hindered the progression of learn- 
ing, because these fundamental knowledges 
have been studied but in passage. Eor if 
you will have a tree bear more fruit than 
it hath used to do, it is not anything you 
can do to the boughs, but it is the stirring 
of the earth and putting new mould about 
the roots that must work it. Neither is it 
to be forgotten, that this dedicating of foun- 
dations and dotations to professory learn- 
ing hath not only had a malign aspect and 
influence upon the growth of sciences, but 
hath also been prejudicial to states and 
governments. For hence it proceedeth that 
princes find a solitude in regard of able 
men to serve them in causes of state, be- 
cause there is no education collegiate which 
is free; where such as were so disposed 
might give themselves to histories, modern 
languages, books of policy and civil dis- 
course, and other the like enablements unto 
service of estate. 

3. Of the Architecture of Fortune 

The opinion of Aristotle seemeth to me a 
negligent opinion, that of those things 
which consist by nature nothing can be 
changed by custom ; using for example, that 
if a stone be thrown ten thousand times up, 
it will not learn to ascend; and that by 
often seeing or hearing, we do not leai'n 
to see or hear the better. For though this 
principle be true in things wherein nature 
is peremptory (the reason whereof we can- 
not now stand to discuss), yet it is other- 



THE EENAISSANCE 



61 



wise in things wherein nature admitteth a 
latitude. For he might see that a strait 
glove Avill come more easily on with use; 
and that a wand will by use bend other- 
wise than it grew; and that by use of the 
voice we speak louder and stronger; and 
that by use of enduring heat or cold, we 
endure it the better, and the like: which 
latter sort have a nearer resemblance unto 
that subject of manners he handleth, than 
those instances which he allegeth. But al- 
loAving his conclusion, that virtues and vices 
consist in habit, he ought so much the more 
to have taught the manner of superinducing 
that habit: for there be many precepts of 
the wise ordering the exercises of the mind, 
as there is of ordering the exercises of the 
body ; whereof we will recite a few. 

The first shall be, that we beware we take 
not at the first either too high a strain, or 
too weak: for if too high, in a' diffident 
nature you discourage, in a confident na- 
ture you breed an opinion of facility, and 
so a sloth; and in all natures you breed a 
'farther expectation than can hold out, and 
so an insatisf action in the end : if too weak 
on the other side, you may not look to per- 
form and overcome any great task. 

Another precept is, to practice all things 
chiefly at two several times, the one when 
the mind is best disposed, the other when 
it is worst disposed; that by the one you 
may gain a great step, by the other you may 
work out the knots and stonds of the mind, 
and make the middle times the more easy 
and pleasant. 

Another precept is, that which Aristotle 
mentioneth by the way, which is to bear 
ever towards the contrary extreme of that 
whereunto we are by nature inclined; like 
unto the rowing against the stream, or mak- 
ing a wand straight by bending him. con- 
trary to his natural crookedness. 

Another precept is, that the mind is 
brought to anything better, and with more 
sweetness and happiness, if that where- 
unto you pretend be not first in the inten- 
tion, but tanquam aliud agendo, because of 
the natural hatred of the mind against ne- 
cessity and constraint. Many other axioms 
there are touching the managing of exercise 
and custom ; which being so conducted doth 
prove indeed another nature ; but being gov- 
erned by chance doth commonly prove but 
an ape of nature, and bringing forth that 
which is lame and counterfeit 

But there is a kind of culture of the 



mind. that seemeth yet more accurate and 
elaborate than the rest, and is built upon 
tlws ground ; that the minds of all men are 
at some times in a state more perfect, and 
at other times in a state more depraved. 
The purpose therefore of this practice is 
to fix and cherish the good hours of the 
mind, and to obliterate and take forth the 
evil. The fixing of the good hath been 
practiced by two means, vows or constant 
resolutions, and observances or exercises; 
which are not to be regarded so much in 
themselves, as because they keep the mind in 
continual obedience. The obliteration of the 
evil hath been practiced by two means, some 
kind of redemjotion or expiation of that 
which is past, and an inception or account 
de novo, for the time to come. But this 
part seemeth sacred and religious, and 
justly; for all good moral philosophy, as 
was said, is but a handmaid to religion. 

Wherefore we will conclude with that 
last point, which is of all other means the 
most compendious and summary, and again, 
the most noble and effectual to the reducing 
of the mind unto virtue and good estate; 
which is the electing and propounding unto 
a man's self good and virtuous ends of his 
life, such as may be in a reasonable sort 
within his compass to attain. For if these 
two things be supposed, that a man set 
before him honest and good ends, and again, 
that he be resolute, constant, and true unto 
them; it will follow that he shall mould 
himself into all virtue at once. And this 
indeed is like the work of nature; whereas 
the other course is like the work of the 
hand. For as when a carver makes an 
image, he shapes only that part whereupon 
he worketh, (as if he be upon the face, that 
part which shall be the body is but a rude 
stone still, till such time as he comes to it;) 
but, contrariwise, when nature makes a 
flower or living creature, she formeth rudi- 
ments of all the parts at one time: so in 
obtaining virtue by habit, while a man 
practieeth temperance, he doth not profit 
much to fortitude, nor the like : but when 
he dedicateth and applieth himself to good 
ends, look, what virtue soever the pursuit 
and passage towards those ends doth com- 
mend unto him, he is invested of a prece- 
dent disposition to conform himself there- 
unto 

Wherein it may appear at the first a new 
and unwonted argument to teach men how 
to raise and make their fortune ; a doctrine 



62 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



wherein every man perchance will be ready 
to yield himself a disciple, till he see the 
difficulty; for fortune layeth as heavy im- 
positions as virtue; and it is as hard and 
severe a thing to be a true politique, as to 
be truly moral. But the handling hereof 
coneerneth learning greatly, both in honor 
and in substance: in honor, because prag- 
matical men may not go away with an opin- 
ion that learning is like a lark, that can 
mount, and sing, and please herself, and 
nothing else ; but may know that she holdeth 
as well of the hawk, that can soar aloft, 
and can also descend and strike upon the 
prey : in substance, because it is the perfect 
law of inquiry of truth, that nothing be in 
the globe of matter, which should not be 
likewise in the globe of crystal, or form; 
that is, that there be not any thing in being 
and action, which should not be drawn and 
collected into contemplation and doctrine. 
Neither doth learning admire or esteem of 
this architecture of fortune, otherAvise than 
as of an inferior work : for no man's fortune 
can be an end worthy of his being; and 
many times the worthiest men do abandon 
their fortune willingly for better respects : 
but nevertheless fortune, as an organ of 
virtue and merit, deserveth the considera- 
tion 

Another precept of this architecture of 
fortune is, to accustom our minds to judge 
of the proportion or value of things, as 
they conduce and are material to our par- 
ticular ends: and that to do substantially, 
and not superficially. For we shall find the 
logical part, as I may term it, of some 
men's minds good, but the mathematical 
part erroneous ; that is, they can well judge 
of consequences, but not of proportions 
and comparisons, preferring things of show 
and sense before things of substance and 
effect. So some fall in love with access to 
princes, others with popular fame and ap- 
plause, supposing they are things of great 
purchase : when in many cases they are but 
matters of envy, peril, and impediment. So 
some measure things according to the labor 
and difficulty, or assiduity, which are spent 
about them; and think, if they be ever 
moving, that they must needs advance and 
proceed ; as Csesar saith in a despising man- 
ner of Cato the second, when he describeth 
how laborious and indefatigable he was to 
no great purpose; Hcec omnia magno studio 
agehat. So in most things men are ready 
to abuse themselves in thinking the great- 



est means to be best, when it should be the 
fittest. 

As for the true marshalling of men's pur- 
suits towards their fortune, as they are 
more or less material, I hold them to stand 
thus : first the amendment of their own 
minds. For the remove of the impediments 
of the mind will sooner clear the passages 
of fortune, than the obtaining fortune will 
remove the impediments of the mind. In 
the second place, I set down wealth and 
means ; which I know most men would have 
placed first, because of the general use 
which it beareth towards all variety of oc- 
casions. But that opinion I may condemn 
with like reason as Machiavel doth that 
other, that moneys were the sinews of the 
wars; whereas, saith he, the true sinews of 
the wars are the sinews of men's arms, that 
is, a valiant, populous, and military nation : 
and he voucheth aptly the authority of 
Solon, who, when Croesus showed him his 
treasury of gold, said to him, that if another 
came that had better iron, he would be 
master of his gold. In like manner it 
may be truly affirmed, that it is not 
moneys that are the sinews of fortune, 
but it is the sinews and steel of men's 
minds, wit, courage, audacity, resolu- 
tion, temper, industry, and the like. In 
the third place I set down reputation, be- 
cause of the peremptory tides and currents 
it hath ; which, if they be not taken in their 
due time, are seldom recovered, it being 
extreme hard to play an after game of repu- 
tation. And lastly, I place honor, which is 
more easily won by any of the other three, 
much more by all, than any of them can be 
purchased by honor. To conclude this pre- 
cept, as there is order and priority in mat- 
ter, so is there in time, the preposterous 
placing whereof is one of the commonest 
errors : while men fly to their ends when 
they should intend their beginnings, and 
do not take things in order of time as they 
come on, but marshal them according to 
greatness, and not according to instance; 
not observing the good precept, Quod nunc 
instat agamus. 

4. This Third Period of Time 

Thus have I concluded this portion of 
learning touching civil knowledge ; and with 
civil knowledge have concluded human phil- 
osophy; and with human philosophy, phil- 
osophy in general. And being now at some 
pause, looking back into that I have passed 



THE EENAISSANCE 



63 



through, this writing seemeth to me, si nun- 
quam fallit imago, as far as man can judge 
of his o^yn work, not much better than that 
noise or sound which musicians make while 
they are tuning their instruments : which is 
nothing pleasant to hear, but yet is a cause 
why the music is sweeter afterwards : so 
have I been content to tune the instru- 
ments of the Muses, that they may play that 
have better hands. And surely, when I set 
before me the condition of these times, in 
which learning hath made her third visita- 
tion or circuit in all the qualities thereof — 
as the excellency and vivacity of the wits 
of this age; the noble helps and lights which 
we have by the travails of ancient writers; 
the art of printing, which communicateth 
books to men of all fortunes; the openness 
of the world by navigation, which hath dis- 
closed multitudes of experiments, and a 
mass of natural history; the leisure where- 
with these times abound, not employing men 
so generally in civil business, as the states 
of Grsecia did, in respect of their popu- 



larity, and the state of Rome, in respect of 
the greatness of their monarchy ; the present 
disposition of these times at this instant to 
peace; the consumption of all that ever can 
be said in controversies of religion, Avhich 
have so much diverted men from other sci- 
ences; the perfection of your Majesty's 
learning, which as a Phoenix may call whole 
vollies of wits to follow you; and the in- 
separable propriety tf time, which is ever 
moi'e and more to disclose truth — ^I cannot 
but be raised to this persuasion that this 
third period of time will far surpass that 
of the Grecian and Roman learning: only 
if men will know their own strength, and 
their own weakness both ; and take one from 
the other, light of invention, and not fire of 
contradiction ; and esteem of the inquisition 
of truth as of an enterprise, and not as 
of a quality or ornament; and employ wit 
and magnificence to things of worth and 
excellency, and not to things vulgar and of 
pojDular estimation. 



IV. IDEAS OF THE STATE 



The Imaginary Commonv^ealth op 
Utopia ^ 

sir thomas more 

1. Thomas Blare to Peter Giles, of 
Antwerp 

I am almoste ashamed, righte wellbeloved 
Peter Giles, to send unto you this boke of 
the Utopian commen wealth, welniegh after 
a yeres space, whiehe I am sure you looked 
for within a moneth and a halfe. And no 
marveil. For you knewe well ynough that 
I was alreadye disbourdened of all the la- 
boure and studye belongynge to the inven- 
tion in this worke, and that I had no nede 
at al to trouble my braines about the dis- 
position, or conveiaunce of the matter : and 
therfore had herein nothing els to do, but 
only to rehearse those thinges, whiehe you 
and I together hard maister Raphael tel 
and declare. Wherefore there was no cause 
why I shuld study to set forth the matter 
with eloquence : forasmuch as his talke 
could not be fine and eloquent, beynge firste 

^ The word means "nowhere." The selections 
are taken from the English translation. 1551. The 
first edition, in Latin, appeared in 1516, 



not studied for, but suddein and unpre- 
meditate, and then, as you know, of a man 
better sene in the Greke language, then in 
the latin tonge. And my writynge, the 
neigher it should approche to his homely 
plaine, and simple speche, somuche the 
niegher shuld it go to the trueth : which is 
the onelye marke, whereunto I do and ought 
to directe all my travail and study herin. 
I graunte and confesse, frende Peter, my- 
selfe dispharged of so muche laboure, bav- 
in ge all these thinges ready done to my 
hande, that almooste there was nothinge 
left for me to do. Elles either the inven- 
tion, or the disposition of this matter 
myghte have required of a witte neither 
base, neither at al unlearned, both some 
time and leasure, and also some studie. But 
if it were requisite, and necessarie, that the 
matter shoulde also have been wrytten elo- 
quentlie, and not alone truelye : of a suere- 
tie that thynge coulde I have perfourmed 
by no tyme nor studye. But now seynge 
all these cares, stayes, and lettes were taken 
awaye, wherein elles so muche laboure and 
studye shoulde have bene employed, and 
that there remayned no other thynge for me 
to do, but onelye to write playnelie the mat- 



64 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



ter as I hard it spoken: that in deede was 
a thynge lighte and easye to be done. How- 
beit to the dispatehynge of thys so lytle 
busynesse, my other cares and troubles did 
leave almost lesse then no leasure. Whiles 
1 doo dayelie bestowe my time aboute lawe 
matters: some to pleade, some to heare, 
some as an arbitratoure with myne awarde 
to determine, some as an umpier or a Judge, 
with my sentence finallye to discusse. Whiles 
I go one waye to see and visite my f rende : 
another waye about myne owne privat af- 
faires. Whiles I spende almost al the day 
abrode emonges other, and the residue at 
home among . mine owne : I leave to my 
self, I meane to my booke no time. For 
when I am come home, I muste eommen with 
my wife, chatte with my children, and talke 
wyth my servauntes. All the whiche thinges 
I recken and accompte amonge businesse, 
forasmuche as they muste of necessitie be 
done : and done muste they nedes be, one- 
lesse a man wyll be straunger in his owne 
house. And in any wyse a man muste so 
fashyon and order hys conditions, and so 
appoint and dispose him selfe, that he be 
merie, jocunde, and pleasaunt amonge them, 
whom eyther nature hathe provided, or 
chaunce hath made, or he hym selfe hath 
chosen to be the felowes, and companyons, 
of hys life: so that with to muche gentle 
behavioure and familiaritie, he do not marre 
them, and by to muche sufferaunce of his 
servauntes, make them his maysters. 
Emonge these thynges now rehearsed, steal- 
eth awaye the daye, the moneth, the yeare. 
When do I write then? And all this while 
have I spoken no worde of slepe, neyther 
yet of meate, which emong a great number 
doth wast no lesse tyme then doeth slepe, 
wherein almoste halfe the life tyme of man 
crepeth awaye. I therefore do wynne and 
get onelye that tyme, whiche I steale from 
slepe and meate. Whiche tyme because it 
is very litle, and yet somwhat it is, ther- 
fore have I ones at the laste, thoughe it be 
longe first, finished Utopia, and have sent 
it to you, f rende Peter, to reade and peruse : 
to the intente that yf anye thynge have 
escaped me, you might put me in remem- 
braunce of it. For thoughe in this behalfe 
I do not greatly e mistruste my selfe (whiche 
woulde God I were somwhat in wit and 
learninge, as- 1 am not all of the worste and 
dullest memorye) yet have I not so great 
truste and confidence in it, that I thinke 
nothinge eoulde fall out of my mynde. For 



John Clement my boye, who as you know 
was there presente with us, whome I suf- 
fer to be awaye frome no talke, wherein 
maye be any profyte or goodnes (for oute 
of this yonge bladed and new shotte up 
corne, whiche hathe»alreadye begon to spring 
up both in Latin and Greke learnyng, I 
loke for plentifull increase at length of 
goodly rype grayne) he I saye hathe 
broughte me into a greate doubte. For 
whereas Hythlodaye (onelesse my memorye 
fayle me) sayde that the bridge of Amau- 
rote, whyche goethe over the river of Anyder 
is fyve hundreth paseis, that is to saye, 
halfe a myle in lengthe: my John sayeth 
that two hundred of those paseis muste be 
plucked away, for that the ryver conteyneth 
there not above three hundreth paseis in 
breadthe, I praye you hartelye call the mat- 
ter to youre remembraunce. For yf you 
agree wyth hym, I also wyll saye as you 
saye, and confesse myselfe deeeaved. But 
if you cannot remember the thing, then 
surelye I wyll write as I have done and as 
myne owne remembraunce serveth me. For 
as I wyll take good hede, that there be in 
my booke nothing false, so yf there be anye 
thynge doubtefuU, I wyll rather tell a lye, 
then make a lie: because I had rather be 
good, then wilie. Howbeit thys matter maye 
easelye be remedied, yf you wyll take the 
paynes to aske the question of Raphael him 
selfe by woorde of mouthe, if he be nowe 
with you, or elles by youre letters. Whiche 
you muste nedes do for another doubte also, 
that hathe chauneed, throughe whose faulte 
I cannot tel: whether through mine, or 
yours, or Raphaels. For neyther we re- 
membred to enquire of him, nor he to tel us 
in what part of the newe world Utopia is 
situate. The whiche thinge, I had rather 
have spent no small somme of money, then 
that it should thus have escaped us; as well 
for that I am ashamed to be ignoraunt in 
what sea that ylande standeth, wherof I 
write so long a treatise, as also because 
there be with us eerten men, and especiallie 
one vertuous and godly man, and a pro- 
fessour of divinitie, who is excedynge de- 
sierous to go unto Utopia : not for a vayne 
and curious desyre to see newes, but to the 
intente he maye further and increase cure 
religion, whiche is there alreadye luckelye 
begonne. And that he maye the better ac- 
eomplyshe and perfourme this hys good 
intente, he is mynded to procure that he 
maye be sente thether by the hieghe 



THE KENAISSANCE 



65 



Byshoppe: yea, and that he himselfe may 
be made Bishoppe of Utopia, beynge noth- 
ynge scrupulous herein, that he muste ob- 
teyne this Byshopricke with suete. For he 
counteth that a godly suete, which proeed- 
eth not of the desire of honoure or lucre, 
but onelie of a godlie zeale. Wherfore I 
moste earnestly desire you, frende Peter, 
to talke with Hythlodaye, yf you can, face 
to face, or els to wryte youre letters to hym, 
and so to woorke in thys matter, that in 
this my booke there maye neyther anye 
thinge be founde, whyche is untrue, neyther 
any thinge be lacking, whiche is true. And 
I thynke verelye it shal be well done, that 
you shewe unto him the book it selfe. For 
yf I have myssed or fayled in anye poynte, 
or if anye faulte have escaped me, no man 
can so Avell eorrecte and amende it, as he 
can: and yet that can he not do, oneles he 
peruse and reade over my booke written. 
Moreover by this meanes shall you pereeave, 
whether he be well wyllynge and content, 
that I shoulde undertake to put this 
woorke in writyng. For if he be mynded 
to publyshe and put forth his owne 
laboures, and travayles himselfe, per- 
chaunee he woulde be lothe, and so woulde 
I also, that in publishynge the Utopiane 
weale publyque, I shoulde prevent him, and 
take frome him the flower and grace of 
the noveltie of this his historie. Howbeit, 
to saye the verye trueth, I am not yet fullye 
determined with my selfe, whether I will put 
forth my booke or no. For the natures of 
men be so divers, the phantasies of some 
so waywarde, their myndes so unkynde, 
their judgementes so eorrupte, that they 
which leade a merie and a joeounde lyfe, 
folowynge theyr owne sensuall pleasures 
and carnall lustes, maybe seme to be in a 
muehe better state or case, then they that 
vexe and unquiete themselves with cares and 
studie for the puttinge forthe and publish- 
ynge of some thynge, that maye be either 
prof ett or pleastire to others : whiche 
others nevertheles will disdainfully, scorne- 
fuUy, and unkindly aecepte the same. The- 
moost part of al be unlearned. And a 
greate number hathe learning in contempte. 
The rude and barbarous alloweth nothing, 
but that which is verie barabrous in dede. 
If it be one that hath a little smacke of 
learnynge, he rejecteth as homely geare and 
commen ware, whatsoever is not stuffed full 
of olde moughteaten termes, and that be 
worne out of use. Some there be that have 



pleasure onelye in olde rustic antiquities. 
And some onelie in their owne doynges. One 
is so sowre, so crabbed, and so unpleas- 
aunte, that he can awaye with no myrthe 
nor sporte. An other is so narrowe be- 
twene the shulders, that he can beare no 
jests nor tauntes. Some seli poore soules be 
so afearde that at everye snappishe woorde 
their nose shall be bitten of, that they stande 
in no lesse drede of everye quicke and 
sharpe woorde, then he that is bitten of a 
madde dogge feareth water. Some be so 
mutable and waverynge, that every houre 
they be in a newe mynde, sayinge one thinge 
syttinge and an other thynge standynge. 
An other sorte sytteth upon their alle- 
bencheis, and there amonge their cuppes 
they geve judgement of the wittes of 
writers, and with greate authoritie they 
condempne even as pleaseth them, everye 
writer accordynge to his writing, in moste 
spitefull maner, mockynge, lowtinge, and 
flowtinge them; beyng them selves in the 
meane season sauffe, and as sayeth the 
proverbe, oute of all daunger of gonne- 
shotte. For why, they be so snugge and 
smothe, that they have not so much as 
one hearre of an honeste man, whereby 
one may take holde of them. There be 
moreover some so unkynde and ungentle, 
that thoughe they take great pleasure, and 
delectation in the worke, yet for all that, 
they can not fynde in their hertes to love 
the Author therof, nor to af orde him a good 
woorde : beynge much like uncourteous, un- 
thankfull, and chourlish gestes, whiche 
when they have with good and daintie 
meates well fylled theire bellyes, departe 
home, gevyng no thankes to the feaste 
maker. Go your wayes now, and make a 
costlye feaste at youre owne charges for 
gestes so dayntie mouthed, so divers in taste, 
and besides that of so unkynde and un- 
thankfullnatures. But nevertheles (frende 
Peter) doo, I pray you, with Hithloday, as 
I willed you before. And as for this mat- 
ter I shall be at my libertie, afterwardes to 
take newe advisement. Howbeit, seeyng 
I have taken great paynes and laboure in 
writyng the matter, if it may stande with 
his mynde and pleasure, I wyll as touch- 
yng the edition of publishyng of the booke.; 
followe the eounsell and advise of my 
frendes, and speciallye yours. Thus fare 
you well right hertely beloved frende Peter, 
with your gentle wife: and love me as you 
have ever done, for I love you better then 
ever I dyd. 



66 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



2. England Through Utopian Eyes 

I in the meanetime (for so my busines 
laye) wente streighte thence to Antwerpe. 
Whiles I was there abidynge, often times 
amonge other, but whiehe to me was more 
welcome then annye other, clyd visite me 
one Peter Giles, a Gitisen of Antwerpe, a 
man there in his countrey of honest repu- 
tation, and also preferred to high promo- 
tions, worthy truly of the hyghest. For it is 
hard to say, whether the young man be in 
learnyng, or in honestye more excellent. 
For he is bothe of wonderfull vertuous con- 
ditions, and also singularly wel learned, and 
towardes all sortes of people excedyng gen- 
tyll : but towardes his f rendes so kynde 
herted, so lovyng, so faithfull, so trustye, 
and of so earnest affection, that it were 
verye harde in any place to fynde a man, 
that with him in all poyntes of frendshippe 
maye be compared. No man can be more 
lowlye or courteous. No man useth lease 
simulation or dissimulation, in no man is 
more prudent simplicitie. Besides this, he 
is in his talke and communication so merye 
and pleasaunte, yea and that withoute 
harme, that throughe his gentyll intertayne- 
ment, and his sweete and delectable com- 
munication, in me was greatly abated and 
diminished the fervente desyre, that I had 
to see my native countrey, my wyfe and 
my chyldren, whom then I dyd muche longe 
and covete to see, because that at that 
time I had been more then iiii. Monethes 
from them. Upon a certayne daye when I 
hadde herde the divine service in our Ladies 
Churche, which is the fayrest, the most 
gorgeous and curious Churche of buyldyng 
in all the Gitie, and also most frequented 
of people, and the service beynge doone, 
was readye to go home to my lodgynge, I 
chaunced to espye this foresayde Peter 
talkynge with a certayne Straunger, a man 
well stricken in age, with a blacke sonne- 
burned face, a longe bearde, and a cloke 
cast homly about his shoulders, whqme by 
his favoure and apparell furthwith I judged 
to bee a mariner. But the sayde Peter 
seyng me, came unto me and saluted me. 
And as I was aboute to answere him : see 
you this man, sayth he (and therewith he 
poynted to the man, that I sawe hym talk- 
ynge with before) I was mynded, quod he, 
to brynge him strayghte home to you. He 
should have ben very welcome to me, sayd 
I,- for your sake. . Nay (quod he) for his 
owne sake, if you knewe him : for there is 



no man thys day livyng, that can tell you of 
so manye straunge and unknown peoples, 
and Countreyes, as this man can. And I 
know wel that you be very desirous to 
heare of such newes. Then I conjectured 
not farre a misse (quod I) for even at the 
first syght I judged him to be a mariner. 
Naye (quod he) there ye were greatly de- 
ceyved : he hath sailed in deede, not as the 
mariner Palinure, but as the experte and 
prudent prince Ulisses : yea, rather as the 
auncient and sage Philosopher Plato. For 
this same Raphaell Hythlodaye (for this is 
his name) is very well lerned in the Latine 
tongue : but prof ounde and excellent in the 
Greke language. Wherein he ever bestowed 
more studye then in the Latine, bycause he 
had geven himselfe wholy to the study of 
Philosophy. Wherof he knew that ther is 
nothyng extante in Latine, that is to anye 
purpose, savynge a fewe of Senecaes, and 
Gieeroes dooynges. His patrimonye that 
he was borne unto, he lefte to his brethren 
(for he is a Portugall borne) and for the 
desire that he had to see, and knowe the 
farre Gountreyes of the worlde, he joyned 
himselfe in company Avith Amerike Vespuce, 
and in the iii. last voyages of those iiii. that 
be nowe in printe and abrode in every 
mannes handes, he continued styll in his 
company, savyng that in the last voyage he 
came not home agayne with him. For he 
made suche meanes and shift, what by in- 
tretaunce, and what by importune sute, that 
he gotte licence of mayster Americke 
(though it were sore against his wyll) to be 
one of the xxiiii whiehe in the ende of the 
last voyage were left in the countrey of 
Gulike. He was therefore lefte behynde for 
hys mynde sake, as one that tooke more 
thoughte and care for travailyng, then 
dyenge: havyng customably in his moiith 
these saiynges. He that hathe no grave, is 
covered with the skye : and, the way to 
heaven out of all places is of like length 
and distaunce. Which fantasy of his (if 
God had not ben his better frende) he had 
surely bought full deare. But after the 
departynge of Mayster Vespu.ce, when he 
had travailed thorough and aboute many 
Gountreyes with v. of his companions Gu- 
likianes, at the last by merveylous chaunce 
he arrived in Taprobane, from whence he 
went to Galiquit, where he chaunced to 
fynde certayne of hys Gountreye shippes, 
wherein he retourned agayne into his Goun- 
treye, nothynge lesse then looked for. 

All this when Peter hadde tolde me: I 



THE EENAISSANCE 



67 



thanked him for his gentle kindnesses that 
he had vouchsafed to brynge me to 
the speaehe of that man, whose com- 
munication he thoughte shoulde be to 
me pleasaunte and acceptable. And there- 
with I tourned me to RajDhaell. And 
when wee hadde haylsed eche other, and 
had spoken these commune woordes, that 
bee customablye spoken at the first meting, 
and acquaintaunee of straungers, we went 
thence to my house, and there in my gar- 
daine upon a bench covered with greene 
torves, we satte downe talkyng together. 
There he tolde us, how that after the de- 
partjmg of Vespuce, he and his fellowes 
that taried behynde in Gulicke, began by 
litle and litle, throughe fayre and gentle 
speaehe, to wynne the love and favoure of 
the people of that eountreye, insomuche 
that within shorte space, they dyd dwell 
amonges them, not only harmless, but also 
occupiyng with them verye familiarly. He 
tolde us also, that they were in high repu- 
tation and favour with a certayne great man 
(whose name and Countreye is nowe quite 
out of my remembraunee) which of his 
mere liberalitie dyd beare the costes and 
charges of him and his fyve companions. 
And besides that gave theim a trustye guyde 
to conducte them in their journey (which by 
water was in botes, and by land in wagons) 
and to brynge theim to other Princes with 
verye frendlye commendations. Thus after 
manye dayes journeys, he sayd, they founde 
townes and Cities and weale publiques, full 
of people, governed by good and holsome 
lawes. For under the line equinoctiall, and 
on bothe sydes of the same, as farre as the 
Sonne doth extende his course, lyeth (quod 
he) great and wyde desertes and wilder- 
nesses, parched, burned, and dryed up with 
continuall and intolerable heate. All 
thynges bee hideous, terrible, lothesome, 
and unpleasaunt to beholde: All thynges 
out of fassyon and comelinesse, inhabited 
withe wylde Beastes and Serpentes, or at the 
leaste wyse, with people, that be no lesse 
savage, wylde, and noysome then the verye 
beastes theim selves be. But a little farther 
beyonde that, all thynges beginne by litle 
and lytle to waxe pleasaunte. The ayre 
softe,' temperate, and gentle. The grounde 
covered with grene grasse. Lesse wildnesse 
in the beastes. At the last shall ye come 
agayne to people, cities and townes wherein 
is continuall entercourse and occupiyng of 
merchaundise and chatfare, not only among 
themselves and* with theire Borderers, but 



also with Merchauntes of farre Countreyes, 
bothe by lande and water. There I had oc- 
casion (sayd he) to go to many countreyes 
on every syde. For there was no shippe 
ready to any voyage or journey, but I and 
my fellowes were into it very gladly re- 
ceyved. The shippes that thei founde first 
were made playn, fiatte and broade in the 
botome, trough wise. The sayles were made 
of great russhes, or of wickers, and in some 
places of lether. Afterwarde thei founde 
shippes with ridged kyeles, and sayles of 
eanvasse, yea, and shortly after, havying all 
thynges lyke oures. The shipmen also very 
experte and cunnynge, bothe in the sea and 
in the wether. But he said that he founde 
great favoure and frendship amonge them, 
for teachynge them the f eate and the use of 
the lode stone. Whiche to them before 
that time was unknowne. And therf ore they 
were wonte to be verye timerous and fear- 
full upon the sea. Nor to venter upon it, 
but only in the somer time. But nowe they 
have suehe a confidence in that stone, that 
they f eare not stormy winter : in so dooynge 
farther from care then daunger. In so 
muche, that it is greatly to be doubted, lest 
that thyng, throughe their owne folish hardi- 
nesse, shall tourne them to evyll and harme, 
which at the first was supposed shoulde be 
to them good and commodious. But what 
he tolde us that he sawe in everye countreye 
where he came, it were very longe to de- 
clare. Neither it is my purpose at this time 
to make rehersall tlierof. But peradventure 
in an other place I wyll speake of it, chiefly 
suche thynges as shall be profitable too 
bee knowen, as in speciall be those decrees 
and ordinaunces, that he marked to be well 
and wittely provided and enacted amonge 
suche peoples, as do live together in a civile 
policye and good ordre. For of suche 
thynges dyd wee buselye enquire and de- 
maunde of him, and he likewise very will- 
ingly tolde us of the same. But as for mon- 
sters, byeause they be no newes, of them 
we were nothyng inquisitive. For nothyng 
is more easye to bee founde, then bee bark- 
ynge Seyllaes, ravenying Celenes, and Les- 
trigones devourers of people, and suche lyke 
great, and incredible monsters. But to 
fynde Citisens ruled by good and holsome 
lawes, that is an exceding rare, and harde 
thyng. But as he marked many fonde, and 
folisshe lawes in those newe founde landes, 
so he rehersed divers actes, and constitu- 
tions, whereby these oure Cities, Nations, 
Countreis, and Kyngdomes may take ex- 



68 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



ample to amende their faultes, enormities 
and errours. Wlierof in another place (as 
I sayde) I wyll intreate. Now at this time 
I am determined to reherse onely that he 
tolde us of the maners, customes, lawes, and 
ordinaunces of the Utopians. But first I 
wyll repete oure former communication by 
thoccasion, and (as I might saye) the drifte 
wherof, he was brought into the mention of 
that weale publique. 

For, when Raphael had very prudentlye 
touched divers thyngs that be amisse, some 
here and some there, yea, very many on 
bothe partes; and againe had spoken of 
suehe wise lawes and i^rudente decrees, as 
be established and used, bothe here amonge 
us and also there amonge theym, as 
a man so perfecte, and exjaerte in the 
lawes, and eustomes of every severall 
Countrey, as though into what place soever 
he came geastwise, there he had ledde al 
his life: then Peter muche mervailynge at 
the man: Surely maister Raphael (quod 
he) I wondre greatly, why you gette you not 
into some kinges courte. Tor I -am sure 
there is no Prince livyng, that wold not 
be very glad of you, as a man not only 
hable highly to delite him with your pro- 
founde learnyng, and this your knowledge 
of countreis, and peoples, but also mete to 
instructe him with examples, and helpe him 
with counsell. And thus doyng, you shall 
bryng your selfe in a verye good case, and 
also be of habilitie to helpe all your frendes 
and kinsfolke. As coneernyng my frendes 
and kynsfolke (quod he) I passe not greatly 
for them. For I thinke I have suffteiently 
doone my parte towardes them akeady. 
For these thynges, that other men doo not 
departe from, untyl they be olde and sycke, 
yea, whiche they be then verye lothe to 
leave, when they canne no longer keepe, 
those very same thynges dyd I beyng not 
only lustye, and in good helth, but also in 
the floure of my youth, divide among my 
frendes and kynsfolkes. Which I thynke 
with this my liberalitie ought to holde them 
contented, and not to require nor to loke 
that besydes this, I shoulcle for their sakes 
geve myselfe in bondage unto kinges. 

Nay, God forbyd that (quod Peter) it is 
notte my mynde that you shoulde be in 
bondage to kynges, but as a retainour to 
them at yoiir pleasure. Whiche surely I 
thinke is the nighest waye that you can 
devise howe to bestowe your time frutefuUy, 
not onlye for the private commoditie of 
your frendes and for the generall proflte 



of all sortes of people, but also for thad- 
vauncement of your self to a much welthier 
state and condition, then you be nowe in. 
To a welthier condition (quod Raphael) by 
that meanes, that my mynde standeth eleane 
agaynst ? Now I lyve at libertie after myne 
owne mynde and pleasure, whiche I thynke 
verye fewe of these great states and pieres 
of realmes can saye. Yea, and there be 
ynow of them that sue for great mens 
frendeshippes : and therfore thinke it no 
great hurte, if they have not me, nor iii. or 
iiii. suche other as I am. Well, I perceive 
playnly frende Raphael (quod I) that you 
be desirous neither of richesse, nor of power. 
And truly I have in no lesse reverence and 
estimation a man of your mynde, then anye 
of theim all that bee so high in power and 
authoritie. But you shall doo as it becom- 
eth you: yea, and accordyng to this wis- 
dome, to this high and free courage of yours, 
if you can finde in your herte so to ap- 
poynt and dispose your selfe, that you mai 
applye your witte and diligence to the 
profile of the weale publique, thoughe it be 
somewhat to youre owne payne and hyn- 
draunce. And this shall you never so wel 
doe, nor wyth so greate proffitte perfourme, 
as yf you be of some gi'eate princes counsel, 
and put into his heade (as I double not but 
you wyl) honeste opinions, and vertuous 
persuasions. For from the prince, as from 
a perpetual wel sprynge, commethe amonge 
the people the floode of al that is good or 
evell. But in you is so perfitte lernynge, 
that withoute anye experience, and agayne 
so greate experience, that wythoute anye 
lernynge you maye well be any kinges coun- 
sellour. You be twyse deceaved maister 
More (quod he) fyrste in me, and agayne 
in the thinge it selfe. For neither is in me 
the habilitye that you force upon me, and 
yf it wer never so much, yet in disquieting 
myne owne quietnes I should nothing fur- 
ther the weale publique. For first of all, 
the moste parte of all princes have more 
delyte in v/arlike matters and f eates of chiv- 
alrie (the knowlege wherof I neither have 
nor desire) than in the good f eates of peace; 
and employe muche more study, how by 
right or by wrong to enlarge their domin- 
ions, than howe wel, and peaceablie to rule, 
and governe that they have alredie. More- 
over, they that be counsellours to kinges, 
every one of them eyther is of him selfe 
so wise in dede, that he nedeth not, or elles 
he thinketh himself so wise, that he wil 
not allowe another mans counsel, saving 



THE EENAISSANCE 



69 



that they do shamefully and flatteringly 
geve assent to the fond and folishe say- 
inges of eerteyn great men. Whose favours, 
bicause they be in high authoritie with their 
prince, by assentation and fiatterie they 
labour to obteyne. And verily it is nat- 
urally geven to all men to esteme their 
owne inventions best. So both the Raven 
and the Ape thineke their owne yonge ones 
fairest. Then if a man in such a company, 
where some disdayne and have despite at 
other mens inventions, and some counte their 
owne best, if among suche menne (I say) 
a man should bringe furth any thinge, that 
he hath redde done in tymes paste, or that 
he hath sene done in other places ; there the 
hearers fare as though the whole existima- 
tion of their wisdome were in jeoperdye to 
be overthrowen, and that ever after thei 
shoulde be counted for verye diserdes,^ un- 
les they could in other mens inventions 
pycke out matter to reprehend, and find 
fault at. If all other poore helpes fayle, 
then this is their extreame refuge. These 
thinges (say they) pleased our foi'efathers 
and auncestours: wolde God we coulde be 
so wise as thei were : and as though thei had 
wittely concluded the matter, and with this 
answere stopped every mans mouth, thei 
sitte downe againe. As who should sai, it 
were a very daungerous matter, if a man 
in any pointe should be fovinde wiser then 
his forefathers were. And yet bee we eon- 
tent to suffre the best and wittiest of their 
decrees to lye unexecuted : but if in any 
thing a better ordre might have ben taken, 
then by them was, there we take fast holde, 
findyng therin many faultes. Manye tymes 
have I chaunced upon such proude, leude, 
overthwarte andwaywarde judgementes,yea, 
and once in England: I prai you Syr (quod 
I) have you ben in our countrey? Yea for- 
soth (quod he) and there I taried for the 
space of iiii. or v. monethes together, not 
longe after the insurrection, that the Wes- 
terne English men made agaynst their kyng, 
which by their owne miserable and pitiful 
slaughter was suppressed and ended. In 
the meane season I was muehe bounde and 
beholdynge to the righte reverende father, 
John Morton, Archebishop and Cardinal of 
Canterbury, and at that time also lorde 
Chauncelloure of Englande : a man, Mayster 
Peter, (for Mayster More knoweth already 
that I wyll saye) not more honourable for 
his authoritie, then for his prudence and 
vertue. He was of a meane stature, and 

1 dolts 



though stricken in age, yet bare he his bodye 
upright. In his face did shine- such an 
amiable reverence, as was pleasaunte to be- 
holde, Gentill in communication, yet earnest, 
and sage. He had great delite manye times 
with roughe speache to his sewters, to prove, 
but withoute harme, what prompte witte 
and what bolde spirite were in every man. 
In the which, as in a vertue much agreinge 
with his nature, so that therewith were not 
joyned impudency, he toke greate delecta- 
tyon. And the same person, as apte and 
mete to have an administratyon in the weale 
publique, he dyd lovingly embrace. In his 
speche he was fyne, eloquent, and pytthye. 
In the lawe he had profunde knowledge, in 
witte he was incomparable, and in memory 
wonderful excellente. These qualityes, which 
in hym were by nature singular, he by 
learnynge and use had made perfecte. The 
kynge put muehe truste in his counsel, the 
weale publyque also in a maner leaned unto 
hym, when I Avas there. For even in the 
chiefe of his youth he was taken from 
schole into the eourte, and there passed all 
his tyme in much trouble and busines, beyng 
continually tumbled and tossed in the waves 
of dyvers mysf ortunes and adversities. And 
so by many and greate daungers he lerned 
the experience of the worlde, whiehe so 
beinge learned can not easely be forgotten. 
It chaunced on a certayne daye, when I sate 
at his table, there was also a certayne laye 
man cunnynge in the lawes of youre Realme. 
Who, I can not tell wherof takynge occasion, 
began diligently and earnestly to prayse that 
strayte and rygorous justice, which at that 
tyme was there executed upon f ellones, who, 
as he sayde, were for the moste parte xx. 
hanged together upon one gallowes. And, 
seyng so fewe escaped punyshement, he 
sayde he coulde not chuse, but greatly won- 
der and marvel, howe and by what evil lucke 
it shold so come to passe, that theves never- 
theles were in every place so ryife and so 
rancke. Naye, Syr, quod I (for I durst 
boldely speake my minde before the Cardi- 
nal) marvel nothinge here at: for this 
punyshment of theves passeth the limites of 
Justice, and is also very hurtefull to the 
weale publique. For it is to extreame and 
cruel a punishment for thefte, and yet not 
sufficient to refrayne and withhold men from 
thefte. For simple thefte is not so great 
an offense, that it owght to be punished with 
death. Neither ther is any punishment so 
horrible, that it can kepe them from 
stealynge, which have no other craft, wherby 



70 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



to get their living. Therfore in this poynte, 
not you onlye, but also the most part of the 
world, be like evyll scholemaisters, which be 
readyer to beate, then to teaehe, their 
scholers. For great and horrible punish- 
mentes be appointed for theves, whereas 
much rather provision should have ben made, 
that there were some meanes, whereby they 
myght get their livyng, so that no man 
shoulde be dryven to this extreme neeessitie, 
firste to steale, and then to dye. Yes (quod 
he) this matter is wel ynough provided for 
already. There be handy craftes, there is 
husbandrye to gette their livynge by, if they 
would not willingly be nought. Nay, quod 
I, you shall not skape so : for first of all, I 
wyll speake nothynge of them, that come 
home oute of the warres, maymed and lame, 
as not longe ago, oute of Blackeheath fielde, 
and a litell before that, out of the warres in 
Fraunce: suche, I saye, as put their lives 
in jeoperdye for the weale publiques or the 
kynges sake, and by reason of weakenesse 
and lamenesse be not hable to oceupye their 
olde craftes, and be to aged to lerne new : 
of them I wyll speake nothing, forasmuch as 
warres have their ordinarie recourse. But 
let us considre those thinges that chaunce 
daily before our eyes. First there is a great 
numbre of gentlemen, which can not be con- 
tent to live idle themselves, lyke dorres, of 
that whiche other have laboured for : their 
tenauntes I meane, whom they polle and 
shave to the quicke, by reisyng their rentes 
(for this onlye poynte of frugalitie do they 
use, men els through their lavasse and 
prodigall spendynge, hable to brynge theym- 
selfes to verye beggerye) these gentlemen, 
I say, do not only live in idlenesse them- 
selves, but also carrye about with them at 
their tailes a great flocke or traine of idle 
and loyterynge servyngmen, which never 
learned any craft wherby to gette their 
livynges. These men as sone as their 
mayster is dead, or be sicke themselfes, be 
incontinent thrust out of dores. For gentle- 
men hadde rather keepe idle persones, then 
sicke men, and many times the dead mans 
heyre is not hable to mainteine so great a 
house, and kepe so many serving men as his 
father dyd. Then in the meane season they 
that be thus destitute of service, either 
starve for honger, or manfullye playe the 
theves. For what would you have them to 
do? When they have wandred abrode so 
longe, untyl they have worne thredebare 
their apparell, and also appaired their helth, 
then gentlemen because of their pale and 



sickely faces, and patched cotes, will not 
take them into service. And husbandmen 
dare not set them a worke : Knowynge wel 
ynoughe that he is nothing mete to doe 
trewe and faythful service to a poore man 
wyth a spade and a mattoke for small wages 
and hard fare, whyehe beynge deyntely and 
tenderly pampered up in ydilnes and pleas- 
ure, was wont with a sworde and a buckler 
by hys syde to jette through the strete with 
a bragginge loke, and to thynke hym selfe 
to good to be anye mans mate. Naye by 
saynt Mary sir (quod the lawier) not so. 
For this kinde of men muste we make 
moste of. For in them as men of stowter 
stomackes, bolder spirites, and manlyer 
courages then handycraftes men and plowe- 
men be, doth consiste the whole powre, 
strength and puissaunce of oure army, when 
we muste fight in battayle. Forsothe, sir, as 
well you myghte saye (quod I) that for 
warres sake you muste cheryshe theves. For 
surely you shall never lacke theves, whyles 
you have them. No, nor theves be not the 
most false and faynt harted soldiers, nor 
souldiours be not the cowardleste theves : so 
wel thees ii. craftes agree together. But this 
faulte, though it be much used amonge you, 
yet is it not peculiar to you only, but corn- 
men also almoste to all nations. Yet Fraunce 
besides this is troubled and infected with a 
much sorer plage. The whole royalme is 
fylled and besieged with hiered souldiours in 
peace tyme (yf that bee peace) whyehe be 
brought in under the same colour and pre- 
tense, that hath persuaded you to kepe these 
ydell servynge men. For thies wyse fooles 
and verye archedoltes thought the wealthe of 
the whole countrey herin to consist, if there 
were ever in a redinesse a stronge and 
sure garrison, specially of old practised 
souldiours, for they put no trust at all in 
men unexercised. And therfore they must 
be forced to seke for warre, to the ende thei 
may ever have practised souldiours and cun- 
nyng mansleiers, lest that (as it is pretely 
sayde of Salust) their handes and their 
mindes through idlenes or lacke of exercise, 
should waxe dul. But howe pernitious and 
pestilente a thyng it is to maintayne suche 
beastes, the Frenche men, by their owne 
harmes have learned, and the examples of 
the Romaynes, Carthaginiens, Syriens, and 
of manye other countreyes doo manifestly 
declare. For not onlye the Empire, but also 
the fleldes and Cities of all these, by divers 
occasions have been overrunned and de- 
stroyed of their owne armies before hande 



THE EENAISSANCE 



71 



had in a redinesse. Now how unnecessary 
a thinge this is, hereby it maye appeare: 
that the Frenehe souldiours, which from 
their youth have ben practised and inured in 
f eates of armes, do not cracke nor advaunce 
themselfes to have very often gotte the up- 
per hand and maistry of your new made 
and uni)ractised souldiours. But in this 
poynte I wyll not use many woordes, leste 
perchaunce I maj^e seeme to flatter you. 
No, nor those same handy crafte men of 
yours in cities, nor yet the rude and up- 
landish plowmen of the countreye, are not 
supposed to be greatly affrayde of your 
gentlemens idle servyngmen, unlesse it be 
suche as be not of body or stature corre- 
spondent to their strength and courage, or 
els whose bolde stomakes be discouraged 
throughe povertie. Thus you may see, that 
it is not to be feared lest they shoulde be 
effeminated, if thei were brought up in good 
craftes and laboursome woorkes, whereby 
to gette their livynges, whose stoute and 
sturdye bodyes (for gentlemen vouchsafe to 
corrupte and spill none but picked and 
chosen men) now either by reason of rest 
and idlenesse be brought to weakenesse : or 
els by to easy and womanly exercises be 
made f eble and unhable to endure hardnesse. 
Truly hoAve so ever the case standeth, thys 
me thinketh is nothing avayleable to tlae 
weale publique, for warre sake, which you 
never have, but when you wyl your self es, to 
kepe and mainteyn an unnumerable flocke of 
that sort of men, that be so troublesome and 
noyous in peace, wherof you ought to have 
a thowsand times more regarde, then of 
warre. But yet this is not only the neces- 
sary cause of stealing. There is an other, 
whych, as I suppose, is proper and jDeculiar 
to you Englishmen alone. What is that, 
quod the Cardinal ? Torsoth my lorde (quod 
1) 5'our shepe that were wont to be so meke 
and tame, and so smal eaters, now, as I 
heare saye, be become so great devowerers 
and so wylde, that they eate up, and swal- 
low downe the very men them selfes. They 
consume, destroye, and devoure whole fieldes, 
bowses, and cities. For looke in what partes 
of the realme doth growe the fynest, and 
therfore dearest woll, there noblemen, and 
gentlemen : yea and certeyn Abbottes, holy 
men no doubt, not contenting them selfes 
with the yearely revenues and jorofytes, that 
were wont to grow to theyr forefathers and 
predecessours of their landes, nor beynge 
content that they live in rest ai:id pleasure 
nothinge profiting, yea much noyinge the 



weale publique : leave no grounde for tillage, 
thei inclose al into pastures : thei throw 
doune houses: they plucke downe townes, 
and leave nothing standynge, but only the 
churche to be made a shepe-howse. And as 
thoughe you loste no small quantity of 
grounde by forests, chases, laundes, and 
parkes, those good holy men turne all dwell- 
inge places and all giebeland into desolation 
and wildernes. Therfore that one covetous 
and unsatiable cormaraunte and very plage 
of his natyve contrey maye compasse aboute 
and inclose many thousand akers of grounde 
together within one pale or hedge, the hus- 
bandmen be thrust owte of their owne, or 
els either by coveyne and fraude, or by vio- 
lent oppression they be put besydes it, or 
by wronges and injuries thei be so weried, 
that they be compelled to sell all: by one 
meanes therfore or by other, either by hooke 
or crooke they muste needes departe awaye, 
poore, selye, wretched soules, men, women, 
husbands, wives, fatherlesse children, wid- 
owes, wof uU mothers, with their yonge babes, 
and their whole houshold smal in substance, 
and muche in numbre, as husbandrye re- 
quireth manye handes. Awaye thei trudge, 
I say, out of their knowen and accustomed 
houses, fyndynge no place to reste in. All 
their housholdestuffe, whiche is verye litle 
woorthe, thoughe it myght well abide the 
sale : yet beeynge sodainely thruste oute, 
they be constrayned to sell it for a thing of 
nought. And when they have wandered 
abrode tyll that be sjoent, what can they 
then els doo but steale, and then justly 
pardy be hanged, or els go about a beg- 
gyng. And yet then also they be caste in 
prison as vagaboundes, because they go 
aboute and worke not : whom no man wyl 
set a worke, though thei never so willyngiy 
profre themselves therto. For one Shep- 
hearde or Heardman is ynoughe to eate up 
that grounde with cattel, to the oecupiyng 
wherof aboute husbandiye manye handes 
were requisite. And this is also the cause 
why victualles be now in many places dearer. 
Yea, besides this the price of wolle is so 
rysen, that poore f olkes, which were wont to 
worke it, and make cloth therof, be nowe 
hable to bye none at all. And by thys 
meanes verye manye be forced to forsake 
worke, and to geve them selves to idelnesse. 
For after that so much grounde was in- 
closed for pasture, an infinite multitude of 
shepe dyed of the rotte, suche vengeaunee 
God toke of their inordinate and unsaciable 
covetousness, sendinge amonge the shepe that 



72 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



pestiferous morrein, whiclie mueli more 
justely shoulde have fallen on the shape- 
masters owne heades. And though the num- 
ber of shepe increase never so faste, yet 
the price f alleth not one myte, because there 
be so f ewe sellers. Por they be almooste all 
comen into a fewe riche mennes handes, 
whome no neade foreeth to sell before they 
lust, and they lu'ste not before they maye sell 
as deare as they luste. Now the same cause 
bringeth in like dearth of the other kindes of 
cattell, yea and that so much the more, 
bicause that after fermes plucked downe, 
and husbandry deeaied, there is no man that 
passethe for the breadynge of younge stoore. 
For these riche men brynge not up the yonge 
ones of greate cattel as they do lambes. But 
first they bie them abrode verie chepe, and 
afterward when they be fatted in their 
pastures, they sell them agayne excedynge 
deare. And therefore (as I suppose) the 
whole incommoditie hereof is not yet felte. 
For yet they make dearth onely in those 
places, where they sell. But when they shall 
fetche them away from thence wheare they 
be bredde faster then they can be broughte 
up : then shall there also be felte gTeate 
dearth, stoore beginning there to f aile, where 
the ware is boughte. Thus the unreasonable 
covetousnes of a few hath turned that thing 
to the utter undoing of your ylande, in the 
whiche thynge the chiefe felicitie of your 
realme did consist. For this gTeate dearth 
of victualles causeth men to kepe as litle 
houses, and as smale hospitalitie as they 
possible maye, and to put away their 
servauntes: whether, I pray you, but a 
beggynge: or elles (whyche these gentell 
blondes and stoute stomackes wyll sooner set 
their myndes unto) a stealing? Nowe to 
amende the matter, to this wretched beg- 
gerye and miserable povertie is joyned 
greate wantonnes, importunate superfluitie, 
and excessive riote. For not only gentle 
mennes servauntes, but also handicraft men : 
yea and almooste the ploughmen of the 
countrey, with al other sortes of people, use 
muche straunge and proude newefangienes 
in their apparell, and to muche prodigall 
riotte and sumptuous fare at their table. 
Nowe bawdes, queines, whoores, harlottes, 
strumpettes, brothelhouses, stewes, and yet 
another stewes, wyne tavernes, ale houses, 
and tipling houses, with so manye noughtie, 
lewde, and unlawfull games, as dyce, eardes, 
tables, tennis, boules, coytes, do not all these 
sende the haunters of them streyghte a 
stealynge, when theyr money is gone? Caste 



oute these pernieyous abhominations, make 
a lawe, that they, whiche plucked downe 
fermes, and townes of husbandrie, shal 
reedifie them, or els yelde and uprender the 
possession therof to suche as wil go to the 
cost of buylding them anewe. Suffer not 
these riche men to bie up al, to ingrosse, and 
forstalle, and with their monopolie to kepe 
the market alone as please them. Let not so 
many be brought up in idelnes, let hus- 
bandry and tillage be restored, let clothe- 
workinge be renewed, that ther may be hon- 
est labours for this idell sort to passe their 
tyme in profitablye, whiche hitherto either 
povertie hath caused to be theves, or elles 
nowe be either vagabondes, or idel serving 
men, and shortelye wilbe theves. Doubtles 
onles you finde a remedy for these enormi- 
ties, you shall in vaine advaunce your selves 
of executing justice upon fellons. For this 
justice is more beautiful in apperaunee, and 
more flourishynge to the shewe, then either 
juste or profitable. For by suffring your 
youthe wantonlie and viciously to be brought 
up, and to be infected, even frome theyr 
tender age, by litle and litle with vice : then 
a goddes name to be punished, when they 
commit the same faultes after being come 
to mans state, which from their youthe they 
were ever like to do : In this pointe, I praye 
you, what other thing do you, then make 
theves and then punish them ? 

3. A Discourse Upon International Rela- 
tions, Happiness, and Reformers 

But yet, all this notwithstandinge, I can 
by no meanes chaunge my mind, but that I 
must nedes beleve, that you, if you be dis- 
posed, and can fynde in youre hearte to 
followe some princes eourte, shall with your 
good counselles greatlye helpe and further 
the eommen wealthe. Wherfore there is 
nothynge more apperteining to youre dewty, 
that is to saye, to the dewtie of a good man. 
For where as your Plato judgeth that weale 
publiques shall by this meanes atteyne per- 
fecte felicitie, eyther if philosophers be 
kynges, or elles if kynges geve themselves to 
the studie of philosophie, how f arre I praye 
you, shall eommen wealthes then be frome 
thys felicitie, yf philosophers wyll vouche- 
saufe to enstruet kinges with their good 
counsell? They be not so unkinde (quod 
he) but they woulde giadlye do it, yea, 
manye have .done it alreadye in bookes that 
they have put furthe, if kynges and princes 
would be willynge and readye to folowe 



THE EENAISSANCE 



73 



good counsell. But Plato doubtlesse dyd 
well foresee, oneless kynges themselves 
woulde applye their mindes to the studye of 
Philosophie, that elles they woulde never 
thoroughlye allowe the counsell of Philoso- 
phers, beynge themselves before even from 
their tender age infected, and corrupt with 
perverse, and evill opinions. Whiche thynge 
Plato hymselfe proved trewe in kinge 
Dionyse. If I shoulde propose to any kyng 
wholsome decrees, doynge my endevoure to 
plucke out of hys mynde the pernicious 
originall causes of vice and noughtines, 
thiiike you not that I shoulde fui'thewith 
either be driven awaye, or elles made a 
laughyng stocke ? Well suppose I were with 
the Frenche kynge, and there syttinge in his 
counsell, whiles in that mooste secrete con- 
sultation, the kynge him selfe there beynge 
presente in hys owne i^ersonne, they beate 
their braynes, and serehe the verye bottomes 
of their wittes to discusse by what crafte 
and meanes the kynge maye styl kepe Myl- 
layne, and drawe to him againe fugitive 
Naples, and then howe to eonquere the 
Venetians, and hoAve to bringe under his 
jurisdiction all Italie, then howe to win the 
dominion of Plaunders, Brabant, and of all 
Burgundie : with divers other landes, whose 
kingdomes he hath longe ago in mind and 
purpose invaded. Here whiles one counsel- 
leth to conclude a legue of peace with the 
Venetians, so longe to endure, as shall be 
thought mete and expedient for their pur- 
pose, and to make them also of their coun- 
sell, yea, and besides that to geve them part 
of the pray, whiche afterwarde, when they 
have brought theyr purpose about after 
their owne myndes, they maye require and 
elayme againe. Another thinketh best to 
hiere the Germaynes. Another woulde have 
the favoure of the SAvyehers wonne with 
money. Anothers advyse is to appease the 
puissaunte poAver of the Emperoures 
majestic wytb golde, as with a moste pleas- 
aunte, and acceptable sacrifice. Whiles 
another gyA^eth counsell to make peace wyth 
the kynge of Arragone, and to restoore unto 
him hys owne kyngedome of Navarra, as a 
full assuraunee of peace. Another commeth 
in with his five egges, and adA^seth to hooke 
in the kynge of Castell with some hope of 
affinitie or allyaunce, and to bringe to their 
parte certeine Pieers of his courte for greate 
pensions. Whiles they all staye at the 
ehiefeste doubte of all, what to do in the 
meane time with Englande, and yet agree 



all in this to make peace Avith the English- 
men, and Avith mooste suer and stronge 
bandes to bynde that Aveake and feable 
frendeshippe, so that they muste be called 
frendes, and hadde in suspicion as enemyes. 
And that therfore the Skottes muste be 
hadde in a readines, as it were in a 
standynge, readie at all occasions, in aunters 
the Englishmen shoulde sturre never so 
lytle, incontinent to set upon them. And 
moreover previlie and seeretlye (for openlie 
it maye not be done by the truce that is 
taken) privelie therefore I saye to make 
muche of some Piere of Englande, that is 
bannished hys countrey, whiche muste cleime 
title to the crpwne of the realme, and afflrme 
hym selfe juste inherytoure thereof, that by 
this subtill meanes they maye holde to them 
the kinge, in whome elles they have but 
small truste and affiaunce. Here I saye, 
where so great and heyghe matters be in 
consultation, where so manye noble and 
wyse menne counsell theyr kynge onelie to 
war-re, here yf I, selie man, shoulde rise up 
and will them to tourne OA^er the leafe, and 
learne a neAve lesson, sayinge that my coun- 
sell is not to medle Avith Italy, but to tarye 
styll at home, and that the kyngedome of 
Fraunce alone is almooste greater, then that 
it maye well be governed of one man : so 
that the kynge shoulde not nede to studye 
howe to gette more; and then shoulde pro- 
pose unto them the decrees of the people that 
be called the Achoriens, whiche be situate 
over agaynste the Ilande of Utopia on the 
south-easte side. These Achoriens ones made 
Avarre in their kinges quarrell for to gette 
him another kingdome, Avhiche he laide 
claime unto, and avauneed hymselfe ryghte 
inheritoure to the crowne thereof, by the 
tytle of an olde aliaunee. At the last when 
they had gotten it, and sawe that they hadde 
even as muche vexation and trouble in 
kepynge it, as they had in gettynge it, and 
that either their newe conquered subjeetes 
by sundrye occasions were makynge daylye 
insurrections to rebell against them, or els 
that other countreis were continuallie with 
divers inrodes and forragynges invadynge 
them : so that they were ever fighting either 
for them, or agaynste them, and never eoulde 
breake up theyr eampes : Seyng them selves 
in the meane season pylled and impover- 
ished : their money caried out of the realme : 
their own men killed to maintaine the giorye 
of an other nation : when they had no warre, 
peace nothynge better then warre, by reason 



74 



THE GEEAT TEADITlON 



that their people in war had so inured them- 
selves to corrupte and wicked maners: that 
they had taken'a delite and pleasure in rob- 
binge and stealing: that through man- 
slaughter they had gathered boldnes to mis- 
chief e: that their lawes were had in con- 
tempte, and nothing set by or regarded : 
that their king beynge troubled with the 
charge and governaunce of two kingdomes, 
could not nor was not hable perfeetlie to 
discharge his office towardes them both : 
seing againe that all these evelles and 
troubles were endles : at the laste layde their; 
heades together, and like faithfull and lov- 
inge sub jectes gave to their kynge free ehoise 
and libertie to kepe styll the one of these Iavo 
kingdomes whether he would : alleginge that 
he was not hable to kepe both, and that they 
were mo then might well be governed of 
half e a king : f orasmuehe as no man woulde 
be content to take him for his mulettour, 
that kepeth an other mans moyles besydes 
his. So this good prince was eonstreyned 
to be content with his olde kyngedome and 
toigeve over the newe to one of his frendes. 
Who shortelye after was violentlie driven out. 
Furthermore if I shoulde declare unto them, 
that all this busie preparaunce to warre, 
wherby so many nations for his sake should 
be broughte into a troublesome hurleiburley, 
when all his coffers were emptied, his treas- 
ures wasted, and his people destroied, should 
at the length through some mischance be 
in vaine and to none effect: and that ther- 
fore it were best for him to content him 
selfe with his owne kingedome of Fraunce, 
as his forfathers and predecessours did be- 
fore him : to make much of it, to enrich it, 
and to make it as flourisshing as he could, to 
endevoure him selfe to love his subjeetes, 
and againe to be beloved of them, willingly 
to live with them, peaceably to governe them, 
and with other kyngdomes not to medle, 
seinge that whiche he hath all reddy is even 
ynoughe for him, yea and more than he can 
well turne hym to : this myne advyse, maister 
More, how thinke you it would be harde 
and taken? So God helpe me, not vei"y 
thankefuUy, quod I. Wei, let us precede 
then, quod he. Suppose that some kyng and 
his counsel were together whettinge their 
wittes and devisinge, what subtell crafte 
they myght invente to enryche the kinge with 
great treasures of money. First one coun- 
selleth to rayse and enhaunce the valuation 
of money when the kinge must paye anye : 
and agayne to calle downe the value of 



coyne to lesse then it is worthe, when he 
muste receive or gather any. For thus great 
sommes shal be payd wyth a lytyl money, 
and where lytle is due muclie shal be re- 
ceaved. Another counselleth to fayne warre, 
that when under this coloure and pretence 
the kyng hath gathered greate aboundainice 
of money, he maye, when it shall please him, 
make peace with greate solemjanitie and 
holye ceremonies, to blinde the eyes of the 
poore communaltie, as taking pitie and com- 
passion forsothe upon mans blonde, lyke a 
loving and a mercifull prince. Another put- 
teth the kynge in remembraunce of certeine 
olde and moughteeaten lawes, that of longe 
tyme have not bene put in execution, whych 
because no man can remembre that they 
were made, everie man hath transgressed. 
The fynes of these lawes he counselleth the 
kynge to require : for there is no waye so 
proffitable, nor more honorable, as the 
whyche hathe a shewe and coloure of justice. 
Another advyseth him to forbidde manye 
thinges under greate penalties and fines, 
specially suche thinges as is for the peoples 
profit not be used, and afterwarde to 
dispence for money with them, whyche by 
this prohibition substeyne losse and dam- 
mage. For by this meanes the favour of 
the people is wonne, and profile riseth two 
wayes. First by takinge forfaytes of them 
whome eovetousnes of gaynes hath brought 
in daunger of this statute, and also by 
sellinge privileges and licences, whyche the 
better that the prince is, forsothe the deerer 
he selleth them: as one that is lothe to 
graunte to any private persone anye thinge 
that is against the proffite of his people. 
And therefore maye sel none but at an 
exceding dere pryce. Another giveth the 
kynge counsel to endaunger unto his grace 
the judges of the Realme, that he maye 
have them ever on his side, and that they 
maye in everye matter despute and reason 
for the kynges right. Yea and further to 
call them into his palace and to require them 
there to argue and discusse his matters in 
his owne presence. So there shal be no mat- 
ter of his so openlye wronge and unjuste, 
wherein one or other of them, either because 
he wyl have sumthinge to allege and objecte 
or that he is ashamed to saye that whiche is 
sayde alreadye, or els to pike a thanke with 
his prince, wil not fynde some hole open 
to set a snare in, wherewith to take the 
contrarie parte in a trippe. Thus whiles the 
judges cannot agree amonges them selfes, 



THE EENAISSANCE 



reasoninge and arguing of that which is 
playne enough, and bringinge the manifest 
trewthe in dowte : ■ in the meane season the 
Kinge maye take a fyt occasion to under- 
stand the lawe as shal moste make for his 
advauntage, whereunto all other for shame, 
or for feare wil agTee. Then the Judges 
may be bolde to pronounce on the kynges 
side. For he that geveth sentence for the 
king, cannot be without a good excuse. For 
it shal be sufficient for him to have equitie 
on his part, or the bare wordes of the lawe, 
or a wrythen and wrested understandinge of 
the same, or els (whiche with good and just 
Judges is of greater force then all lawes be) 
the Kynges indisputable prerogative. To 
conclude, al the eounsellours agre and eon- 
sent together with the ryche Crassus, that no 
abundance of gold can be sufficient for a 
prince, which muste kepe and maynteyne 
an armie: furthermore that a kynge, 
thoughe he would, can do nothinge un justlye. 
For all that all men have, yea also the men 
them selfes be all his. And that every man 
hath so much of his owne, as the kynges 
gentilnes hath not taken from hym. And 
that it shal be moste for the kinges ad- 
vantage, that his subjectes have very lytle 
or nothinge in their possession, as whose 
savegarde doth herein consiste, that his 
people doe not waxe wanton and wealthie 
through riches and libertie, because where 
these thinges be, there men be not wonte 
patiently to obeye harde, unjuste, and un- 
lawefuU commaundementes ; whereas on the 
other part neade and povertie doth holde 
downe and kepe under stowte courages, and 
maketh them patient perforce, takynge from 
them bolde and rebellynge stomakes. Here 
agayne if I shoulde ryse up, and boldelye 
afiflrme that all these eounselles be to the 
kinge dishonoure and reproche, whose 
honoure and safetye is more and rather sup- 
ported and upholden by the wealth and 
ryches of his people, then by hys owne 
treasures: and if I should declare that the 
eomminaltie chueseth their king for their 
owne sake, and not for his sake: to the 
intent, that through his laboure and studie 
they might al live wealthily sauffe from 
wronges and injuries : and that therf ore the 
kynge ought to take more care for the 
wealthe of his people, then for his owne 
wealthe, even as the office and dewtie of a 
shepehearde is in that he is a shepherde, to 
feede his shepe rather then himselfe. For as 
towchinge this, that they thinke the defence 



and mayntenaunee of peace to consiste in 
the povertie of the people, the thing it selfe 
sheweth that they be farre out of the waye. 
For where shal a man finde more wrangling, 
quarrelling, brawling, and chiding, then 
among beggers ? Who be more desierous of 
newe mutations and alterations, then they 
that be not content with the present state of 
their lyfe? Or finallye who be bolder 
stomaked to bringe all in a hurlieburlye 
(therby trustinge to get some windfal) then 
they that have nowe nothinge to leese ? And 
yf any Kyng were so smally regarded, and 
so lightly estemed, yea so behated of his 
subjectes, that other wayes he could not 
kepe them in awe, but onlye by open 
wronges, by pollinge and shavinge, and by 
bringinge them to beggerie, sewerly it were 
better for him to forsake his kingedome, 
then to holde it by this meanes: whereby 
though the name of a king be kepte, yet the 
majestie is lost. For it is againste the dig- 
nitie of a kynge to have rule over beggers, 
but rather over ryche and welthie men. Of 
this mynde was the hardie and couragius 
Fabrice, when he sayde, that he had rather 
be a ruler of riche men, then be ryche him- 
selfe. And verelye one man to live in pleas- 
ure and wealth, whyles all other wepe and 
smarte for it, that is the parte, not of a 
kynge, but of a jayler. To be shorte as he 
is a folyshe phisition, that cannot cure his 
patientes disease, onles he caste him in an 
other syckenes, so he that cannot amend the 
lives of his subjectes, but be taking from 
them the wealthe and commoditie of lyf e, he 
muste nedes graunte that, he knoweth not 
the feate how to governe men. But let him 
rather amende his owne lyfe, renounce un- 
honest pleasures, and forsake pride. For 
these be the ehiefe vices that cause hym to 
runne in the contempte or hatred of his 
people. Let him lyve of hys owne, hurtinge 
no man. Let him doe cost not above his 
power. Let him restreyne wyekednes. Let 
him prevente vices, and take awaye the oc- 
casions of offenses by well orderynge hys 
subjectes, and not by sufferynge wiekednes 
to increase afterward to be punyshed. Let 
hyTiL not be to hastie in callynge agayne 
lawes, whyche a custome hathe abrogated: 
specially suche as have bene longe forgotten, 
and never lacked nor neaded. And let hym 
never under the cloke and pretence of trans- 
gression take suche fynes and forfajrtes, as 
no Judge wyll suffre a piivate persone to 
take, as unjuste and ful of gile. Here if I 



76 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



should brynge forth before them the lawe 
of the Maeariens, whiche be not farre dis- 
taunt from Utopia: whose Kynge the daye 
of hys coronation is bounde by a solempne 
othe, that he shall never at anye time have 
in hys treasure above a thousande pounde of 
golde or sylver: They saye a verye good 
kynge, whiche toke more care for the wealthe 
and commoditye of his countrey, then for 
thenriehing of him self e, made this lawe to 
be a stop and barre to kinges from heaping 
and hording up so muche money as might 
impoveryshe their people. For* he forsawe 
that this som of treasure woulde suffice to 
supporte the kynge in battaile against his 
owne people, if they shoulde chaunce to 
rebell: and also to maintein his warres 
againste the invasions of his forreyn ene- 
mies, Againe he perceived the same stocke 
of money to be to title and unsufficient to 
encourage and enhable him wrongfuUye to 
take away other mens goodes : whyche was 
the chiefe cause whie the lawe was made. 
An other cause was this. He thought that 
by this provision his people shoulde not 
laeke money, wherewith to mayneteyne their 
dayly occupieng and chaffayre. And seynge 
the kynge could not chewse but laye out and 
bestowe al that came in above the prescript 
some of his stocke, he thought he woulde 
seke no occasions to doe his subjeetes in- 
juria. Suche a kynge shal be feared of evel 
men, and loved of good men. These, and 
suche other informations, yf I shoulde use 
among men wholye inclined and geven to 
the contrarye part, how deaffe hearers thinke 
you shoulde I have 1 Deaffe hearers douteles 
(quod I). And in good faith no marveyle. 
And to be iilaine with you, truelye I can not 
allowe that suche communication shalbe used, 
or suche counsell geven, as you be suere 
shall never be regarded nor reeeaved. For 
how can so straunge informations be profit- 
able, or how can they be beaten into their 
headdes, whose myndes be allredye pre- 
vented : with cleane contrarye persuasions ? 
This schole philosophie is not unpleasaunte 
amonge frendes in f amiliare communication, 
but in the eounselles of kinges, where greate 
matters be debated and reasoned with glycate 
authoritye, these thinges have no place. That 
is it whiche I mente (quod he) when I sayde 
philosophye hadde no place amonge kinges. 
In dede (quod I) this schole philosophie 
hath not: whiche thinketh all thinges mete 
for every place. But there is an other phil- 
osophye more civile, whyche knoweth, as ye 



wolde say, her owne stage, and thereafter 
orderynge and behavinge hereselfe in the 
playe that she hathe in hande, playethe her 
parte aceordingelye with eomlyenes, utter- 
inge nothinge oute of dewe ordre and 
fassyon. And this is the philosophye that 
you muste use. Or els whyles a commodye 
of Plautus is playinge, and the vyle bonde- 
men skoffynge and trytfelinge amonge them 
selfes, yf you shoulde sodenlye come upon 
the stage in a Philosophers apparrell, and 
reherse oute of Octavia the place wherein 
Seneca disputeth with Nero : had it not bene 
better for you to have played the domme 
persone, then by rehersynge that, whycli 
served neither for the tyme nor place, to 
have made suche a tragycall comedye or 
gallymalf reye 1 For by bryngynge in other 
stuffe that nothinge ajoperteynethe to the 
presente matter, you muste nedes marre and 
pervert the play that is in hand, thoughe the 
stuffe that you bringe be muche better. What 
part soever you have taken upon you, playe 
that aswel as you can and make the best of 
it: And doe not therefore disturbe and 
brynge oute of ordre the whole matter, 
bycause that an other, whyche is meryer and 
better cummethe to your remembraunce. So 
the case standeth in a common wealthe, and 
so it is in the consultations of Kynges and 
prynces. Yf evel opinions and noughty per- 
suasions can not be utterly and quyte 
plucked out of their hartes, if you can not 
even as you wolde remedy vices, which use 
and eustome hath confirmed: yet for this 
cause you must not leave and forsake the 
common wealthe : you muste not forsake the 
shippe in a tempeste, because you can not 
rule and kepe downe the wyndes. No nor 
you muste not laboure to dryve into their 
heades newe and straunge informations, 
whyche you knowe wel shalbe nothinge re- 
garded wyth them that be of cleane contrary 
mindes. But you must with a crafty wile 
and a subtell trayne studye and endev.oure 
youre selfe, asmuehe as in you lyethe, to 
handle the matter wyttelye and handesome- 
lye for the purpose, and that whyche you 
can not turne to good, so to order it that it 
be not verye badde. For it is not possible 
for al thinges to be well, onles all men were 
good, Whych I thinke wil not be yet thies 
good many yeares. 

4. Labor in Utopia 

Husbandrie is a Science common to them 
all in generall, bothe men and women, where- 



THE KENAISSANCE 



77 



in they be all experte and cunning. In this 
they be all instructed even from their youth : 
partelie in their scholes with traditions and 
preceptes, and partlie in the countrey nighe 
the citie, brought up as it were in j^layinge, 
not onely beholding the use of it, but by 
occasion of exercising their bodies practis- 
ing it also. Besides husbandrie, Avhiche (as 
I saide) is common to them all, everye one 
of them learneth one or other several and 
particular science, as his owne proper erafte. 
That is most commonly either clothworking 
in wol or flaxe, or masonrie, or the smithes 
craft, or the carpenters, science. For there 
is none other occupation that any number 
to speake of doth use there. For their gar- 
mentes, which throughoute all the Ilande be 
of one fashion (savynge that there is a dif- 
ference betwene the mans garmente and the 
womans, betwene the maried and the un- 
maried) and this one continueth for ever- 
more unehaunged, semely and comelie to the 
eye, no lette to the movynge and weldynge 
of the bodye, also fytte both for wynter and 
summer: as for these garmentes (I saye) 
every familie maketh their owne. But of 
the other f oresaide eraf tes everye man learn- 
eth one. And not onely the men, but also 
the women. But the women, as the weaker 
sort, be put to the easier craftes: as to 
worke woUe and flaxe. The more laborsome 
sciences be committed to the men. For the 
mooste part every man is broughte up in his 
fathers erafte. For moste commonlye they 
be naturallie therto bente and inclined. But 
yf a mans minde stande to anye other, he 
is by adoption put into a familye of that 
occupation, which he doth most fantasy. 
Whome not onely his father, but also the 
magistrates do diligently loke to, that he be 
put to a discrete and an honest householder. 
Yea, and if anye person, when he hath 
learned one erafte, be desierous to learne 
also another, he is likewyse suffred and per- 
mitted. 

When he hathe learned bothe, he occupieth 
whether he wyll: onelesse the eitie have 
more neade of the one then of the other. 
The chiefe and almooste the onelye offyce 
of the Syphograuntes is, to see and take 
hede, that no manne sit idle : but that everye 
one applye hys owne craft with earnest 
diligence. And yet for all that, not to be 
wearied from earlie in the morninge, to late 
in the evenninge, with eontinuall worke, like 
labouringe and toylinge beastes. For this 
is worse then the miserable and wretched 



condition of bondemen. Whiche nevertheles 
is almooste everye where the lyfe of worke- 
men and artificers, saving in Utopia. For 
they dividynge the daye and the nyghte into 
xxiiii. juste houres, appointe and assigne 
onelye sixe of those houres to woorke; iii 
before noone, upon the whiche they go 
streighte to diner: and after diner, when 
they have rested two houres, then they 
worke iii. houres and upon that they go to 
supper. Aboute eyghte of the cloke in the 
eveninge (countinge one of the elocke at 
the firste houre after noone) they go to 
bedde : eyght houres they geve to slepe. All 
the voide time, that is betwene the houres 
of worke, slepe, and meate, that they be 
suffered to bestowe, every man as he liketh 
best him selfe. Not to thintent that they 
shold mispend this time in riote or slouth- 
f uln6s : but beynge then licensed from the 
laboure of their owne occupations, to bestow 
the time well and thriftelye upon some other 
science, as shall please them. For it is a 
solempne custome there, to have lectures 
daylye early in the morning, where to be 
presente they onely be constrained that be 
namelye chosen and appoynted to learninge. 
Howbeit a greate multitude of every sort 
of people, both men and women go to heare 
lectures, some one and some an other, as 
everye mans nature is inclined. Yet, this 
notwithstanding, if any man had rather 
bestowe this time upon his owne occupation, 
(as it ehauneeth in manye, whose mindes 
rise not in the contemplation of any science 
liberall) he is not letted, nor prohibited, but 
is also ijraysed and commended, as profitable 
to the common wealthe. After supper they 
bestow one houre in playe: in summer in 
their gardens : in winter in their eommen 
halles: where they dine and suppe. There 
they exercise themselves in musike, or els in 
honest- and wholsome communication. Dice- 
playe, and suehe other f olishe and pernicious 
games they know not. But they use ij. 
games not much unlike the chesse. The one 
is the battell of numbers, wherein one num- 
bre stealethe awaye another. The other is 
wherin vices fyghte with vertues, as it were 
in battel array, or a set fyld. In the which 
game is verye properlye shewed, bothe the 
striffe and discorde that vices have amonge 
themselfes, and agayne theire unitye and 
Concorde againste vertues : And also what 
vices be repugnaunt to what vertues : with 
what powre and strength they assaile them 
openlye : by what wieles and subtelty they 



78 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



assaulte them seeretelye: with what helpe 
and aide the vertues resists, and overcome 
the puissaunee of the vices: by what craft 
they frustrate their purposes : and finally 
by what sleight or meanes the one get- 
teth the victory. But here least you be 
deceaved, one tliinge you muste looke more 
narrowly upon. For seinge they bestowe 
but vi. houres in woorke, perchaunee you 
maye thinke that the laeke of some neces- 
sarye thinges hereof maye ensewe. But 
this is nothinge so. For that smal time is 
not only enough but also to muche for the 
stoore and abundance of all thinges, that 
be requisite, either for the necessitie, or 
commoditie of life. The which thinge you 
also shall perceave, if you weye and con- 
sider with your selfes how great a parte 
of the people in other contreis lyveth ydle. 
First almost all women, whyche be the 
half e of the whole numbre : or els if the 
women be somewhere occupied, there most 
eommonlye in their steade the men be ydle. 
Besydes this how greate, and howe ydle 
a companye is there of preystes, and re- 
lygious men, as they cal them? put thereto 
al ryche men, siDeeiallye all landed men, 
which comonlye be called gentilmen, and 
noble men. Take into this numbre also 
theire servauntes : I meane all that flocke 
of stoute bragging russhe bucklers. Joyne 
to them also sturdy and valiaunte beggers, 
elokinge their idle lyfe under the eoloure of 
some disease or sickenes. And trulye you 
shal find them much fewer then you thought, 
by whose labour all these thinges are 
wrought, that in mens affaires are now 
daylye used and frequented. Nowe con- 
syder with youre selfe, of these fewe that 
doe woorke, how fewe be occupied in neees- 
sarye woorkes. For where money beareth 
all the swinge, there many vaayne and su- 
perfluous occupations must nedes be used, 
to serve only for ryotous superfluite, and 
unhonest pleasure. For the same multitude 
that now is occupied in woork, if they were 
devided into so fewe occupations as the 
necessarye use of nature requyreth; in so 
greate plentye of thinges as then of neces- 
sity woulde ensue, doubtles the prices 
wolde be to lytle for the artifycers to mayn- 
teyne theire livinges. But yf all these, that 
be nowe busied about unprofitable occu- 
pations, with all the whole flocke of them 
that lyve ydellye and slouthfullye, whyche 
consume and waste everye one of them 
more of these thinges that come by other 



mens laboure, then ij. of the workemen 
themselfes doo: yf all these (I saye) were 
sette to profytable occupatyons, you ease- 
lye perceave howe lytle tyme would be 
enoughe, yea and to muche to stoore us with 
all thinges that maye be requisite either for 
necessitie, or for commoditye, yea or for 
pleasure, so that the same pleasure be trewe 
and natural. And this in Utopia the thinge 
it selfe makethe manif este and playne. For 
there in all the citye, with the whole eon- 
treye, or sliiere adjoyning to it searselye 
500. persons of al the whole numbre of men 
and women, that be neither to olde, nor to 
weake to worke, be licensed and distcharged 
from laboure. Amonge them be the Sipho- 
grauntes (Avhoe thoughe they be by the 
lawes exempte and privileged from labour) 
yet they exempte not themselfes : to the 
intent that they may the rather by their 
example provoke other to worke. The same 
vacation from labour do they also enjoye, 
to whome the people persuaded by the 
commendation of the priestes, and secrete 
election of the Siphograuntes, have geven a 
perpetual licence from laboure to learninge. 
But if any one of them prove not aecord- 
inge to the expectation and hoope of him 
eonceaved, he is forthwith plucked backe 
to the company of artificers. And eon- 
trarye wise, often it ehaunceth that a handi- 
eraftes man doth so earnestly bestowe his 
vaeaunte and spare houres in learninge, and 
throughe diligence so profyteth therin, that 
he is taken from his handy occupation, and 
promoted to the company of the learned. 
Oute of this ordre of the learned be chosen 
ambassadours, priestes, Tranibores, and 
finallye the prince him selfe. Whome they 
in theire olde tonge cal Barzanes, and by 
a newer name, Adamus. The residewe of 
the people being neither ydle, nor yet oc- 
cupied about unprofitable exercises, it may 
be easely judged in how fewe houres how 
muche good woorke by them may be doone 
and dispatched, towardes those thinges that 
I have spoken of. This commodity they 
have also above other, that in the most 
part of necessarye occupations they neade 
not so much work, as other nations doe. 
For first of all the buildinge or repayringe 
of houses asketh everye where so manye 
mens continual labour, bicause that the un- 
thrifty heire suffereth the houses that his 
father buylded in contyneuaunee of tyme 
to fall in decay. So that which he myghte 
have upholden wyth lytle eoste, hys sue- 



THE EENAISSANCE 



79 



cessoure is eonstreyned to buylde it agayne 
a newe, to his great charge. Yea manye 
tymes also the howse that stoode one man 
in muche moneye, another is of so nyee 
and soo delyeate a mynde, that he settethe 
nothinge by it. And it beynge neglected, 
and therefore shortelye fallynge into ruyne, 
he buyldethe uiDpe another in an other 
place with no lesse eoste and chardge. But 
amonge the Utopians, where all thinges be 
sett in a good ordre, and the common wealthe 
in a good staye, it very seldom chaunceth, 
that they cheuse a newe plotte to buyld an 
house upon. And they doo not only finde 
spedy and quicke remedies for present 
faiiltes: but also preyente them that be 
like to fall. And by this meanes their 
houses continewe and laste very longe with 
litle labour and smal reparations: in so 
much that this kind of woorkmen somtimes 
have almost nothinge to doo. But that they 
be commaunded to hewe timbre at home, 
and to square and trimme up stones, to the 
intente that if anye woorke ehaunce, it may 
the spedelier rise. Now, syr, in theire ap- 
parell, marke (I praye you) howe few 
woorkmen they neade. Fyrste of al, whyles 
they be at woorke, they be covered homely 
with leather or skinnes, that will last vii. 
yeares. When they go furthe abrode they 
caste upon them a eloke, whyeh hydeth the 
other homelye apparel. These clookes 
through out the whole Hand be all of one 
eoloure, and that is the natural colours of 
the wul. They therefore do not only spend 
much lesse wuUen clothe then is sjiente in 
other contreis, but also the same standeth 
them in muche lesse eoste. But lynen clothe 
is made with lesse laboure, and is therefore 
hadde more in use. But in lynen cloth onlye 
whytenesse, in wuUen only clenlynes is re- 
garded. As for the smalnesse or finenesse 
of the threde, that is no thinge passed for. 
And this is the cause wherfore in other 
places iiii. or v. clothe gownes of dyvers 
eoloures, and as manye silke cootes be not 
enoughe for one man. Yea and yf he be of 
the delicate and nyse sorte x. be to fewe : 
whereas there one garmente wyl serve a man 
mooste commenlye ij. yeares. For whie 
shoulde he desyre moo? Seinge yf he had 
them, he should not be the better hapte or 
covered from colde, neither in his apparel 
anye whitte the comlyer. Wherefore, seinge 
they be all exercysed in profitable occupa- 
tions, and that fewe artificers in the same 
craftes be sufficiente, this is the cause that 



plentye of all thinges beinge among them, 
they doo sometymes bringe forthe an in- 
numerable companye of people to amend the 
hyghe wayes, yf anye be broken. Many 
times also, when they have no suche woorke 
to be occupied aboute, an open proclamation 
is made, that they shall bestowe fewer houres 
in worke. For the magistrates doe not exer- 
cise theire citizens againste theire willes in. 
unneadefuU laboures. For whie in the in- 
stitution of that weale publique, this ende is 
onelye and chiefely pretended and mynded, 
that what time maye possibly be spared 
from the necessarye occupaeions and affayres 
of the commen wealth, all that the citizeins 
shoulde withdrawe from the bodely service 
to the free libertye of the minde, and gar- 
nisshinge of the same. For herein they sup- 
pose the felieitye of this liffe to consiste. 

5. '^And the Pursuit of Happiness" 
They dispute of the good qualityes of the 
sowle, of the body, and of fortune. And 
whether the name of goodnes maye be ap- 
plied to all these, or onlye to the endowe- 
mentes and giftes of the soule. They reason 
of vertue and pleasure. But the chiefe and 
principall question is in what thinge, be it 
one or moe, the felieitye of man consistethe. 
But in this poynte they seme almooste to 
muche geven and enclyned to the opinion of 
them, which def ende pleasure, wherein they 
determine either all or the ehiefyste parte 
of mans felieitye to reste. And (whyche is 
more to bee marveled at) the defense of this 
soo deyntye and delicate an opinion, they 
f etche even from their grave, sharpe, bytter, 
and rygorous religion. For they never dis- 
pute of felicity or blessednes, but they joins 
unto the reasons of Philosophye eerteyne 
principles taken oute of religion : wythoute 
the whyche to the investigation of trewe 
felieitye they thynke reason of it self e weake 
and unperfecte. Those principles be these 
and such lyke. That the soule is immortal, 
and by the bountiful goodnes of God 
ordeined to felicitie. That to our vertues 
and good deades rewardes be appointed after 
this life, and to our evel deades punish- 
mentes. Though these be perteyning to re- 
ligion, yet they thincke it mete that they 
shoulde be beleved and graunted by profes 
of reason. But yf these principles were con- 
dempned and dysanulled, then without anye 
delaye they pronounce no man to be so 
folish, whiche woulde not do all his diligence 
and endevoure to obteyne pleasure be ryght 



80 



THE GKEAT TEADITION 



or wronge, onlye avoydynge this incon- 
venience, that the lesse pleasure should not 
be a let or hinderaunce to the bigger : or 
that he laboured not for that pleasure, 
whiche would bringe after it displeasure, 
greefe, and sorrow. For they judge it ex- 
treame madnes to folowe sharpe and pein- 
ful vertue, and not only to bannislie the 
pleasure of life, but also willingly to suffer 
griefe, without anye hope of profifit thereof 
ensuinge. For what proffit can there be, if 
a man, when he hath passed over all his 
[yf e unpleasauntly, that is to say, miserablye, 
shall have no rewarde after his death ? But 
nowe, syr, they thinke not felicitie to reste 
in all pleasure, but only in that pleasure 
that is good and houeste, and that hereto as 
to perfet blessednes our nature is allured 
and drawen even of vertue, whereto onlye 
they that be of the contrary opinion do at- 
tribute felicitie. For they define vertue to 
be life ordered according to nature, and that 
we be hereunto ordeined of god. And that 
he dothe f ollowe the course of nature, which 
in desiering and refusinge thinges is ruled 
by reason. Furthermore that reason doth 
chiefely and principallye kendle in men the 
love and veneration of the devine majestie. 
Of whose goodnes it is that we be, and that 
we be in possibilitie to attayne felicite. And 
that secondarely it bothe stirrethe and pro- 
voketh us to leade our lyfe oute of care in 
joy and mirth, and also moveth us to helpe 
and further all other in respecte of the 
societe of nature to obteine and enjoye the 
same. For there was never man so earnest 
and paineful a folloAver of vertue and hater 
of pleasure, that wold so injoyne you 
laboures, watchinges, and fastinges, but he 
would also exhort you to ease, lighten, and 
relieve, to your powre, the lack and misery 
of others, praysing the same as a dede of ■ 
humanitie and pitie. Then if it be a poynte 
of humanitie for man to bring health and 
comforte to man, and speeiallye (which is 
a vertue' moste peculiarlye belonging to 
man) to mitigate and assuage the greife of 
others, and by takyng from them the sor- 
owe and hevynes of lyfe, to restore them to 
joye, that is to saye, to pleasure : whie maye 
it not then be sayd, that nature doth pro- 
voke everye man to doo the same to him- 
self e? For a joyfull lyfe, that is to say, a 
pleasaunt lyfe is either evel : and if it be 
so, then thou shouldest not onlye helpe no 
man therto, but rather, as much as in the 
lieth, withdrawe all men frome it, as noysome 



and hurtef ul, or else if thou not only mayste, 
but also of dewty art bound to procure it to 
others, why not chiefely to the selfe? To 
whome thou art bound to shew as much 
favoure and gentelnes as to other. For 
when nature biddeth the to be good and 
gentle to other she commaundeth the not to 
be cruell and ungentle to the selfe. There- 
fore even very nature (saye they) pre- 
scribeth to us a joyful lyfe, that is to say, 
pleasure as the ende of all oure operations. 
And they define vertue to be lyfe ordered 
accordynge to the prescripte of nature. But 
in that that nature dothe allure and provoke 
men one to healpe another to lyve merily 
(which suerly she doth not without a good 
cause : for no man is so f arre above the 
lotte of mans state or condicion, that nature 
dothe carke and care for hym onlye, whiche 
equallye favourethe all, that be compre- 
hended under the communion of one shape 
forme and fassion) verely she commaundeth 
the to use diligent circumspection, that thou 
do not so seke for thine owne commodities, 
that thou procure others incommodities. 
Wherefore theire opinion is, that not only 
covenauntes and bargaynes made amonge 
private men ought to be well and faythe- 
fullye fulfilled, observed, and kepte, but 
also commen lawes, whiche either a good 
prince hath justly publyshed, or els the 
people neither oppressed with tyrannye, 
neither deceaved by fraude and gyell, hath 
by theire common consent constituted and 
ratifyed, coneerninge the partieion of the 
commodities of lyfe, that is to say, the 
matter of pleasure. These lawes not offended, 
it is wysdome that thou looke to thine own 
wealthe. And to doe the same for the com- 
mon wealth is no lesse then thy duetie, if 
thou bearest any reverent love, or anynaturall 
zeale and affection to thy native countreye. 
But to go about to let an other man of his 
pleasure, whiles thou proeurest thine owne, 
that is open wrong. Contrary wyse to 
withdfawe somethinge from the selfe to geve 
to other, that is a pointe of humanitie and 
gentilnes : whiche never taketh awaye so 
muche commoditie, "as it bringethe agayne. 
For it is recompensed with the retourne of 
benefytes, and the conscience of the good 
dede with the remembraunce of the thanke- 
full love and benevolence of them to whom 
thou hast done it, doth bringe more pleasure 
to thy mynde, then that whiche thou hast 
withholden from thy selfe could have brought 
to thy bodye. Finallye (which to a godly 



THE EENAISSANCE 



81 



disposed and a religious mind is easy to be 
persuaded) God reeompenseth the gifte of a 
short and smal pleasure with great and ever- 
lastinge joye. Therfore-the matter diligently 
weyede and considered, thus they thinke, 
that all our actions, and in them the vertues 
themselfes be referred at the last to pleas- 
ure, as their ende and felicitie. Pleasure 
tliey call every motion and state of the bodie 
or mynde wherin man hath naturally delec- 
tation. Appetite they joyne to nature, and 
that not without a good cause. For like as 
not only the senses, but also right reason 
coveteth whatsoever is naturally pleasaunt, 
so that it may be gotten without wrong or 
injurie, not letting or debarring a greater 
pleasure, nor causing painful labour, even 
so those thinges that men by vaine ymagina- 
tion do f ayne against nature to be pleasaunt 
(as though it laye in their power to ehaunge 
the thinges, as they do the names of thinges) 
al suehe pleasures they beleve to be of so 
small helpe and furtheraunce to felicitie, 
that they counte them a great let and hinder- 
aunce. Because that in whom they have 
ones taken place, all his mynde they pos- 
sesse Avith a false opinion of pleasure. So 
that there is no place left for true and nat- 
urall delectations. For there be many 
thinges, which of their owne nature conteyne 
no pleasauntnes : yea the moste parte of 
them muche griefe and sorrowe. And yet 
throughe the perverse and milicyous flicker- 
inge inticementes of lewde and unhoneste 
desyres, be taken not only for speeiall and 
sovereigne pleasures, but also be counted 
amonge the chiefe causes of life. In this 
counterfeat kinde of pleasure they put them 
that I spake of before. Whiche the better 
gownes they have on, the better men they 
thinke them selfes. In the which thing they 
doo twyse erre. For they be no lesse de- 
ceaved in that they thinke theire gowne the 
better, than they be, in that they thinke 
themselfes the better. For if you consider 
the profitable use of the garmente, whye 
should wulle of a fyner sponne threde, be 
thougi better, than the wul of a course 
sponne threde f Yet they, as though the one 
did passe the other by nature, and not by 
their mistakyng, avaunee themselfes, and 
thinke the price of their owne persones there- 
by greatly enereased. And therefore the 
honour, which in a course gowne they durste 
not have loked for, they require, as it were 
of dewtie, for theyr fyner gownes sake. And 
if thev be passed by without reverence, they 



take it displeasauntly and disdainfullye. 
And agayne is it not lyke madnes to take a 
23ryde in vayne and unprofitable honours'? 
For what naturall or trewe pleasure doest 
thou take of an other mans bare hede, or 
bowed knees'? Will this ease the paine of 
thy knees, or remedie the phrensie of thy 
hede'? In this ymage of counterfeite pleas- 
ure, they be of a marvelous madnesse, whiche 
for the opinion of nobilitie, rejoyse muche in 
their owne eonceyte. Because it was their 
fortune to come of suche auncetoures, whose 
stocke of longe tyme hathe bene counted 
ryche (for nowe nobilitie is nothing ellcs) 
speciallye riche in landes. And though their 
auneetours left them not one foote of lande, 
yet they thinke themselves not the lesse 
noble therfore of one heare. In this 
number also they counte them that take 
pleasure and delite (as I said) in gemmes 
and precious stones, and thynke them- 
selves almoste goddes, if they chaunce to 
gette an excellente one, speciallye of that 
kynde, whiche in that tyme of their own 
eountre men is had in hyghest estimation. 
For one kynde of stone kepeth not his pryce 
styll in all countreis and at all times. Nor 
they bye them not, but taken out of the 
golde and bare : no nor so neither, untyll 
they have made the seller to sweare, that he 
will warraunte and assure it to be a true 
stone, and no counterfeit gemme. Suche 
care they take lest a counterfeite stone 
should deeeave their eyes in steade of a 
ryghte stone. But why shouldest thou not 
take even as muche pleasure in beholdynge 
a counterfeite stone, whiche thine eye cannot 
discerne from a righte stone ? They shoulde 
bothe be of lyke value to thee, even as to 
the blynde man. What shall I saye of them, 
that ke23e su23erfluous riches, to take delec- 
tation only in the beholdinge, and not in the 
use or occupiynge thereof? Do they take 
trew pleasure, or elles be thei deceaved with 
false pleasure"? Or of them that be in a 
contrarie vice, hidinge the gold whiche they 
shall never occupye, nor peradventure never 
se more? And whiles they take care leaste 
they shall leesQ it, do leese it in dede. For 
what is it elles, when they hyde it in the 
ground, takyng it bothe froirie their owne 
use, and perchaunee frome all other mennes 
also ? And yet thou, when thou haste hydde 
thy treasure, as one out of all care, hoppest 
for joye. The whiche treasure, yf it shoulde 
chaunce to bee stolen, and thou ignoraunt of 
the thefte shouldest dye tenne years after: 



82 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



all that tenne yeares space that thou lyvedest 
after thy money was stoolen, what matter 
was it to thee, whether it hadde bene taken 
awaye or elles safe as thou lef teste it? 
Trewlye both wayes like profytte came to 
thee. 

6. The Welfare of All the People 
Nowe I have declared and described unto 
you, as truelye as I coulde the fourme and 
ordre of that commen wealth, which verely 
in my judgment is not only the beste, but 
also that which alone of good right maye 
claime and take upon it the name of a com- 
men wealth or publique weale. For in other 
places they speake stil of the commen 
wealth. But every man procureth his owne 
private gaine. Here where nothinge is pri- 
vate, the commen affaires bee earnestlye 
loked upon. And truely on both partes they 
have good cause so to do as they do. For in 
other eountreys who knoweth not that he 
shall sterve for honger, onles he make some 
severall provision for himselfe, though the 
commen wealthe floryshe never so muche in 
ryches ? And therefore he is compelled even 
of verye neeessitie to have regarde to him 
selfe, rather then to the people, that is to 
saye, to other. Contrarywyse there where 
all thinges be commen to every man, it is not 
to be doubted that any man shal lacke anye 
thinge necessary for his private uses : so 
that the commen store houses and bernes be 
suf&cientlye stored. For there nothinge is 
distributed after a nyggyshe sorte, neither 
there is anye poore man or begger. And 
thoughe no man have anye thinge, yet everye 
man is ryehe. For what can be more riche, 
then to lyve joyfully and merely, without al 
griefe and pensif enes : not caring for his 
owne lyving, nor vexed or troubled with 
his wifes importunate complayntes, nor 
dreadynge povertie to his sonne, nor sor- 
rowyng for his doughters dowrey *? Yea they 
take no care at all for the lyvyng and 
wealthe of themselfes and al theirs, of theire 
wyfes, theire chyldren, theire nephewes, 
theire childrens chyldren, and all the suc- 
cession that ever shall followe in theire 
posteritie. And yet besydes this there is no 
lesse provision for them that were ones 
labourers, and be nowe weake and impotent, 
then for them that do nowe laboure and take 
payne. Here nowe woulde I see, yf anye 
man dare bee so bolde as to compare with 
this equytie, the justice of other nations. 
Among whom, I forsake God, if I can fynde 



any signe or token of equitie and justice. 
For what justice is this, that a ryche golde- 
smythe, or an usurer, or to bee shorte anye 
of them, which either doo nothing at all, or 
els that whyche they doo is such, that it is 
not very necessary to the common wealth, 
should have a pleasaunte and a welthie 
lyvinge, either by Idlenes, or by unneees- 
sarye busines: when in the meane tyme 
poore labourers, carters, yronsmythes, car- 
penters, and plowmen, by so greate and con- 
tinual toyle, as drawing and bearinge 
beastes be skant liable to susteine, and againe 
so necessary toyle, that without it no com- 
mon wealth were liable to eontinewe and en- 
dure one yere, should yet get so liarde and 
poore a lyving, and lyve so wretched and 
miserable a lyfe, that the state and condi- 
tion of the labouringe beastes maye seme 
muche better and welthier? For they be 
not put to soo eontinuall laboure, nor theire 
lyvinge is not muche worse, yea to them 
muche pleasaunter, takynge no thoughte in 
the meane season for the tyme to come. 
But these seilye poore wretches be presently 
tormented with barreyne and unfrutefuU 
labour. And the remembraunee of theire 
poore indigent and beggerlye olde age 
kylleth them up. For theire dayly wages is 
so lytle, that it will not suffice for the same 
daye, muche lesse it yeldeth any overplus, 
that may daylye be layde up for the relyefe 
of olde age. Is not this an unjust and an 
unkynde publyque weale, whyche gyveth 
great fees and rewardes to gentlemen, as 
they call them, and to goldsmythes, and to 
suche other, whiche be either ydle persones, 
or els onlye flatterers, and devysers of vayne 
pleasures: And of the contrary parte 
maketh no gentle provision for poore plow- 
men, coliars, laborers, carters, yronsmythes, 
and carpenters : without whome no commen 
wealthe can eontinewe? But after it hath 
abused the labours of theire lusty and 
flowring age, at the laste when they be op- 
pressed with olde age and syckenes, being 
nedye, poore, and indigent of all thinges, 
then forgettyng their so manye paynefull 
watchings, not remembring their so manye 
and so greate benefltes, recompenseth and 
acquyteth them moste unkyndly with mysera- 
ble death. And yet besides this the riche 
men not only by private fraud but also by 
commen lawes do every day pluck and 
snatche awaye from the poore some parte of 
their daily living. So whereas it semed 
before unjuste to recompense with un- 



THE EENAISSANCE 



83 



kindnes their paynes that have bene bene- 
ficiall to the publique weale, nowe they have 
to this their wrong and un juste dealinge 
(which is yet a muche worse pointe) geven 
the name of justice, yea and that by force 
of a lawe. Therfore when I consider and 
way in my mind all these commen wealthes, 
which now a dayes any where do flourish, 
so god helpe me, I can jDerceave nothing but 
a certein conspiracy of riche men procur- 
inge theire owne commodities under the 
name and title of the commen wealth. They 
invent and devise all meanes and eraftes, 
first how to kepe safely, without feare of 
lesing, that they have unjustly gathered 
together, and next how to hire and abuse 
the worke and laboure of the poore for as 
litle money as may be. These devises, when 
the riche men have decreed to be kept and 
observed under coloure of the comminaltie, 
that is to saye, also of the pore j^eople, then 
they be made lawes. But these most wicked 
and vicious men, when they have by their 
unsatiable covetousnes deA'ided among them 
selves al those thinges, whiehe woulde have 
sufficed all men, yet how farre be they from 
the welth and felicitie of the Utopian com- 
men wealth? Out of the which, in that all 
the desire of money with the use thereof is 
utterly secluded and banished, howe greate 
a heape of cares is cut away ! How gi'eat 
an occasion of wickednes and mischiefe is 
plucked up by the rotes ! For who knoweth 
not, that fraud, theft, ravine, brauling, 
quarelling, brabling, striffe, chiding, conten- 
tion, murder, treason, poisoning, which by 
daily punishmentes are rather revenged then 
refrained, do dye when money dieth ? And 
also that feare, grief e, care, labour es and 
watehinges do perish even the very same 
moment that money perisheth ? Yea poverty 
it self e, which only semed to lacke money, if 
money were gone, it also would decrease and 
vanishe away. And that you may perceave 
this more plainly, consider with your self es 
some barein and unfruteful yeare, wherin 
manye thousandes of people have starved 
for honger : I dare be bolde to say, that in 
the end of that penury so much corne or 
grain might have bene found in the rich 
mens bernes, if they had bene searched, as 
being divided among them whome famine 
and pestilence then consumed, no man at al 
should have felt that plague and penuri. 
So easely might men gette their living, if 
that same worthye princesse lady money did 
not alone stop up the waye betwene us and 



our lyving, which a goddes name was very 
excellently devised and invented, that by her 
the way thereto should be opened. I am 
sewer the ryehe men perceave this, nor they 
be not ignoraunte how much better it were 
too lacke noo necessarye thing, then to 
abunde with overmuehe superfluite : to be 
ryd oute of innumerable cares and troubles, 
then to be besieged and encombred with 
great ryches. And I dowte not that either 
the respecte of every mans private com- 
moditie, or els the authority of oure savioure 
Christe (which for his great wisdom could 
not but know what were best, and for his 
inestimable goodnes could not but counsel to 
that which he knew to be best) wold have 
brought all the worlde longe agoo into the 
lawes of this weale publique, if it wer not 
that one only beast, the princesse and mother 
of all mischiefe. Pride, doth withstande and 
let it. She measurethe not wealth and pros- 
perity by her owne commodities, but by the 
miserie and incomodities of other, she would 
not by her good will be made a goddesse, yf 
there were no wretches left, over whom she 
might, like a seorneful ladie rule and 
triumph, over whose miseries her felicities 
mighte shyne, whose povertie she myghte 
vexe, tormente, and enerease by gorgiouslye 
settynge furthe her riehesse. Thys hell- 
hounde creapeth into mens hartes : and 
plucketh them backe from entering the right 
pathe of life, and is so depely roted in mens 
brestes, that she can not be plucked out. 
This fourme and fashion of a weale pub- 
lique, which I would gladly wish unto al 
nations, I am glad yet that it hath ehaunced 
to the Utopians, which have folowed those 
institutions of life, whereby they have laid 
such foundations of their common wealth, 
as shal continew and last not only wealthely, 
but also, as far as mans wit may judge and 
conjecture, shall endure for ever. For, 
seyng the chiefe causes of ambition and 
sedition, with other vices be plucked up by 
the rootes, and abandoned at home, there can 
be no jeopardie of domisticall dissention, 
whiehe alone hathe caste under foote and 
brought to noughte the well fortefied and 
stronglie defenced wealthe and riches of 
many cities. But forasmuch as perfect Con- 
corde remaineth, and wholsome lawes be 
executed at home, the envie of al forein 
princes be not hable to shake or move the 
empire, though they have many tymes long 
ago gone about to do it, beyng evermore 
driven backe. 



84 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



"One Sovereign Governor" 

sir thomas elyot 

[From The Boke of the Governour, 1534] 

That one soueraigne gouernour ought to he 
in a publike iveale. And what damage 
hath happened where a multitude hath had 
equal authorite without any soueraygne. 

Lyke as to a castell or f ortresse suffisethe 
one owner or souerayne, and where any mo 
be of like power and autboritie seldome 
Cometh the warke to perfection; or beinge 
all redy made, where the one diligently 
ouerseeth and the other neglecteth, in that 
contention all is subuerted and commeth to 
ruyne. In semblable wyse dothe a publike 
weale that hath mo chiefe gouernours than 
one. Example we may take of the grekes, 
amonge whom in diners cities weare diners 
fourmes of publyke weales gouerned by 
multitudes : wherin one was most tolerable 
where the gouernance and rule was alway 
permitted to them whiche excelled in vertue, 
and was in the greke tonge called Aristo-. 
cratia, in latin Optimorum Potentia, in 
engiisshe the rule of men of beste disposi- 
tion, which the Thebanes of longe tyme 
obserued. 

An other publique weale was amonge the 
Atheniensis, where equalitie was of astate 
amonge the peo^Dle, and only by theyr hoUe 
consent theyr citie and dominions were 
gouerned : whiche moughte well be called a 
monstre with many heedes : nor neuer it was 
certeyne nor stable : and often tymes they 
banyssed or 'slewe the beste citezins, whiche 
by their vertue and wisedome had moste 
profited to the publike weale. This maner 
of gouernaunce was called in greke Demo- 
cratia, in latin Popularis potentia, in 
engiisshe the rule of the comminaltie. Of 
these two gouernances none of them may be 
sufficient. For in the fyrste, whiche con- 
sisteth of good men, vertue is nat so con- 
stant in a multitude, but that some, beinge 
ones in authoritie, be incensed with glorie: 
some with ambition : other with coueitise and 
desire of treasure or possessions : wherby 
they falle iji to contention: and finallye, 
where any achiuethe the superioritie, the 
hoUe gouernance is reduced unto a fewe in 
nombre, whiche fearinge the multitude and 
their mutabilitie, to the intent to kepe them 
in drede to rebelle, ruleth by terrour and 
crueltie, thinking therby to kepe them selfe 
in suertie: nat withstanding, rancour 



coarcted and longe detained in a narowe 
roume, at the last brasteth out with intollera- 
ble violence, and bryngeth al to confusion. 
For the power that is practized to the Lurte 
of many can nat continue. The populare 
astate, if it any thing do varie from equalitie 
of substance or estimation, or that the multi- 
tude of people haue oner moche liberte, of 
necessite one of these inconueniences muste 
happen : either tiranny, where he that is to 
moche in fauour wolde be elevate and suffre 
none equalite, orels in to the rage of a ecm- 
munaltie, whiche of all rules is moste to be 
feared. For lyke as the communes, if they 
fele some seueritie, they do humbly serue 
and obaye, so where they imbracinge a 
licence refuse to be brydled, they flynge and 
plunge: and if they ones throws downe 
thejrr gouernour, they ordre euery thynge 
without iustice, only with vengeance and 
crueltie : and with incomparable difficultie 
and unneth by any wysedome be pacified and 
brought agayne in to ordre. Wherfore un- 
doubtedly the best and most sure gouer- 
naunce is by one kynge or prince, whiche 
ruleth onely for the weale of his people to 
hym subiecte: and that maner of gouer- 
naunce is beste approued, and hath longest 
continued, and is moste auncient. For who 
can denie but that all thynge in heuen and 
erthe is gouerned by one god, by one per- 
petuall ordre, by one prouidence? One 
Sonne ruleth ouer the day, and one Moone 
ouer the nyghte; and to descende downe to 
the erthe, in a litell beest, whiche of all other 
is moste to be maruayled at, I meane the 
Bee, is lefte to man by nature, as it semeth, 
a perpetuall figure of a iuste gouernaunce or 
rule : who hath amonge them one principall 
Bee for theyr gouernour, who excelleth all 
other in greatnes, yet hath he no prieke or 
stinge, but in hym is more knowlege than in 
the residue. For if the day f olowyng shall be 
fayre and drye, and that the bees may issue 
out of theyr stalles without peryll of rayne 
or vehement wynde, in the mornyng erely he 
calleth them, makyng a noyse as it were the 
sowne of a home or a trumpet; and with 
that all the residue prepare them to labour, 
and fleeth abrode, gatheryng nothing but 
that shall be swete and profitable, all though 
they sitte often tymes on herbes and other 
thinges that be venomous and stynkinge. 

The capitayne hym selfe laboureth nat 
for his sustinanee, but all the other for hym ; 
he onely seeth that if any drane or other 
unprofitable bee entreth in to the hyue, and 



THE EENAISSANCE 



85 



consumethe the hony, gathered by other, that 
he be immediately expelled from that com- 
pany. And when there is an other nombre 
of bees encreased, they semblably haue also 
a capitayne, whiehe be nat suffered to con- 
tinue with the other. Wherfore this newe 
company gathered in to a swarme, hauyng 
their capitayne among them, and enuiron- 
ynge hym to perserue lijrm from harme, they 
issue forthe sekyng a newe habitation, 
whiehe they fynde in some tree, exeej^t with 
some pleasant noyse they be alured and con- 
uayed unto an other hyue. 1 suppose who 
seriously beholdeth this example, and hath 
any commendable witte, shall therof gather 
moche matter to the fourmynge of a publike 
weale. 

The Garden of the Commonwealth 
sir thomas eltot 

[From The Boke of the Governour, 1534] 

For who commendeth those gardiners that 
wyll put all their diligence in trymmyng or 
kepynge delicately one knotte or bedde of 
herbes, suffryng all the remenaunt of their 
gardeyne to be subuerted with a great nom- 
bre of molles,^ and do attende at no tyme 
for the takynge and destroyinge of them, 
until the herbis, wherin they haue employed 
all their labours, be also tourned uppe and 
perisshed, and the moUes increased in so in- 
finite nombres that no industry or labour 
may suffice to consume them, whereby the 
labour is frustrate and all the gardeine made 
unprofitable and also unpleasaunt? In this 
similitude to the gardeyne may be resembled 
the publike weale, to the gardiners the 
gouernours and counsailours, to the knottes 
or beddes sondrye degrees of personages, to 
the molles vices and sondry enormities. 
Wherfore the consultation is but of a small 
effecte wherin the uniuersall astate of the 
publike weale do nat oecupie the more parte 
of the tyme, and in that generaltie euery 
particuler astate be nat diligently ordered. 
For as TuUi sayeth, they that consulte for 
parte of the people and neglecte the residue, 
they brynge in to the citie or countraye a 
thynge mooste perniciouse, that is to say, 
sedition and diseorde, whereof it hapnethe 
that some wyll seeme to fauoure the multi- 
tude, other be inclined to leene to the beste 
sorte, fewe do studie for all uniuersallye. 
Whiehe hath bene the cause that nat onely 
Athenes, (whiehe TuUi dothe name), but 

^ Moles. 



also the citie and empyre of Rome, with 
diners other cities and realmes, haue decayed 
and ben finally brought in extreme desola- 
tion. Also Plato, in his booke of fortytude, 
sayeth in the persone of Socrates, Whan so 
euer a man seketh a thinge for cause of an 
other thynge, the consultation aught to be 
alway of that thyng for whose cause the 
other thing is sought for, and nat of that 
which is sought for because of the other 
thynge. And surely wise men do consider 
that damage often tymes hapneth by abus- 
inge the due f ourme of consultation : men 
like euyll Phisitions sekynge for medicynes 
or they perfectly knowe the sicknesses ; and 
as euyll marchauntes do utter firste the 
wares and commodities of straungers, whiles 
straungers be robbynge of their owne cof ers. 

Therfore these thinges that I haue re- 
hersed concernyng consultation ought to be 
of all men in authoritie substancially pon- 
dered, and moost vigilauntly obserued, if 
they intende to be to their publike weale 
profitable, for the whiehe purpose onely they 
be called to be gouernours. And this con- 
clude I to write any more of consultation, 
whiehe is the last part of morall Sapience, 
and the begynnyng of sapience politike. 

Nowe all ye reders that desire to haue 
your children to be gouernours, or in any 
other authoritie in the publike Aveale of your 
eountrey, if ye bringe them up and instruete 
them in suche fourme as in this boke is de- 
clared, they shall than seme to all men 
worthye to be in authoritie, honour, and 
noblesse, and all that is under their gouer- 
naunce shall prosjjere and come to perfec- 
tion. And as a precious stone in a ryche 
ouche ^ they shall be beholden and wondred 
at, and after the dethe of their body their 
soules for their endeuour shall be ineorcpre- 
hensibly rewarded of the gyuer of wisedome, 
to whome onely be gyuen eternall glorie. 
Amen. 



Some Elizabethan Political Ideas in 
Shakespeare's Dramas 

1. Our Sea-Walled Garden 

[From Richard II, Act III, scene iv] 

Langley. The Duke of York's garden 

Enter the Queen and two Ladies 
Queen. What sport shall we devise here 
in this garden, 
To drive away the heavy thought of care ? 
1 Setting. 



86 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Lady. Madam, we'll play at bowls. 
Queen. 'Twill make me think the world is 
full of rubs, 
And that my fortune runs against the bias. 
Lady. Madam, we'll dance. 
Queen. My legs .can keep no measure in 
delight, 
When my poor heart no measure keeps in 

grief : 
Therefore, no dancing, girl; some other "^ 
sport. 
Lady. Madam, we'll tell tales. 
Queen. Of sorrow or of joy? 
Lady. Of either, madam. 

Queen. Of neither, girl : 
For if of joy, being altogether wanting, 
It doth remember me the more of sorrow ; 
Or if of grief, being altogether had. 
It adds more sorrow to my want of joy : 
For what I have I need not to repeat ; 
And what I want it boots not to conaplain. 
Lady. Madam, I'll sing. 
Queen. 'Tis well that thou hast cause ; 

But thou shouldst please me better, wouldst 
thou weep. 
Lady. I could weep, madam, would it 
do you good. 
. Queen. And I could sing, would weeping 

do me good, 
And never borrow any tear of thee. 

Enter a Gardener, and two Servants 
But stay, here come the gardeners : 
Let's step into the shadow of these trees. 
My wretchedness unto a row of pins. 
They'll talk of state; for every one doth so 
Against a change ; woe is forerun with woe. 
[Queen and Ladies retire 
Gard. Go, bind thou up yon dangling 
apricocks, 
Which, like unruly children, make their sire 
Stoop with oppression of their prodigal 

weight : 
Give some supportance to the bending twigs. 
Go thou, and like an executioner. 
Cut off the heads of too fast growing sprays. 
That look too lofty in our commonwealth : 
All must be even in our government. 
You thus employ'd, I will go root away 
The noisome weeds, which without profit suck 
The soil's fertility from wholesome flowers. 
Serv. Why should we in the compass of 
a pale 
Keep law and form and due proportion. 
Showing, as in a model, our firm estate. 
When our sea-walled garden, the whole land, 
Is full of weeds, her fairest flowers 
choked up, 



Her fruit-trees all unpruned, her hedges 

ruin'd, 
Her knots disorder'd, and her Avholesome 

herbs 
Swarming with caterpillars ? 

Gard. Hold thy peace : 

He that hath suffer'd this disordered spring 
Hath now himself met with the fall of leaf : 
The weeds which his broad-spreading leaves 

did shelter. 
That seem'd in eating him to hold him up, 
Are pluek'd up root and all by Bolingbroke, 
I mean the Earl of Wiltshire, Bushy, Green. 
Serv. What, are they dead ? 
Gard. Tliey are; and Bolingbroke 

Hath seized the wasteful king. 0, what pity 

is it 
That he had not so trimm'd and dress'd his 

land 
As we this garden ! We at time of year 
Do wound the bark, the skin of our fruit- 
trees. 
Lest, being over-proud in sap and blood. 
With too much riches it confound itself : 
Had he done so to great and growing men, 
They might have lived to bear and he to 

taste 
Their fruits of duty: superfluous branches 
We lop away, that bearing boughs may live : 
Had he done so, himself had borne the crown 
Which waste of idle hours hath quite thrown 

down. 
Serv. What, think you then the king 

shall be deposed? 
Gard. Depress'd he is already, and de- 
posed 
'Tis doubt he will be : letters came last night 
To a dear friend of the good Duke of 

York's, 
That tell black tidings. 

Queen. 0, I am press'd to death through 

want of speaking! [Coming forward 
Thou, old Adam's likeness, set to dress this 

garden. 
How dares thy harsh rude tongue sound this 

unpleasing news? 
What Eve, what serpent, hath suggested 

thee 
To make a second fall of cursed man ? 
Why dost thou say King Eichard is de- 
posed? 
Darest thou, thou little better thing than 

earth. 
Divine his downfall? Say, where, when, 

and how, 
Camest thou by this ill tidings? Speak, 

thou wretch. 



THE EENAISSANCE 



87 



Gard. Pardon me, madam : little joy 
have I 

To breathe this news ; yet what I say is true. 

King Richard, he is in the mighty hold 

Of Bolingbroke: their fortunes both are 

weigh' d : 
In your lord's scale is nothing but himself. 
And some few vanities that make him light ; 
But in the balance of great Bolingbroke, 
Besides himself, are all the English peers, 
And with that odds he weighs King Richard 

down. 
Post you to London, and you will find it so ; 
I speak no more than every one doth know. 
Queen. Nimble mischance, that art so 

light of foot, 
Doth not thy embassage belong to me, 
And am I last that knows it? 0, thou 

think'st 
To serve me last, that I may longest keep 
Thy sorrow in my breast. Come, ladies, go. 
To meet at London London's king in woe. 
What, was I born to this, that my sad look 
Should grace the triumph of great Boling- 
broke? 
Gardener, for telling me these news of woe, 
Pray God the plants thou graft'st may never 

grow ! [Exeunt Queen and Ladies 

Gard. Poor queen ! so that thy state 

might be no worse, 
I would my skill were subject to thy curse. 
Here did she fall a tear; here in this place 
I'll set a bank of rue, sour herb of grace: 
Rue, even for ruth, here shortly shall be seen 
In the remembrance of a weeping queen. 



2. Of Divine Bight 

[From Richard II, Act III, scene ii. The 
King returns to his realm, having learned 
of Bolingbroke's rebellion] 

The coast of Wales. A castle in view 

Drums: flourish and colors. Enter King 
Richard^ the Bishop of Carlisle^ 
AuMERLE^ and Soldiers 

K. Rich. Barkloughly castle call they this 
at hand? 

Aum. Yea, my lord. How brooks your 
grace the air. 
After your late tossing on the breaking seas ? 
K. Rich. Needs must I like it well : I 
weep for joy 
To stand upon my kingdom once again. 
Dear earth, I do salute thee with my hand, 



Though rebels wound thee with their horses' 

hoofs : 
As a long-parted mother with her child 
Plays fondly with her tears and smiles in 

meeting. 
So, weeping, smiling, greet I thee, my earth, 
And do thee favors with my royal hands. 
Feed not thy sovereign's foe, my gentle 

earth. 
Nor with thy sweets comfort his ravenous 

sense ; 
But let thy spiders, that suck up thy venom, 
And heavy-gaited toads lie in their way. 
Doing annoyance to the treacherous feet 
Which with usurping steps do trample thee : •* 
Yield stinging nettles to mine enemies ; 
And when they from thy bosom pluck a 

flower, 
Guard it, I pray thee, with a lurking adder 
Whose double tongue may with a mortal 

touch 
Throw death upon thy sovereign's enemies. 
Mock not my senseless conjuration, lords : 
This earth shall have a feeling and these 

stones 
Prove armed soldiers, ere her native king 
Shall falter under foul rebellion's arms. 
Car. Fear not, my lord : that Power that 
made you king 
Hath power to keep you king in spite of all. 
• The means that heaven yields must be em- 
braced, 
And not neglected ; else, if heaven would. 
And we will not, heaven's offer we refuse, 
The proffer'd means of succor and redress. 
Aum. He means, my lord, that we are 
too remiss; 
Whilst Bolingbroke, through our security, 
Grows strong and great in substance and in 
power. 
K. Rich. Diseomfortable cousin ! know'st 
thou not 
That when the searching eye of heaven is hid 
Behind the globe, that lights the lower 

world. 
Then thieves and robbers range abroad un- 
seen 
In murders and in outrage, boldly here : 
But when from under this terrestrial ball 
He fires the proud tops of the eastern pines . 
And darts his light through every guilty 

hole. 
Then murders, treasons, and detested sins. 
The cloak of night being pluck'd from off 

their backs. 
Stand bare and naked, trembling at them- 
selves ? 



THE GEEAT TEADITTON 



So when this thief, this traitor, Bolingbroke, 
Who all this while hath revel'd in the night 
Whilst we were wandering with the an- 
tipodes, 
Shall see uS rising in our throne, the east, 
His treasons will sit blushing in his face. 
Not able to endure the sight of day. 
But self -affrighted tremble at his sin. 
Not all the water in the rough rude sea 
Can wash the balm off from an anointed 

king; 
The breath of worldly men cannot depose 
The deputy elected by the Lord : 
Tor every man that Bolingbroke hath press'd 
To lift shrewd steel against our golden 

crown, 
God for his Richard hath in heavenly pay 
A glorious angel : then, if angels fight, 
Weak men must fall, for heaven still guards 
the right. 

[From Act IV, scene i. The King is 
deposed] 

York. Great Duke of Lancaster, I come 
to thee 
From plume-pluck'd Richard ; who with will- 
ing soul 
Adopts thee heir, and his high scepter yields 
To the possession of thy royal hand : 
Ascend his throne, descending now from 

him; 
And long live Henry, fourth of that name ! 
Bolingbroke. In God's name, I'll ascend 

the regal throne. 
Carlisle. Marry, God forbid ! 
Worst in this royal presence may I speak. 
Yet best beseeming me to speak the truth. 
Would God that any in this noble presence 
Were enough noble to be upright judge 
Of noble Richard ! then true noblesse would 
Learn him forbearance from so foul a wrong. 
What subject can give sentence on his king? 
And who sits here that is not Richard's sub- 
ject? 
Thieves are not judged but they are by to 

hear. 
Although apparent guilt be seen in them ; 
And shall the figure of God's majesty. 
His captain, steward, deputy-elect. 
Anointed, crowned, planted many years, 
Be judged by subject and inferior breath. 
And he himself not present ? 0, f orf end it, 

God, 
That in a Christian climate souls refined 
Should show so heinous, black, obscene a 
deed ! 



I speak to subjects, and a subject speaks, 
Stirr'd up by God, thus boldly for his king. 
My Lord of Hereford here, whom you call 

king. 
Is a foul traitor to proud Hereford's king : 
And if you crown him, let me prophesy: 
The blood of English shall manure the 

ground, 
And future ages groan for this foul act; 
Peace shall go sleep with Turks and infidels. 
And in this seat of peace tumultuous wars 
Shall kin with kin and kind with kind con- 
found ; 
Disorder, horror, fear, and mutiny 
Shall here inhabit, and this land be call'd 
The field of Golgotha and dead men's skulls. 
0, if you Vaise this house against this house, 
It will the woefullest division prove 
That ever fell upon this cursed earth. 
Prevent it, resist it, let it not be so. 
Lest child, child's children, cry against you 
"woe !" 
Northumberland. Well have you argued, 
sir; and, for your pains. 
Of capital treason we arrest you here. 
My Lord of Westminster, be it your charge 
To keep him safely till his day of trial. 
May it please you, lords, to grant the com- 
mons' suit. 
Boling. Fetch hither Richard, that in 
common view 
He may surrender ; so we shall proceed 
Without suspicion. 

York. I will be his conduct, {Exit 

Boling. Lords, you that here are under 
our arrest. 
Procure your sureties for your days of 

answer. 
Little are we beholding to your love, 
And little look'd for at your helping hands. 

Re-enter York, with Richaed, and Offleers 
bearing the regalia. 

K. Rich. Alack, why am I sent for to a 

king. 
Before I have shook off the regal thoughts 
Wherewith I reign'd? I hardly yet have 

learn'd 
To insinuate, flatter, bow, and bend my 

limbs. 
Give sorroAv leave awhile to tutor me 
To this submission. Yet I well remember 
The favors of these men: were they not 

mine ? 
Did they not sometime cry, "all hail!" to 

me? 



THE RENAISSANCE 



89 



So Judas did to Christ : but he, in twelve, 
Found truth in all but one; I, in twelve 

thousand, none. 
God save the king ! Will no man say amen? 
Am I both priest and clerk? Avell then, amen. 
God save the king ! although I be not he ; 
And yet, amen, if heaven do think him 

me. 
To do what service am I sent for hither? 
York. To do that office of thine own 

good Avill 
Which tired majesty did make thee offer. 
The resignation of thy state and crown 
To Henry Bolingbroke. 
K. Rich. Give me the crown. Here, 

cousin, seize the crown; 
Here, cousin; 

On this side my hand, and on that side yours. 
Now is this golden crown like a deep well 
That owes two buckets, filling one another. 
The emptier ever dancing in the air. 
The other down, unseen, and full of water : 
That bucket down and full of tears am I, 
Drinking my gi'iefs, whilst you mount up 

on high. 
Boling. I thought you had been willing 

to resign, 
K. Rich. My crown I am; but still my 

griefs are mine : 
You may my glories and my state depose, 
But not my griefs ; still am I king of those. 
Boling. Part of your cares you give me 

with your crown, 
K. Rich. Your cares set up do not pluck 

my cares down. 
My care is loss of care, by old care done ; 
Your care is gain of care, by new care 

won: 
The cares I give I have, though given away ; 
They tend the crown, yet still with me they 

stay. 
Boling. Are you contented to resign the 

crown ? 
K. Rich. Ay, no; no, ay; for I must 

nothing be ; 
Therefore no no, for I resign to thee. 
Now mark me, how I will undo myself: 
I give this heavy weight from off my head 
And this unwieldy scepter from my hand. 
The pride of kingly sway from out my 

heart ; 
With mine own tears I wash away my balm, 
With mine OAvn hands I give away my crown, 
With mine own tongue deny my sacred state. 
With mine own breath release all duty's 

rites : 
All pomp and majesty I do forswear ; 



My manors, rents, revenues, I forego; 
My acts, decrees, and statutes I deny: 
God pardon all oaths that are broke to 

me! 
God keejD all vows unbroke that swear to 

thee! 
Make me, that nothing have, with nothing 

grieved. 
And thou with all pleased, that hast all 

achieved ! 
Long mayst thou live in Richard's seat to 

sit. 
And soon lie Richard in an earthy pit ! 
God save King Harry, unking'd Richard 

says. 
And send him many years of sunshine 

days! 
What more remains? 

North. No more, but that you read 
These accusations and these grievous crimes 
Committed by your person and your fol- 
lowers 
Against the state and profit of this land; 
That, by confessing them, the sou^ls of men 
May deem that you are worthily deposed. 
K. Rich. Must I do so? and must I ravel 
out 
My Aveaved-up folly? Gentle Northumber- 
land, 
If thy offences were upon record. 
Would it not shame thee in so fair a troop 
To read a lecture of them ? If thou wouldst, 
There shouldst thou find one heinous ar- 
ticle. 
Containing the deposing of a king 
And cracking the strong warrant of an 

oath, 
Mark'd with a blot, damn'd in the book of 

heaven : 
Nay, all of you that stand and look upon. 
Whilst that my wretchedness doth bait my- 
self. 
Though some of you with Pilate wash your 

hands 
Showing an outward pity; yet you Pilates 
Have here deliver'd me to my sour cross. 
And water cannot wash away your sin. 
North. My Lord, despatch; read o'er 

these articles. 
K. Rich. Mine eyes are full of tears, I 
cannot see: 
And yet salt water blinds them not so much 
But they can see a sort of traitors here. 
Nay, if I turn my eyes upon myself, 
I find myself a traitor with the rest; 
For I have given here my soul's consent 
To undeck the pompous body of a king; 



90 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Made glory base and sovereignty a slave, 
Proud majesty a subject, state a peasant. 
North. My lord, — 

K. Rich. No lord of thine, thou liaught 
insulting man, 
Nor no man's lord; I have no name, no 

title, 
No, not that name was given me at the 

font, 
But 'tis usurped : alack the heavy day. 
That I have worn so many winters out. 
And know not now what name to call my- 
self! 
that I were a mockery king of snow. 
Standing before the sun of Bolingbroke, 
To melt myself away in water-drops ! 
Good king, great king, and yet not greatly 

good. 
And if my word be sterling yet in England, 
Let it command a mirror hither straight, 
That it may show me what a face I have. 
Since it is bankrupt of his majesty. 

B'oling. Go some of you and fetch a 

looking-glass. {^Exit an attendant. 

North. Read o'er this paper while the 

glass doth come. 
K. Rich. Fiend, thou torment'st me ere I 

come to hell ! 
Baling. Urge it no more, my Lord North- 
umberland. 
North. The commons will not then be 

satisfied. 
K. Rich. They shall be satisfied: I'll 
read enough, 
When I do see the very book indeed 
Where all my sins are writ, and that's my- 
self. 

Re-enter Attendaat, with a glass. 

Give me the glass, and therein will I read. 
No deejDer wrinkles yet ? hath sorrow struck 
So many blows upon this face of mine, 
And made no deeper wounds? flattering 

glass. 
Like to my followers in prosperity. 
Thou dost beguile me! Was this face the 

face 
That every day under his household roof 
Did keep ten thousand men? was this the 

face 
That, like the sun, did make beholders wink? 
Was this the face that faced so many fol- 
lies. 
And was at last out-faced by Bolingbroke? 
A brittle glory shineth in this face : 
As brittle as the glory is the face; 

[Dashes the glass against the ground. 



For there it is, crack'd in a hundred shiv- 
ers. ' 
Mark, silent king, the moral of this sport, 
How soon my sorrow hath destroy'd my 
face. 
Boling. The shadow of your sorrow hath 
destroy'd 
The shadow of your face. 

K. Rich. Say that again. 

The shadow of my sorrow ! ha ! let's see : 
'Tis very true, my grief lies all within; 
And these external manners of laments 
Are merely shadows to the unseen grief 
That swells with silence in the tortured 

soul ; 
There lies the substance: and I thank thee, 

king. 
For thy great bounty, that not only givest 
Me cause to wail, but teachest me the way 
How to lament the cause. I'll beg one 

boon. 
And then be gone and trouble you no more. 
Shall I obtain it? 

Boling. Name it, fair cousin. 
K. Rich. "Fair cousin"? I am greater 
than a king: 
For when I was a king, my flatterers 
Were then but subjects; being now a sub- 
ject, 
I have a king here to my flatterer. 
Being so great, I have no need to beg. 
Boling. Yet ask. 
K. Rich. And shall I have? 
Boling. You shall. 
K. Rich. Then give me leave to go. 
Boling. Whither? 
K. Rich. Whither you will, so I were 

from your sights. 
Boling. Go, some of you convey him to 

the Tower. 
K. Rich. 0, good! convey? conveyers 
are you all. 
That rise thus nimbly by a true king's 
fall. . 

[Exeunt King Richard, some Lords, 

and a Guard. 

Boling. On Wednesday next we solemnly 

set down 

Our coronation: lords, prepare yourselves. 

3. The Commonwealth of the Bees 

[From Henry V, Act I, scene ii. Exeter and 
Canterbury discourse of govern- 
ment to the King] 

Exeter. While tliat the armed hand doth 
fight abroad. 



THE RENAISSANCE 



91 



The advised head defends itself at home; 
For government, though high and low and 

lower, 
Put into parts, doth keep in one consent, 
Congreeing in a full and natural close, 
Like music. 

Canterbury. Therefore doth heaven di- 
vide 
The state of man in divers functions, 
Setting endeavor in continual motion; 
To which is fixed, as an aim or butt. 
Obedience: for so work the honey-bees, 
Creatures that by a rule in nature teach 
The act of order to a peopled kingdom. 
They have a king and officers of sorts; 
Where some, like magistrates, correct at 

home. 
Others, like merchants, venture trade 

abroad. 
Others, like soldiers, armed in their stings. 
Make boot upon the summer's velvet 

buds. 
Which pillage they with merry march bring 

home 
To the tent-royal of their emperor; 
Who, busied in his majesty, surveys 
The singing masons building roofs of 

gold. 
The civil citizens kneading up the honey, 
The poor mechanic porters crowding in 
Their heavy burdens at his narrow gate, 
The sad-eyed justice, with his surly hum, 
Delivering o'er to executors pale 
The lazy yawning drone. I this infer, 
That many things, having full refer- 
ence 
To one consent, may work contrariously : 
As many arrows, loosed several ways, 
Come to one mark; as many ways meet in 

one town ; 
As many fresh streams meet in one salt 

sea; 
As many lines close in the dial's center; 
So may a thousand actions, once afoot, 
End in one purpose, and be all well borne 
Without defeat. Therefore to France, my 

liege. 
Divide your happy England into four; 
Whereof take you one quarter into France, 
And you withal shall make all Gallia 

shake. 
If we, with thrice such powers left at 

home. 
Cannot defend our own doors from the 

dog, 
Let us be worried, and our nation lose 
The name of hardiness and policy. 



4. Of ''Degree" 

[From Troilus and Cressida, Act I^ 
scene iii.] 

The Grecian camp. Before 
Agamemnon's tent. 

Sennet. Enter Agamemnon_, Nestor, 
Ulysses^ Menelaus, and others. 

Agam. Princes, 
What grief hath set the jaundice on your 

cheeks 1 
The ample proposition that hope makes 
In all designs begun on earth below 
Fails in the promised largeness : checks and 

disasters 
Grow in the veins of actions highest rear'd,- 
As knots, by the conflux of meeting sap. 
Infect the sound pine and divert his grain 
Tortive and errant from his course of 

growth. 
Nor, princes, is it matter new to us 
That we come short of our suppose so far 
That after seven years' siege yet Troy walls 

stand ; 
Sith every action that hath gone before, 
Whereof we have record, trial did draw 
Bias and thwart, not answering the aim, 
And that unbodied figure of the thought 
That gave't surmised shape. Why then, 

you princes, 
Do you with cheeks abash'd behold our 

works. 
And call them shames? which are indeed 

nought else 
But the protracted trials of gTeat Jove 
To find persistive constancy in men : 
The fineness of Avhich metal is not found 
In fortune's love; for then the bold and 

coward. 
The wise and fool, the artist and unread. 
The hard and soft, seem all affined and 

kin: 
But, in the wind and tempest of her frown, 
Distinction, with a broad and powerful fan, 
Puffing at all, winnows the light away; 
And what hath mass or matter, by itself 
Lies rich in virtue and unmingled. 

Nest. With due observance of thy god-- 

like seat, 
Great Agamemnon, Nestor shall apply 
Thy latest words. In the reproof of chance 
Lies the true proof of men : the sea being 

smooth 
How many shallow bauble boats dare sail 
Upon her patient breast, making their way 
With those of nobler bulk! 



92 



THE GREAT TEADITION 



But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage 

The gentle Thetis, and anon behold 

The strong-ribb'd bark through liquid 

mountains cut, 
Bounding between the two moist elenients, 
Like Perseus' horse: where then the saucy 

boat 
Whose weak untimber'd sides but even now 
Co-rivall'd greatness f Either to harbor fled, 
Or made a toast for Neptune. Even so 
Doth valor's show and valor's worth divide 
In storms of fortune; for in her ray and 

brightness 
The herd hath more annoyance by the breeze 
Than by the tiger; but when the splitting 

wind 
Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks, 
And flies fled under shade, why, then the 

thing of courage 
As roused with rage with rage doth sym- 
pathize. 
And with an accent tuned in selfsame key 
Retorts to chiding fortune. 

JJlyss. Agamemnon, 

Thou great commander, nerve and bone of 

Greece, 
Heart of our numbers, soul and only spirit. 
In whom the tempers and the minds of 

all 
Should be shut up, hear what Ulysses 

sjDeaks. 
Besides the applause and approbation 
The which, [To Agamemnon'] most mighty 

for thy place and sway, 
[To Nestor] And thou most reverend for 

thy stretch'd-out life 
I give to both your speeches, which were 

such 
As Agamemnon and the hand of Greece 
Should hold up high in brass, and such 

again 
As venerable Nestor, hatch'd in silver. 
Should with a bond of air, strong as the 

axletree 
On which heaven rides, knit all the Greek- 

ish ears 
To his experienced tongue, yet let it please 

both. 
Thou great, and wise, to hear Ulysses speak. 
Agam.. Speak, prince of Ithaca; and be't 

of less expect 
That matter needless, of importless burden, 
Divide thy lips, than we are confident, 
When rank Thersites opes his mastic jaws. 
We shall hear music, wit, and oracle. 
TJlyss. Troy, yet upon his basis, had been 

down, 



And the great Hector's sword had lack'd a 

master. 
But for these instances. 
The specialty of rule hath been neglected: 
And, look, how many Grecian tents do stand 
Hollow upon this plain, so many hollow 

factions. 
When that the general is not like the hive 
To whom the foragers shall all repair. 
What honey is expected? Degree being 

vizarded. 
The unworthiest shows as fairly in the mask. 
The heavens themselves, the planets, and 

this center 
Observe degree, priority, and place, 
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form. 
Office, and custom, in all line of order; 
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol 
In noble eminence enthroned and sphered 
Amidst the other ; whose medicinable eye 
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil. 
And posts, like the commandment of a king. 
Sans check to good and bad : but when the 

planets 
In evil mixture to disorder wander, 
What plagues and what portents ! what mu- 
tiny ! 
What raging of the sea! shaking of earth! 
Commotion in the winds ! frights, changes, 

horrors. 
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate 
The unity and married calm of states 
Quite from their fixture! 0, when degree 

is shaked. 
Which is the ladder to all high designs, 
Then enterprise is sick! How could com- 
munities. 
Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in 

cities. 
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores. 
The primogenitive and due of birth, 
Prerogative of age, crowns, scepters, 

laurels. 
But by degree, stand in authentic place? 
Take but degree away, untune that string. 
And, hark, what discord follows ! each thing 

meets 
In mere oppugnancy: the bounded waters 
Should lift their bosoms higher than the 

shores 
And make a sop of all this solid globe : 
Strength should be lord of imbecility. 
And the rude son should strike his father 

dead : 
Force should be right ; or rather, right and 

wrong, 
Between whose endless jar justice resides, 



THE EENAISSANCE 



93 



Should lose their names, and so should jus- 
tice too. 
Then every thing includes itself in power, 
Power into will, will into appetite; 
And appetite, an universal wolf, 
So doubly seconded with will and power. 
Must make perforce an universal prey. 
And last eat up himself. Great Agamem- 
non, 
This chaos, when degree is suffocate, 
Follows the choking. 
And this neglection of degree it is 
That by a pace goes backward, with a pur- 
pose 
It hath to climb. The general's disdain'd 
By him one step below, he by the next, 
That next by him beneath ; so every step, 
Exampled by the first pace that is sick 
Of his superior, grows to an envious fever 
Of pale and bloodless emulation: 
And 'tis this fever that keeps Troy on foot, 
Not her own sinews. To end a tale of 

length, 
Troy in our weakness stands, not in her 
strength. ' 

Of Government 

richard hooker 

[From Ecclesiastical Polity, Book I, 1592] 

1. Maintaining Things That Are 
Established 

He that goeth about to persuade a mul- 
titude, that they are not so well governed 
as they ought to be, shall never want at- 
tentive and favorable hearers ; because they 
know the manifold defects whereunto every 
kind of regiment is subject, but the secret 
lets and difficulties, which in public pro- 
ceedings are innumerable and inevitable, 
they have not ordinarily the judgment to 
consider. And because such as openly re- 
prove supposed disorders of state are taken 
for principal friends to the common bene- 
fit of all, and for men that carry singular 
freedom of mind ; under this fair and plausi- 
ble color whatsoever they utter passeth for 
good and current. ' That which wanteth in 
the weight of their speech, is supplied by 
the aptness of men's minds to accept and 
believe it. Whereas on the other side, if 
we maintain things that are established, we 
have not only to strive with a number of 
heavy prejudices deeply rooted in the hearts 
of men, who think that herein we serve 
the time, and speak in favor of the present 



state, because thereby we either hold or 
seek preferment; but also to bear such ex- 
ceptions as minds so averted beforehand 
usually take against that which they are 
loth should be poured into them. 

Albeit therefore much of that we are 
to speak in this present caiTse may seem 
to a number perhaps tedious, perhaps ob- 
scure, dark, and intricate; (for many talk 
of the truth, which never sounded the depth 
from whence it springeth; and therefore 
when they are led thereunto they are soon 
weary, as men drawn from those beaten 
paths wherewith they have been inured;) 
yet this may not so far prevail as to cut 
off that which the matter itself requireth, 
howsoever the nice humor of some be there- 
with pleased or no. They unto whom we 
shall seem tedious are in no wise injured 
by us, because it is in their own hands to 
spare that labor which they are not willing 
to endure. And if any complain of obscur- 
ity, they must consider, that in these mat- 
ters it Cometh no otherwise to pass than 
in sundry the works both of art and also 
of nature, where that which hath greatest^ 
force in the very things we see is notwith- 
standing itself oftentimes not seen. The 
stateliness of houses, the goodliness of trees, 
when we behold them delighteth the eye; 
but that foundation which beareth up the 
one, that root which ministereth unto the 
nourishment and life, is in the bosom of 
the earth concealed; and if there be at any 
time occasion to search into it, such labor 
is then more necessary than pleasant, both 
to them which undertake it and for the 
lookers-on. In like manner, the use and 
benefit of good laws all that live under them 
may enjoy with delight and comfort, albeit 
the grounds and first original causes from 
whence they have sprung be unknown, as 
to the greatest part of men they are. But 
when they who withdraw their obedience 
pretend that the laws which they should 
obey are corrupt and vicious; for better 
examination of their quality, it behoveth 
the very foundation and root, the highest 
well-spring and fountain of them to be 
discovered. Which because we are not oft- 
entimes accustomed to do, when we do 
it the pains we take are more needful a 
great deal than acceptable, and the matters 
which we handle seem by reason of newness 
(till the mind grow better acquainted with 
them) dark, intricate, and unfamiliar. For 
as much help whereof as may be in this 



94 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



case, I have endeavored throughout the body 
of this whole discourse, that every former 
part might give strength unto all that fol- 
low, and every later bring some light unto 
all before. So that if the judgments of 
men do but hold themselves in suspense as 
touching these first more general medita- 
tions, till in order they have perused the rest 
that ensue; what may seem dark at the 
first will afterwards be found more plain, 
even as the later particular decisions will 
appear I doubt not more strong, when the 
other have been read before. 

2. Of Law in Nature 

Wherefore to come to the law of nature: 
albeit thereby we sometimes mean that man- 
ner of working which God hath set for each 
created thing to keep; yet forasmuch as 
those things are termed most properly na- 
tural agents, which keep the law of their 
kind unwittingly, as the heavens and ele- 
ments of the world, which can do no other- 
wise than they do; and forasmuch as we 
give unto intellectual natures the name of 
Voluntary agents, that so we may distin- 
guish them from the other ; expedient it will 
be, that we sever the law of nature observed 
by the one from that which the other is 
tied unto. Touching the former, their strict 
keeping of one tenure, statute, and law, 
is spoken of by all, but hath in it more 
than men have as yet attained to know, or 
perhaps ever shall attain, seeing the travail 
of wading herein is given of God to the 
sons of men, that perceiving how much the 
least thing in the world hath in it more 
than the wisest are able to reach unto, they 
may by this means learn humility. Moses, 
in describing the work of creation, attribut- 
eth speech unto God: "God said. Let there 
be light : let there be a firmament : let the 
waters under the heaven be gathered to- 
gether into one place : let the earth bring 
forth: let there be lights in the firmament 
of heaven." Was this only the intent of 
Moses, to signify^ the infinite greatness of 
God's power by the easiness of his accom- 
plishing such effects, without travail, pain, 
or labor? Surely it seemeth that Moses 
had herein besides this a further purpose, 
fiamely, first to teach that God did not work 
as a necessary but a voluntary agent, in- 
tending beforehand and decreeing with him- 
self that which did outwardly proceed from 
him : secondly, to show that God did then 
institute a law natural to be observed by 



creatures, and therefore according to the 
manner of laws, the institution thereof is 
described, as being established by solemn 
injunction. His commanding those things 
to be which are, and to be in such sort as 
they are, to keep that tenure and course 
which they do, importeth the establishment 
of nature's law. This world's first creation, 
and the preservation since of things created, 
what is it but only so far forth a mani- 
festation by execution, what the eternal law 
of God is concerning things natural? And 
as it Cometh to pass in a kingdom rightly 
ordered, that after a law is once publisbed, 
it presently takes effect far and wide, all 
states framing themselves thereunto; even 
so let us think it fareth in the natural 
course of the world : since the time that 
God did first proclaim the edicts of his 
law upon it, heaven and earth have hear- 
kened unto his voice, and their labor hath 
been to do his will : He "made a law for the 
rain" : He gave his "decree unto the sea, that 
the waters should not pass his command- 
ment." Now if nature should intermit her 
course, and leave altogether though it were 
but for a while the observation of her 
own laws; if those principal and mother 
elements of the world, whereof all things 
in this lower world are made, should lose 
the qualities which now they have; if the 
frame of that heavenly arch erected over 
our heads should loosen and dissolve itself; 
if celestial spheres should forget their 
wonted motions, and by irregular volubility 
turn themselves any way as it might hap- 
pen; if the prince of the lights of heaven, 
which now as a giant doth run his un- 
wearied course, should as it were through 
a languishing faintness begin to stand and 
to rest himself; if the moon should wander 
from her beaten way, the times and seasons 
of the year blend themselves by disordered 
and confused mixture, the winds breathe 
out their last gasp, the clouds yield no rain, 
the earth be defeated of heavenly influence, 
the fruits of the earth pine away as chil- 
dren at the withered breasts of their mother 
no longer able to yield them relief: what 
would become of man himself, whom these 
things now do all serve? See we not plainly 
that obedience of creatures unto the law 
of nature is the stay of the whole world ? 

3. Of the Sources of Government 
But forasmuch as we are not by our- 
selves sufficient to furnish ourselves with 



THE EENAISSANCE 



95 



competent store of things needful for such 
a life as our nature doth desire, a life fit 
for the dignity of man; therefore to sup- 
ply those defects and imperfections which 
are in us living single and solely by our- 
selves, we are naturally induced to seek 
communion and f elloAvship with others. This 
was the cause of men's uniting themselves 
at ■ the first in jjolitic Societies, which so- 
cieties could not be without Government, 
nor Government without a distinct kind of 
Law from that which hath been already 
declared. Two foundations there are which 
bear up public societies; the one, a natural 
inclination, whereby all men desire sociable 
life and fellowship ; the other, • an order ex- 
pressly or secretly agreed u^^on touching 
the manner of their union in living to- 
gether. The latter is that which we call the 
Law of a Commonweal, the very soul of a 
politic body, the i^arts whereof are by law 
animated, held together, and set on work 
in such actions, as the common good re- 
quireth. Laws politic, ordained for ex- 
ternal order and regiment amongst men, are 
never framed as they should be, unless pre- 
suming the will of man to be inwardly ob- 
stinate, rebellious, and averse from all obedi- 
ence unto the sacred laws of his nature; in 
a word, unless presuming man to be in 
regard of his depraved mind little better 
than a wild beast, they do accordingly pro- 
vide notwithstanding so to frame his out- 
ward actions, that they be no hinderance 
unto the common good for which societies 
are instituted : unless they do this, they are 
not perfect. It resteth therefore that we 
consider how nature findeth out such laws 
of government as serve to direct even na- 
ture depraved to a right end. 

All men desire to lead in this world a 
happy life. That life is led most happily, 
wherein all virtue is exercised without im- 
pediment or let. The Apostle, in exhorting 
men to contentment although they have in 
this world no more than very bare food and 
raiment, giveth us thereby to understand 
that those are even the lowest of things 
necessary; that if we should be strijDped of 
all those things without which we might 
possibly be, yet these must be left ; that 
destitution in these is such an impediment, 
as till it be removed suffereth not the mind 
of man to admit any other care. For this 
cause, first God assigned Adam maintenance 
of life, and then appointed him a law to 
observe. For this cause, after men began 



to grow to a number, the first thing we 
read they gave themselves unto was the 
tilling of the earth and the feeding of cat- 
tle. Having by this means whereon to live, 
the principal actions of their life afterward 
are noted by the exercise of their religion. 
True it is, that the kingdom of God must 
be the first thing in our purposes and de- 
sires. But inasmuch as righteous life pre- 
supposeth life; inasmuch as to live virtu- 
ously is impossible except we live; there- 
fore the first impediment, which naturally 
we endeavor to remove, is penury and want 
of things without which we cannot live. 
Unto life many implements are necessary; 
more, if we seek (as all men naturally do) 
such a life as hath in it joy, comfort, de- 
light, and pleasure. To this end we see how 
quickly sundry arts mechanical were found 
out, in the very prime of the world. As 
things of greatest necessity are always first 
provided for, so things of greatest dignity 
are most accounted of by all such as judge 
rightly. Although therefore riches be a 
thing which every man wisheth, yet no man 
of judgment can esteem it better to be 
rich than wise, virtuous, and religious. If 
we be both or either of these, it is not be- 
cause we are so born. For into the world 
we come as empty of the one as of the other, 
as naked in mind as we are in body. Both 
which necessities of man had at the first no 
other helps and suiDplies than only domes- 
tical; such as that which the Prophet im- 
plieth, 'saying, "Can a mother forget her 
child?" such as that which the Apostle 
mentioned, saying, "He that careth not for 
his own is worse than an infidel"; such as 
that concerning Abraham, "Abraham will 
command his sons and his household after 
him, that they keep the way of the Lord." 
Biit neither that which we learn of our- 
selves nor that which others teach us can 
prevail, where wickedness and malice have 
taken deep root. If therefore when there 
was but as yet one only family in the world, 
no means of instruction human or divine 
could prevent effusion of blood; how could 
it be chosen but that when families were 
multiplied and increased ui^on earth, after 
separation each providing for itself, envy, 
strife, contention, and violence must grow 
amongst them? For hath not Nature fur- 
nished man with wit and valor, as it were 
with armor, which may be used as well 
unto extreme evil as good? Yea, were they 
not used by the rest of the world unto evil ; 



96 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



unto the contrary only by Seth, Enoch, 
and those few the rest in that line? We 
all make complaint of the iniquity of our 
times: not unjustly; for the days are evil. 
But compare them with those times wherein 
there were no civil societies, with those times 
wherein there was as yet no manner of pub- 
lic regiment established, with those times 
wherein there were not above eight persons 
righteous living upon the face of the earth ; 
and we have surely good cause to think 
that God hath blessed us exceedingly, and 
hath made us behold most happy days. 

To take away all such mutual grievances, 
injuries, and wrongs, there was no way but 
only by growing unto composition and 
agreement amongst themselves, by ordaining 
some kind of government public, and by 
yielding themselves subject thereunto; that 
unto whom they granted authority to rule 
and govern, by them the peace, tranquillity, 
and happy estate of the rest might be pro- 
cured. Men always knew that Avhen force 
and injury Avas offered they might be de- 
fenders of themselves ; they knew that how- 
soever men may seek their own commodity, 
yet if this were done with injury unto others 
it was not to be suffered, but by all men 
and by all good means to be withstood; 
finally they knew that no man might in rea- 
son take upon him to detei'mine his own 
right, and according to his own determin- 
ation proceed in maintenance thereof, in- 
asmuch as every man is towards himself and 
them whom he greatly affecteth partial ; 
and therefore that strifes and troubles would 
be endless, except they gave their common 
consent all to be ordered by some whom 
they should agree upon : without which con- 
sent there were no reason that one man 
should take upon him to be lord or judge 
over another; because, although there be 
according to the opinion of some very great 
and judicious men a kind of natural right 
in the noble, wise, and virtuous, to govern 
them which are of servile disposition; nev- 
ertheless for manifestation of this their 
right, and men's more peaceable content- 
ment on both sides, the assent of them who 
are to be governed seemeth necessary. 

To fathers within their private families 
Nature hath given a supreme power; for 
which cause we see throughout the world 
even from the foundation thereof, all men 
have ever been taken as lords and lawful 
kings in their own houses. Howbeit over a 
whole grand multitude having no such de- 



pendency upon any one, and consisting of 
so many families as every politic society 
in the world doth, impossible it is that any 
should have complete lawful power, but by 
consent of men, or immediate appointment 
of God; because not having the natural 
superiority of fathers, their power must 
needs be either usurped, and then unlawful; 
or, if lawful, then either granted or con- 
sented unto by them over whom they ex- 
ercise the same, else given extraordinarily 
from God, unto whom all the world is sub- 
ject. It is no improbable opinion therefore 
which the arch-philosopher was of, that as 
the chiefest person in every household was 
always as it were a king, so when numbers 
of households joined themselves in civil 
society together, kings were the first kind 
of governors amongst them. Which is also 
(as it seemeth) the reason why the name of 
Father continued still in them, who of 
fathers were made rulers ; as also the ancient 
custom of governors to do as Melchisedec, 
and being kings to exercise the office of 
priests, which fathers did at the first, grew 
perhaps by the same occasion. 

Howbeit not this the only kind of regi- 
ment that hath been received in the world. 
The inconveniences of one kind have caused 
sundry other to be devised. So that in a 
word all public regiment of what kind so- 
ever seemeth evidently to have risen from 
deliberate advice, consultation, and com- 
position between men, judging it convenient 
and behoveful ; there being no impossibility 
in nature considered by itself, but that men 
might have lived without any public regi- 
ment. Howbeit, the corruption of our na- 
ture being presupposed, we may not deny 
but that the Law of Nature doth now re- 
quire of necessity some kind of regiment; 
so that to bring things unto the first course 
they were in, and utterly to take away all 
kind of public government in the world, 
were apparently to overturn the whole 
world. 

The case of man's nature standing there- 
fore as it doth, some kind of regiment the 
Law of Nature doth require ; yet the kinds 
thereof being many. Nature tieth not to any 
one, but leaveth the choice as a thing arbi- 
trary. At the first when some certain kind 
of regiment was once approved, it may be 
that nothing was then further thought upon 
for the manner of governing, but all per- 
mitted unto their wisdom and discretion 
which were to rule; till by experience they 



THE EENAISSANCE 



97 



found this for all parts very inconvenient, 
so as the thing which they had devised for 
a remedy did indeed but increase the sore 
which it should have cured. They saw that 
to live by one man's will became the cause 
of all men's misery. This constrained them 
to come unto laws, wherein all men might 
see their duties beforehand, and know the 
penalties of transgressing them. If things 
be simply good or evil, and withal univer- 
sally so acknowledged, there needs no new 
law to be made for such things. The first 
kind therefore of things appointed by laws 
human containeth whatsoever being in itself 
naturally good or evil, is notwithstanding 
more secret than that it can be discerned 
by every man's present conceit, without 
some deeper discourse and judgment. In 
which discourse because there is difficulty 
and possibility many Avays to err, unless 
such things were set down by laws, many 
would be ignorant of their duties which now 
are not, and many that know what they 
should do would nevertheless dissemble it, 
and to excuse themselves pretend ignorance 
and simiDlicity, which now they cannot. 

And because the greatest part of men are 
such as prefer their own private good be- 
fore all things, even that good which is 
sensual before whatsoever is most divine; 
and for that the labor of doing good, together 
with the pleasure arising from the con- 
trary, doth make men for the most part 
slower to the one and proner to the other, 
than that duty prescribed th-em by law can 
prevail sufficiently with them : therefore 
unto laws that men do make for the bene- 
fit of men it hath seemed always needful 
to add rewards, which may more allure unto 
good than any hardness deterreth from it, 
and punishments, which may more deter 
from evil than any sweetness thereto al- 
lureth. Wherein as the generality is na- 
tural, virtue rewardable, and vice punish- 
able; so the particular determination of the 
reward or punishment belongeth unto them 
by whom laws are made. Theft is naturally 
punishable, but the kind of punishment is 
positive, and such lawful as men shall think 
with discretion convenient by law to ap- 
point. 

In laws, that which is natural bindeth 
universally, that which is positive not so. 
To let go those kinds of positive laws which 
men impose upon themselves, as by vow 
unto God, contract with men, or such like; 
somewhat it will make unto our purpose, a 



little more fully to consider what things 
are incident unto the making of the posi- 
tive laws for the government of them that 
live united in public society. Laws do not 
only teach what is good, but they enjoin 
it, they have in them a certain constraining 
force. And to constrain men unto any thing 
inconvenient doth seem unreasonable. Most 
requisite therefore it is that to devise laws 
which all men shall be forced to obey none 
but wise men be admitted. Laws are mat- 
ters of principal consequence; men of com- 
mon capacity and but ordinary judgment 
are not able (for how should they?) to 
discern what things are fittest for each 
kind and state of regiment. We cannot be 
ignorant how much our obedience unto laws 
dependeth upon this point. Let a man 
though never so justly oppose himself unto 
them that are disordered in their ways, and 
what one amongst them commonly doth not 
stomach at such contradiction, storm at re- 
proof, and hate such as would reform them ? 
Notwithstanding even they which brook it 
worst that men should tell them of their 
duties, when they are told the same by a law, 
think very well and reasonably of it. For 
why? They presume that the law doth 
speak with all indifferency ; that the law 
hath no side-respect to their persons; that 
the law is as it were an oracle proceeded 
from wisdom and understanding. 

Howbeit laws do not take their constrain- 
ing force from the quality of such as de- 
vise them, but from that power which doth 
give them the strength of laws. That whidh 
we spake before concerning the power of 
government must here be applied unto the 
power of making laws whereby to govern; 
which power God hath over all : and by the 
natural law, whereunto he hath made all 
subject, the lawful power of making laws 
to command whole politic societies of men 
belongeth so proj^erly unto the same entire 
societies, that for any prince or potentate 
of what kind soever ujoon earth to exercise 
the same of himself, and not either by ex- 
press commission immediately and person- 
ally received from God, or else by authority 
derived at the first from their consent upon 
whose persons they impose laws, it is no 
better than mere tyranny. 

Laws they are not therefore which pub- 
lic approbation hath not made so. But ap- 
probation not only they give who personally 
declare their assent by voice, sign, or act, 
but also when others do it in their names 



98 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



by right originally at the least derived from 
them. As in parliaments, councils, and the 
like assemblies, although we be not per- 
sonally ourselves joresent, notwithsanding 
our assent is by reason of others agents 
there in our behalf. And what we do by 
others, no reason but that it should stand 
as our deed, no less effectually to bind us 
than if ourselves had done it in person. 
In many things assent is given, they that 
give it not imagining they do so, because 
the manner of their assenting is not ap- 
parent. As for example, when an qjpso- 
lute monarch 'commandeth his subjects that 
which seemeth good in his own discretion, 
hath not his edict the force of § law whether 
they approve or dislike it? Again, that 
which hath been received long sithence and 
is by custom now established, we keep as a 
law which we may not transgress ; yet what 
consent was ever thereunto sought or re- 
quired at our hands? 

Of this point therefore we are to note, 
that sith men naturally have no full and 
perfect power to conimand whole politic 
multitudes of men, therefore utterly with- 
out our consent we could in such sort be at 
no man's commandment living. And to be 
commanded we do consent, when that so- 
ciety whereof we are part hath at any time 
before consented, without revoking the same 
after by the like universal agreement. 
Wherefore as any man's deed past is good 
as long as himself continueth; so the act 
of a public society of men done five hun- 
dred years sithence standeth as theirs who 
presently are of the same societies, because 
corporations are immortal; we were then 
alive in our predecessors, and they in their 
successors do live still. Laws therefore hu- 
man, of what kind soever, are available by 
consent. 

4. Of the Law of Nations 

Now besides that law which simply con- 
cerneth men as men, and that which belong- 
eth unto them as they are men linked with 
others in some form of politic society, there 
is a third kind of law which touch eth all 
such several bodies politic, so far forth as 
one of them hath public commerce with an- 
other. And this third is* the Law of Na- 
tions. Between men and beasts there is no 
possibility of sociable communion, because 
the well-spring of that communion is a 
natural delight which man hath to transfuse 
from himself into others, and to receive 



from others into himself especially those 
things wherein the excellency of his kind 
doth most consist. The chiefest instrument 
of human communion therefore is speech, 
because thereby we impart mutually one to 
another the conceits of our reasonable un- 
derstanding. And for that cause seeing 
beasts are not hereof capable, forasmuch as 
with them we can use no such conference, 
they being in degree, although above other 
creatures on earth to whom nature hath de- 
nied sense, yet lower than to be sociable com- 
panions of man to whom nature hath given 
reason; it is of Adam said that amongst 
the beasts "he found not for himself any 
meet companion." Civil society doth more 
content the nature of man than any pri- 
vate kind of solitary living, because in so- 
ciety this good of mutual participation is 
so much larger than otherwise. Herewith 
notwithstanding we are not satisfied, but we 
covet (if it might be) to have a kind of 
society and fellowship even with all man- 
kind. Which thing Socrates intending to 
signify professed himself a citizen, not of 
this or that commonwealth, but of the world. 
And an effect of that very natural desire 
in us (a manifest token that we wish after 
a sort an universal fellowship with all men) 
appeareth by the wonderful delight men 
have, some to visit foreign countries, some 
to discover nations not heard of in former 
ages, we all to know the affairs and deal- 
ings of other people, yea to be in league 
of amity with them: and this not only for 
traffic's sake, or to the end that when many 
are confederated each may make other the 
more strong, but for such cause also as 
moved the Queen of Saba to visit Solomon ; 
and in a word, because "nature doth pre- 
sume that how many men there are in the 
world, so many gods as it were there are, 
or at leastwise such they should be towards 
men. 

Touching laws which are to serve men in 
this behalf; even as those Laws of Reason, 
which (man retaining his original integrity) 
had been sufficient to direct each particular 
person in all his affairs and duties, are not 
sufficient but require the access of other 
laws, now that man and his offspring are 
grown thus corrupt and sinful; again, as 
those laws of polity and regiment, which 
would have served men living in public so- 
ciety together with that harmless disposi- 
tion which then they should have had, are 
not able now to serve, when men's iniquity 



THE RENAISSANCE 



99 



is so hardly restrained within any tolerable 
bounds : in like manner, the national laws 
of natural commerce between societies of 
that former and better quality might have 
been other than now, when nations are so 
prone to offer violence, injury, and wrong. 
Hereupon hath grown in every of these three 
kinds that distinction between Primary and 
Secondary laws; the one grounded upon 
sincere, the other built upon depraved na- 
ture. Primary laws of nations are such 
as concern embassage, such as belong to 
the courteous entertainment of foreigners 
and strangers, such as serve for commodi- 
ous traffic, and the like. Secondary laws 
in the same kind are such' as this present 
unquiet world is most familiarly acquainted 
with; I mean l^ws of arms, which yet are 
much better known than kept. But what 
matter the Law of Nations doth contain I 
omit to search. 

The strength and virtue of that law is 
such that no particular nation can lawfully 
prejudice the same by any their several laws 
and ordinances, more than a man by his 
private resolutions the law of the whole 
commonwealth or state wherein he liveth. 
For as civil law, being the act of the whole 
body politic, doth therefore overrule each 
several part of the same body; so there is no 
reason that any one commouAvealth of itself 
should to the prejudice of another annihilate 
that whereupon the whole world hath agreed. 
For which cause, the Laeedasmonians for- 
bidding all access of strangers into their 
coasts, are in that respect both by Josephus 
and Theodoret deservedly blamed, as be- 
ing enemies to that hospitality which for 
common humanity's sake all the nations on 
earth should embrace. 

5. "Her Voice the Harmony of the 
World" 
Thus far therefore we have endeavored 
in part to open, of what nature and force 
laws are, according unto their several kinds ; 
the law which God with himself hath eter- 
nally set down to follow in his own works; 
the law which he hath made for his creatures 
to keep; the law of natural and necessary 
agents; the law which angels in heaven 
obey; the law whereunto by the light of 
reason men find themselves bound in that 
they are men ; the law which they make by 
composition for multitudes and politic so- 
cieties of men to be guided by; the law 
which belongeth unto each nation; the law 



that concerneth the fellowship of all; and 
lastly the law which God himself hath su- 
pernaturally revealed. It might peradven- 
ture have been more popular and more 
plausible to vulgar ears, if this first dis- 
course had been spent in extolling the force 
of laws, in showing the great necessity of 
them when they are good, and in aggra- 
vating their offence by whom public laws 
are injuriously traduced. But forasmuch as 
with such kind of matter the passions of 
men are rather stirred one way or other, 
than their knowledge any way set forward 
unto the trial of that whereof there is doubt 
made, I have therefore turned aside from 
that beaten path, and chosen though a less 
easy yet a more profitable way in regard 
of the end we propose. Lest therefore any 
fnan should marvel whereunto all these 
things tend, the drift and purpose of all is 
this, even to show in what manner, as every 
good and perfect gift, so this very gift of 
good and perfect laws is derived from the 
Father of lights; to teach men a reason 
why just and reasonable laws are of so 
great force, of so great use in the world; 
and to inform their minds with some method 
of reducing the laws whereof there is pres- 
ent controversy unto their first original 
causes, that so it may be in every particu- 
lar ordinance, thereby the better discerned, 
whether the same be reasonable, just, and 
righteous, or no. Is there any thing which 
can either be thoroughly understood or 
soundly judged of, till the very first causes 
and principles from which originally it 
springeth be made manifest ? If all parts of 
knowledge have been thought by wise men 
to be then most orderly delivered and pro- 
ceeded in, when they are drawn to their first 
original; seeing that our whole question 
concerneth the quality of ecclesiastical laws, 
let it not seem a labor superfluous that in 
the entrance thereunto all these several 
kinds of laws have been consider-ed, inas- 
much as they all concur as principles, they 
all have their forcible operations therein, 
although not all in like apparent and mani- 
fest manner. By means whereof it cometh 
to pass that the force which they have is 
not observed of many. 

Easier a great deal it is for men by law 
to be taught what they ought to do, than 
instructed how to judge as they should do 
of law : the one being a thing which be- 
longeth generally unto all, the other such as 
none but the wiser and more judicious sort 



100 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



can perform. Yea, the wisest are always 
touching this point the readiest to acknowl- 
edge, that soundly to judge of a law is the 
weightiest thing which any man can take 
upon him. But if we will give judgment of 
the laws under which we live, first let that 
law eternal be always before our eyes, as 
being of principal force and moment to 
breed in religious minds a dutiful estimation 
of all laws, the use and benefit whereof we 
see ; because there can be no doubt but that 
laws apparently good are (as it were) things 
copied out of the very tables of that high 
everlasting law ; even as the book of that law 
hath said concerning itself, "By me kings 
reign," and "by me princes decree justice." 
Not as if men did behold that book and 
accordingly frame their laws ; but because it 
worketh in them, because it discovereth and 
(as it were) readeth itself to the world by 
them, when the laws which they make are 
righteous. Furthermore, although we per- 
ceive not the goodness of laws made, never- 
theless sitli things in themselves may have 
that which we peradventure discern not, 
should not this breed a fear in our hearts 
how we speak or judge in the worse part 
concerning that, the unadvised disgrace 
whereof may be no mean dishonor to Him 
towards whom we profess all submission and 
awe? Surely there must be very manifest 
iniquity in laws, against which we shall be 
able to justify our contumelious invectives. 
The chief est root whereof, when we use them 
without cause, is ignorance how laws inferior 
are derived from that supreme or highest 

law 

Our largeness of speech how men do find 
out what things reason bindeth them of 
necessity to observe, and what it guideth 
them to choose in things which are left as 
arbitrary; the care we have had to declare 
the different nature of laws which severally 
concern all men, from such as belong unto 
men either civilly or spiritually associated, 
such as pertain to the fellowship which na- 
tions, or which Christian nations, have 
amongst themselves, and in the last place 
such as concerning every or any of these 
God himself hath revealed by his Holy 
Word: all serveth but to make manifest, 
that as the actions of men are of sundry 
distinct kinds, so the laws thereof must ac- 
cordingly be distinguished. There are in 
men operations, some natural, some rational, 
some supernatural, some politic, some finally 
ecclesiastical : which if we measure not each 



by his own proper law, whereas the things 
themselves are so different, there will be in 
our understanding and judgment of them 
confusion. 

As that first error showeth, whereon our 
opposites in this cause have grounded them- 
selves. For as they rightly maintain that 
God must be glorified in all things, and that 
the actions of men cannot tend unto his 
glory unless they be framed after his law; 
so it is their error to think that the only law 
which God hath appointed unto men in that 
behalf is the sacred Scrij)ture. By that 
which we work naturally, as when we 
breathe, sleep, move, we set forth the glory 
of God as natural agents do, albeit we have 
no express purpose to make that our end, 
nor any advised determination therein to fol- 
low a law, but do that we do (for the most 
part) not as much as thinking thereon. In 
reasonable and moral actions another law 
taketh place ; a law by the observation where- 
of we glorify God in such sort as no creature 
else under man is able to do; because other 
creatures have not judgment to examine the 
quality of that which is done by them, and 
therefore in that they do they neither can 
accuse nor approve themselves. Men do 
both, as the Apostle teacheth; yea, those 
men which have no written law of God to 
show what is good or evil, carry written in 
their hearts the universal law of mankind, 
the Law of Reason, whereby they judge as 
by a rule which God hath given unto all men 
for that purpose. The law of reason doth 
somewhat direct men how to honor God as 
their Creator; but how to glorify God in 
such sort as is required, to the end he may 
be an everlasting Savior, this we are taught 
by divine law, which law both ascertaineth 
the truth and supplieth unto us the want of 
that other law. So that in moral actions, 
divine law helpeth exceedingly the law of 
reason to guide man's life; but in super- 
natural it alone guideth. 

Proceed we further; let us place man in 
some public society with others, whether 
civil or spiritual ; and in this case there is no 
remedy but we must add yet a further law. 
For although even here likewise the laws of 
nature and reason be of necessary use, yet 
somewhat over and besides them is neces- 
sary, namely human and positive law, to- 
gether with that law which is of commerce 
between grand societies, the law of nations, 
and of nations Christian. For which cause 
the law of God hath likewise said, "Let 



THE EENAISSANGE 



101 



every soul be subject to the higher powers." 
The public power of all societies is above 
every soul contained in the same societies. 
And the principal use of that power is to 
give laws unto all that are under it ; which 
laws in such case we must obey, unless there 
be reason showed which may necessarily en- 
force that the Law of Reason or of God 
doth enjoin the contrary. Because except 
our own jorivate and but probable resolu- 
tions be by the law of public determinations 
overruled, we take away all possibility of 
sociable life in the world. A plainer example 
whereof than ourselves we cannot have. How 
Cometh it to pass that we are at this present 
day so rent with mutual contentions, and 
that the Church is so much troubled about 
the polity of the Church ? No doubt if men 
had been willing to learn how many laws 
their actions in this life are subject unto, 
and what the true force of each law is, all 
these controversies might have died the very 
day they were first brought forth. 

It is both commonly said, and truly, that 
the best men otherwise are not always the 
best in regard of society. The reason where- 
of is, for that the law of men's actions is 
one, if they be respected only as men; and 
another, when they are considered as parts 
of a politic body. Many men there are, 
than whom nothing is more commendable 
when they are singled; and yet in society 
with others none less fit to answer the duties 
which are looked for at their hands. Yea, I 
am persuaded, that of them with whom in 
this cause we strive, there are whose betters 
amongst men would be hardly found, if they 
did not live amongst men, but in some wil- 
derness by themselves. The cause of which 
their disiDosition so unframable unto so- 
cieties wherein they live, is, for that they 
discern not aright what place and force 
these several kinds of laws ought to have 
in all their actions. Is their question either 
concerning the regiment of the Church in 
general, or about conformity between one 
church and another, or of ceremonies, offices, 
powers, jurisdictions in our own church? 
Of all these things they judge by that rule 
which they frame to themselves with some 
show of iDrobability, and' what seemeth in 
that sort convenient, the same they think 
themselves bound to practice; the same by 
all means they labor mightily to uphold; 
whatsoever any law of man to the contrary 
hath determined they weigh it not. Thus by 
following the law of private reason, where 



the law of public should take place, they 
breed disturbance. . . . 

Wherefore that here we may briefly end : 
of Law there can be no less acknowledged, 
than that her seat is the bosom of God, her 
voice the harmony of the world: all things 
in heaven and earth do her homage, the very 
least as feeling her care, and the greatest 
as not exempted from her power: both 
Angels and men and creatures of what con- 
dition soever, though each in different 'sort 
and manner, yet all with uniform consent, 
admiring her as the mother of their peace 
and joy. 

Two Counsels on Government 

FRANCIS BACON 

[From the Essays] 

1. Of Empire 

It is a miserable state of mind to have 
few things to desire, and many things to 
fear; and yet that commonly is the case of 
kings, who, being at the highest, want mat- 
ter of desire, which makes their minds more 
languishing ; and have many representations 
of perils and shadows, which makes their 
minds the less clear. And this is one reason 
also of that effect which the Scripture 
speaketh of, "that the kmg's heart is in- 
scrutable." For multitude of jealousies, and 
lack of some predominant desire that should 
marshal and put in order all the rest, mak- 
eth any man's heart hard to find or sound. 
Hence it comes, likewise, that princes many 
times make themselves desires, and set their 
hearts upon toys: sometimes upon a build- 
ing, sometimes upon erecting of an order, 
sometimes upon the advancing of a person, 
sometimes upon obtaining excellency in 
some art or feat of the hand, — as Nero for 
playing on the harp, Domitian for certainty 
of the hand with the arrow, Commodus for 
playing at fence, Caracalla for driving 
chariots, and the like. This seemeth incred- 
ible unto those that know not the principle, 
that the mind of man is more cheered and 
refreshed by profitmg in small things, than 
by standing at a stay in great. We see also 
that kings that have been fortunate con- 
querors in their first years, it being not pos- 
sible for them to go forward infinitely, but 
that they must have some check or arrest in 
their fortunes, turn in their latter years to 
be superstitious and melancholy; as did Al- 
exander the Great, Diocletian, and in our 



102 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



memory Charles V., and others ; for he that 
is used to go forward, and findeth a stop, 
f alleth out of his own favor, and is not the 
thing he was. 

To speak now of the true temper of em- 
pire, it is a thing rare and hard to keep; 
for both temper and distemper consist of 
contraries. But it is one thing to mingle 
contraries, another to interchange them. 
The answer of Apollonius to Vespasian is 
full of excellent instruction, Vespasian 
asked him, "What was Nero's overthrow?" 
He answered, "Nero could touch and tune 
the harp well ; but in government sometimes 
he used to wind the pins too high, some- 
times to let them down too low." And cer- 
tain it is, that nothing destroyeth authority 
so much as the unequal and untimely inter- 
change of power pressed too far, and re- 
laxed too much. 

This is true, that the wisdom of all these 
latter times, in princes' affairs, is rather fine 
deliveries, and shiftings of dangers and mis- 
chiefs when they are near, than solid and 
grounded courses to keep them aloof. But 
this is but to try masteries with fortune. 
And let men beware how they neglect and 
suffer matter of trouble to be prepared, for 
no man can forbid the spark, nor tell whence 
it may come. The difficulties in princes' 
business are many and great ; but the great- 
est difficulty is often in their own mind. 
For it is common with j)rinces, saith Taci- 
tus, to will contradictories. "Sunt ple- 
rumque regum voluntates vehementes, et 
inter se eontrarige." ^ For it is the solecism 
of power to think to command the end, and 
yet not to endure the mean 

2. Of Innovations 

As the births of living creatures at first 
are ill-shapen, so are all Innovations, which 
are the births of time. Yet, notwithstand- 
ing, as those that first bring honor into their 
family are commonly more worthy than 
most that succeed, so the first precedent (if 



it be good) is seldom attained by imitation. 
For 111, to man's nature as it stands per- 
verted, hath a natural motion, strongest in 
continuance; but Good has a forced motion, 
strongest at first. Surely every medicine is 
an innovation, and he that will not apply 
new remedies must expect new evils. For 
time is the greatest mnovator; and if time 
of course alters things to the worse, and 
wisdom and counsel shall not alter them to 
the better, what shall be the end? 

It is true that what is settled by custom, 
though it be not good, yet at least it is fit; 
and those things Avhich have long gone to- 
gether are, as it were, confederate with 
themselves ; whereas new things piece not so 
well ; but, though they help by their utility, 
yet they trouble by their inconf ormity. Be- 
sides, they are like strangers, more admired, 
and less favored. All this is true, if time 
stood still; which contrariwise moveth so 
round that a froward retention of custom is 
as turbulent a thing as an innovation; and 
they that reverence too much old times, are 
but a scorn to the new. It were good, there- 
fore, that men in their innovations would 
follow the example of time itself; which 
indeed innovateth greatly, but quietly, and 
by degrees scarce to be perceived ; for other- 
wise, whatsoever is new is unlooked for : 
and ever it mends some, and pairs others; 
and he that is holpen takes it for a fortune, 
and thanks the time; and he that is hurt, 
for a wrong, and imputeth it to the author. 

It is good also not to try experiments in 
States, except the necessity be urgent, or 
the utility evident; and well to beware that 
it be the reformation that draweth on the 
change, and not the desire of change that 
pretendeth the reformation : and lastly, that 
the novelty, though it be not rejected, yet 
be held for a suspect ; and, as the Scripture 
saith, that we make a stand upon the ancient 
way, and then look about us, and discover 
what is the straight and right way, and so 
to walk in it. 



V 

Sonnets 
william shakespeare 

XV 

When I consider every thing that grows 
Holds in perfection but a little moment, 

1 "The desires of kings are generally violent and 
arbitrary." 



THE POET'S COMMENT 
I 



That this huge stage presenteth nought but 
shows 

Whereon the stars in secret influence com- 
ment ; 

When I perceive that men as plants increase, 

Cheered and check'd even by the self -same 

sky, 

Vaunt in their youthful sap, at height 
decrease, 



THE RENAISSANCE 



103 



And wear their brave state out of memory; 
Then the conceit of this inconstant stay 
Sets you most rich in youth before my 

sight, 

Where wasteful Time debateth with Decay, 

To change your day of youth to sullied 

night ; 

And all in war with Time for love of you, 

As he takes from you, I engraft you new. 



Let those who ax'e in favor with their stars 
Of public honor and proud titles boast, 
Whilst I, whom foi'tune of such triumph 

bars, 
Unlook'd for joy in that I honor most. 
Great princes' favorites their fair leaves 

spread 
But as the marigold at the sun's eye, 
And in themselves their pride lies buried, 
For at a frown they in their glory die. 
The painful warrior famoused for fight, 
After a thousand victories once foil'd, 
Is from the book of honor razed quite, 
And all the rest forgot for which he toil'd: 
Then happy I, that love and am beloved 
Where I may not remove nor be removed. 

XXIX 

When, in disgrace with fortune and men's 

eyes, 
I all alone beweep my outcast state 
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless 

cries 
And look upon myself and curse my fate, 
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope, 
Featured like him, like him with friends 

possess'd. 
Desiring this man's art and that man's scope, 
With what I most enjoy contented least; 
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despis- 
ing, 
Haply I think on thee, and then my state. 
Like to the lark at break of day arising 
From sullen earth, sings hymns at heaven's 

gate ; 
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth 

brings 
That then I scorn to change my state with 

kings. 

XXX 

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought 
I summon up remembrance of things past, 
I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought. 
And with old woes new wail my dear time's 
waste : 



Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, 
For precious friends hid in death's dateless 

night. 
And weep afresh love's long since caneell'd 

woe. 
And moan the expense of many a vanish'd 

sight : 
Then can I grieve at grievances foregone. 
And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er 
The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan. 
Which I new pay as if not paid before. 
But if the while I think on thee, dear 

friend, 
All losses are restored and sorrows end. 

LV 

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments 

Of princes, shall outlive this powerful 

rhyme ; 
But you shall shine more bright in these 

contents 
Than unswept stone besmear'd with sluttish 

time. 
When wasteful war shall statues overturn, 
And broils root out the work of masonry. 
Nor Mars his sword nor war's quick fire 

shall burn 
The living record of your memory. 
'Gainst death and all-oblivious enmity 
Shall you pace forth ; your praise shall still 

find room 
Even in the eyes of all posterity 
That wear this world out to the ending 

doom. 
So, till the judgment that yourself arise, 
You live in this, and dwell in lovers' eyes. 

LXIV 

When I have seen by Time's fell hand de- 
faced 
The rich proud cost of outworn buried age ; 
When sometime lofty towers I see down- 
razed 
And brass eternal slave to mortal rage; 
When I have seen the hungry ocean gain 
Advantage on the kingdom of the shore. 
And the firm soil win of the watery main, 
Increasing store with loss and loss with 

store ; 
When I have seen such interchange of state. 
Or state itself confounded to decay ; 
Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate, 
That Time will come and take my love away. 
This thought is as a death, which cannot 

choose 
But weep to have that which it fears to 
lose. 



104 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



LXV 

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor bound- 
less sea, 
But sad mortality o'er-sways their power, 
How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, 
Whose action is no stronger than a flower? 
0, how shall summer's honey breath hold out 
Against the wreckf ul siege of battering days. 
When rocks impregnable are not so stout. 
Nor gates of steel so strong, but Time 

decays ? 
fearful meditation ! where, alack. 
Shall Time's best jewel from Time's chest 

lie hid? 
Or what strong hand can hold his swift foot 

back? 
Or who his spoil of beauty can forbid? 
0, none, unless this miracle have might, 
That in black ink my love may still shine 
bright. 

LXVI 

Tired with all these, for restful death I 

cry,— 
As, to behold desert a beggar born. 
And needy nothing trimm'd in jollity, 
And purest faith unhappily forsworn. 
And gilded honor shamefully misplaced. 
And maiden virtue rudely strumpeted. 
And right perfection wrongfully disgTaced, 
And strength by limping sway disabled. 
And art made tongue-tied by authority, 
And folly doctor-like controlling skill. 
And simple truth miseall'd simplicity, 
And ca^ptive good attending captain ill : 

Tired with all these, from these would I be 
gone, 

Save that, to die, I leave my love alone. 



LXXIII 

That time of year thou mayst in me behold 
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do 

hang 
Upon those boughs which shake against the 

cold. 
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet 

birds sang. 
In me thou see'st the twilight of such day 
As after sunset fadeth in the west. 
Which by and by black night doth take 

away, 
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest. 
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire 
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie. 
As the death-bed whereon it must expire. 



Consumed with that which it was nour- 

ish'd by. 
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love 

more strong. 
To love that well which thou must leave 

ere long. 

CVII 

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul 
Of the wide world dreaming on things to 

come. 
Can yet the lease of my true love control. 
Supposed as forfeit to a confined doom. 
The mortal moon hath her ecliiDse endured 
And the sad augurs mock their own presage ; 
Ineertainties now crown themselves assured 
And peace proclaims olives of endless age. 
Now with the drops of this most balmy time 
My love looks fresh, and Death to me sub- 
scribes, 
Since, spite of him, I'll live in this poor 

rhyme. 
While he insults o'er dull and speechless 
tribes : 
And thou in this shalt find thy monument, 
When tyrants' crests and tombs of brass 
are spent. 

cxvi 

Let me not to the marriage of true minds 
Admit impediments. Love is not love 
Which alters when it alteration finds. 
Or bends with the remover to remove : 
0, no ! it is an ever-fixed mark 
That looks on tempests and is never shaken ; 
It is the star to every wandering bark. 
Whose worth's unknown, although his height 

be taken. 
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and 

cheeks 
Within his bending sickle's compass come ; 
Love alters not with his brief hours and 

weeks, 
But bears it out even to the edge of doom. 
If this be error and upon me proved, 
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. 

CXLVI 

Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth, 
[Amidst] these rebel powers that thee array, 
Why dost thou pine within and suffer dearth, 
Painting thy outward walls so costly gay? 
Why so large cost, having so short a lease. 
Dost thou upon thy fading mansion spend? 
Shall worms, inheritors of this excess, 
Eat up thy charge? is this thy body's end? 
Then, soul, live thou upon thy servant';? loss. 



THE RENAISSANCE 



105 



And let that pine to aggravate thy store ; 
Buy terms divine in selling hours of dross; 
Within be fed, without be rich no more : 
So shalt thou feed on Death, that feeds on 

men. 
And Death once 
dying then. 



dead, there's no more 



My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is 
sir edward dyer 

My mind to me a kingdom is. 
Such present joys therein I find 

That it excels all other bliss 

That earth affords or grows by kind : 

Though much I want which most would 
have, 

Yet still my mind forbids to crave. 

No princely pomp, no wealthy store, 

No force to win the victory. 
No wily wit to salve a sore. 

No shape to feed a loving eye ; 
To none of these I yield as thrall : 
For why? My mind doth serve for all. 

I see how plenty [surfeits] oft, 
And hasty climbers soon do fall; 

I see that those which are aloft 
Mishap doth threaten most of all; 

They get with toil, they keep with fear : 

Such cares my mind could never bear. 

Content to live, this is my stay ; 

I seek no more than may suffice; 
I press to bear no haughty sway; 

Look, what I lack my mind supplies : 
Lo, thus I triumph like a king, 
Content with that my mind doth bring. 

Some have too much, yet still do crave ; 

I little have, and seek no more. 
They are but jDoor,. though much they have, 

And I am rich with little store : 
They poor, I lich ; they beg, I give ; 
They lack, I leave ; they pine, I live. 

I laugh not at another's loss ; 

I grudge not at another's pain; 
No worldly waves my mind can toss; 

My state at one doth still remain: 
I fear no foe, I fawn no friend; 
I loathe not life, nor dread my end. 

Some weigh their pleasure by their lust, 
Their wisdom by their rage of will ; 



Their treasure is their only trust; 

A cloaked craft their store of skill: 
But all the pleasure that I find 
Is to maintain a quiet mind. 

My wealth is health and perfect ease; 

My conscience clear my chief defense; 
I neither seek by bribes to jDlease, 

Nor by deceit to breed offence : 
Thus do I live ; thus will I die ; 
Would all did so as well as I! 



The Character of a Happy Life 
SIR henry wotton 

How happy is he born and taught 
That serveth not another's will; 

Whose armor is his honest thought. 
And simple truth his utmost skill! 

Whose passions not his masters are ; 

Whose soul is still prepared for death. 
Untied unto the world by care 

Of public fame or private breath; 

Who envies none that chance doth raise ; 

Nor vice hath ever understood 
(How deepest wounds are given by praise!) 

Nor rules of State, but rules of good; 

Who hath his life from rumors freed ; 

Whose conscience is his strong retreat ; 
Whose state can neither flatterers feed. 

Nor ruin make oppressors great ; 

Who God doth late and early pray. 
More of his grace, than gifts, to lend, 

And entertains the harmless day 
With a religious book or friend ! 

This man is freed from servile bands 

Of hope to rise or fear to fall ! 
Lord of himself, though not of lands ; 

And having nothing, yet hath all ! 



Death 
john donne 

Death, be not proud, though some have 
called thee 

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art Aot so; 

For those whom thou think'st thou dost over- 
throw 



106 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Die not, poor Death; nor yet canst thou 

kill me. 
From Rest and Sleep, which but thy 

picture be. 
Much pleasure; then from thee much more 

must flow; 
And soonest our best men with thee do go — 
Rest of their bones and souls' delivery! 
Thou'rt slave to Fate, chance, kings, and 

desperate men. 
And dost with poison, war, and sickness 

dwell ; 
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as 

well 
And better than thy stroke. Why swell'st 

thou then ? 
One short sleep past, we wake eternally, 
And Death shall be no more: Death, thou 

shalt die ! 



A Pindaric Ode ^ 

BEN JONSON 

To the immortal memory and friendship of 

that noble pair, Sir Lucius Gary 

and Sir H. Morison 



The Strophe, or Turn 

Brave infant of Saguntum, clear 
Thy coming forth in that great year, 
When the prodigious Hannibal did crown 
His rage with razing your immortal town. 
Thou looking then about. 
Ere thou wert half got out. 
Wise child, didst hastily return, 
And mad'st thy mother's womb thine urn. 
How summ'd a circle didst thou leave man- 
kind 
Of deepest lore, could we the center find ! 

The Antistrophe, or Counter-Turn 

Did wiser nature draw thee back, 
From out the horror of that sack; 
Where shame, faith, honor, and regard of 

right, 
Lay trampled on? the deeds of death and 
night 
Urged, hurried forth, and hurl'd 
Upon the affrighted world; 
Fire, famine, and fell fury met, 
And all on utmost ruin set : 
As, could they but life's miseries foresee, 
No doubt all infants would return like thee. 



The Epode, or Stand 

For what is life, if measured by the space. 

Not by the act"? 
Or masked man, if valued by his face, 
Above his fact ? 
Here's one outlived his peers 
And told forth fourscore years : 
He vexed time, and busied the whole state ; 
Troubled both foes and friends ; 
But ever to no ends : 
What did this stirrer but die late? 
How well at twenty had he fallen or stood ! 
For three of his four score he did no good. 

II 

The Strophe, or Turn 

He entered well by virtuous parts, 
Got up, and thrived with honest arts, 
He purchased friends, and fame, and honors 

then. 
And had his noble name advanced with men ; 
But weary of that flight. 
He stooped in all men's sight 
To sordid flatteries, acts of strife, 
And sunk in that dead sea of life. 
So deep, as he did then death's waters sup. 
But that the cork of title buoyed him up. 

The Antistrophe, or Counter-Turn 

Alas ! but Morison fell young ! 

He never fell, — thou f all'st, my tongue. 
He stood a soldier to the last right end, 
A perfect patriot and a noble friend; 
But most, a virtuous son. 
All offices were done 

By him, so ample, full, and round. 

In weight, in measure, number, sound, 
As, though his age imperfect might appear. 
His life was of humanity the sphere. 

The Epode, or Stand 

Go now, and tell our days summed up with 
fears, 

And make them years ; 
Produce thy mass of miseries on the stage, 
To swell thine age; 
Repeat of things a throng, 
To show thou hast been long, 
Not lived; for life doth her great actions 
spell. 
By what was done and wrought 
In season, and so brought 
To light : her measures are, how well 



THE RENAISSANCE 



107 



Each syllable answered, and was formed, 

how fair; 
These make the lines of life, and that's her 

air! 

Ill 

The Strophe, or Turn 

It is not growing like a tree 
In bulk, doth make men better be ; 
Or standing long an oak, three hundred 

year, 
To fall a log at last, dry, bald, and sear : 
A lily of a day. 
Is fairer far, in May, 
Although it fall and die that night ; 
It was the plant and flower of light. 
In small proportions we just beauties see; 
And in short measures life may perfect be. 

The Antistrophe, or Counter-Turn 

Call, noble Lucius, then, for wine, 
And let thy locks with gladness shine; 
Accept this garland, plant it on thy head. 
And think, nay know, thy Morison's not 
dead. 
He leaped the present age, 
Possest with holy rage. 
To see that bright eternal day; 
Of which we priests and poets say 
Such truths as we expect for happy men ; 
And there he lives with memory and Ben 

The Epode, or Stand 

Jonson, who sung this of him, ere he went, 

Himself, to rest. 
Or taste a part of that full joy he meant 
To have exprest. 
In this bright asterism ; — 
Where it were friendship's schism, 
Were not his Lucius long with us to tarry, 
To separate these twi- 
Lights, the Dioscuri; 
And keep the one half from his Harry. 
But fate doth so alternate the design. 
Whilst that in heaven, this light on earth 
must shine, — 

IV 

The Strophe, or Turn 

And shine as you exalted are ; 
Two names of friendship, but one star : 
Of hearts the union, and those not by 
chance 



Made, or indenture, or leased out t' advance 
The profits for a time. 
No pleasures vain did chime. 
Of rhymes, or riots, at your feasts. 
Orgies of di'ink, or feigned protests; 
But simple love of greatness and of good, 
That knits brave minds and manners more 
than blood. 

The Antistrophe, or Counter-Turn 

This made you first to know the why 
You liked, tlien after, to a23ply 
That liking; and approach so one the 

t'other. 

Till either grew a portion of the other; 

Each styled by his end. 

The copy of his friend. 

You lived to be the great sir-names 

And titles by which all made claims 

Unto the Virtue: nothing perfect done, 

But as a Gary or a Morison. 

The Epode, or Stand 

And such a force the fair example had, 

As they that saw 
The good and durst not practice it, were glad 
That such a law 
Was left yet to mankind; 
Where they might read and find 
Friendship, indeed, was written not in 
words ; 
And with the heart, not pen. 
Of two so early men, 
Whose lines her rolls were, and records ; 
Who, ere the first down bloomed on the 

chin. 
Had sowed these fruits, and got the har- 
vest in. 

His Pilgrimage 
sir walter raleigh 

Give me my scallop-shell of quiet. 
My staff of faith to walk upon, 

My scrip of joy, immortal diet. 
My bottle of salvation. 

My gown of glory, hope's true gage ; 

And thus I'll take my pilgrimage. 

Blood must be my body's balmer; 

No other balm will there be given; 
Whilst my soul, like a quiet palmer, 

Traveleth towards the lands of heaven, 
Over the silver mountains. 



108 



THE GREAT TEADITION 



Where spring the nectar fountains. 

There will I kiss 

The bowl of bliss ; 
And drink mine everlasting fill 
Upon every milken hill. 
My soul will be a-dry before ; 
But, after, it will thirst no more. 

Then by that happy blissful day 

More peaceful pilgrims I shall see, 
That have cast off their rags of clay, 
And walk apparelled fresh like me. 

I'll take them first. 

To quench their thirst 
And taste of nectar suckets, 

At those clear wells 

Where sweetness dwells. 
Drawn up by saints in crystal buckets. 

And when our bottles and all we 
Are filled with immortality. 
Then the blessed paths we'll travel, 
Strowed with rubies thick as gravel ; 
Ceilings of diamonds, sapphire floors. 
High walls of coral, and pearly bowers. 

From thence to Heaven's bribeless hall, 
Where no corrupted voices brawl; 
No conscience molten into gold; 
No forged accuser bought or sold; 
No cause deferred, no vain-spent journey. 
For there Christ is the King's Attorney, 
Who pleads for all, without degrees. 
And he hath angels but no fees. 

And when the grand twelve million jury 
Of our sins, with direful fury, 
Against our souls black verdicts give, 
Christ pleads his death ; and then we live. 

Be Thou my speaker, taintless Pleader ! 
Unblotted Lawyer ! true Proeeeder ! 
Thou giv'st salvation, even for alms. 
Not with a bribed lawyer's palms. 

And this is mine eternal plea 
To Him that made heaven and earth and 

sea: 
That, since my flesh must die so soon, 
And want a head to dine next noon, 
Just at the stroke, when my veins start and 

spread. 
Set on my soul an everlasting head ! 

Then am I ready, like a palmer fit, 
To tread those blest paths; which before I 
writ. 



The Last Pages of "The History of the 
World" 

sir walter raleigh 

For the rest, if we seek a reason of the 
succession and continuance of this bound- 
less ambition in mortal men, we may add 
to that which hath been already said, that 
the kings and princes of the world have al- 
ways laid before them the actions, but not 
the ends, of those great ones which pre- 
ceded them. They are always transported 
with the glory of the one, but they never 
mind the misery of the other, till they find 
the experience in themselves. They neglect 
the advice of God, while they enjoy life, or 
hope it; but they follow the counsel of 
Death upon his first approach. It is he that 
puts into man all the wisdom of the world, 
without speaking a word, which Grod, with 
all the words of his law, promises, or threats, 
doth not infuse. Death, which hateth and 
destroyeth man, is believed ; God, which hath 
made him and loves him, is ahvays deferred; 
I have considered, saith Solomon, all the 
works that are under the sun, and, behold, 
all is vanity and vexation of spirit; but who 
believes it, till Death tells it us? It was 
Death, which opening the conscience of 
Charles the Fifth, made him enjoin his son 
Philip to restore Navarre ; and king Francis 
the First of France, to command that jus- 
tice should be done upon the murderers of 
the protestants in Merindol and Cabrieres, 
which till then he neglected. It is therefore 
Death alone that can suddenly make man to 
know himself. He tells the proud and in- 
solent, that they are but abjects, and hum- 
bles them at the instant, makes them cry, 
complain, and repent, yea, even to hate their 
forepast happiness. He takes the account 
of the rich, and proves him a beggar, a 
naked beggar, which hath interest in nothing 
but in the gravel that fills his mouth. He 
holds a glass before the eyes of the most 
beautiful, and makes them see therein their 
deformity and rottenness, and they acknowl- 
edge it. 

eloquent, just, and mighty Death! 
whom none could advise, thou hast per- 
suaded; what none hath dared, thou hast 
done; and whom all the world hath flat- 
tered, thou only hast cast out of the world 
and despised; thou hast drawn together all 
the far-stretched greatness, all the pride, 
cruelty, and ambition of man, and covered 
it all over with these two narrow words. Hie 
jacet ! 



PURITANS AND KINGS 



I. THE SOUL AND THE WOELD 



1. THE PEOPLE OF A BOOK 



The Puritan Spirit 

john richard green 

[From A Short History of the English 
People] 

No greater moral change ever passed over 
a nation than passed over England during 
the years which parted the middle of the 
reign of Elizabeth from the meeting of the 
Long Parliament. England became the 
people of a book, and that book was the 
Bible. It was as yet the one English book 
which was familiar to every Englishman ; it 
was read at churches and read at home, and 
everywhere its words, as they fell on ears 
which custom had not deadened, kindled a 
startling enthusiasm. When Bishop Bonner 
set up the first six Bibles in St. Paul's 
''many well-disposed people used much to 
resort to the hearing thereof, especially when 
they could get any that had an audible voice 
to read to them." . . . "One John Porter 
used sometimes to be occupied in that good- 
ly exercise, to the edifying of himself as well 
as others. This Porter was a fresh young 
man and of a big stature ; and great multi- 
tudes would resort thither to hear him, be- 
cause he could read well and had an audible 
voice." But the "goodly exercise" of read- 
ers such as Porter was soon superseded by 
the continued recitation of both Old Testa- 
ment and New in the public services of the 
Church ; while the small Geneva Bibles car- 
ried the Scripture into every home. The 
popularity of the Bible was owing to other 
causes besides that of religion. The whole 
prose literature of England, save the for- 
gotten tracts of Wyclif , has grown up since 
the translation of the Scriptures by Tyndale 
and Coverdale. So far as the nation at large 
was concerned, no history, no romance, hard- 
ly any poetry, save the little-known verse 
of Chaucer, existed in the English tongue 



109 



when the Bible was ordered to be set up in 
churches. Sunday after Sunday, day after 
day, the crowds that gathered round Bon- 
ner's Bibles in the nave of St. Paul's, or the 
family group that hung on the words of the 
Geneva Bible in the devotional exercises at 
home, were leavened with a new literature. 
Legend and annal, war-song and psalm. 
State-roll and biography, the mighty voices 
of prophets, the parables of Evangelists, 
stories of mission journeys, of perils by the 
sea and among the heathen, philosophic ar- 
guments, apocalyptic visions, all were flung 
broadcast over minds unoccupied for the 
most part by any rival learning. The dis- 
closure of the stores of Greek literature had 
wrought the revolution of the Renascence. 
The disclosure of the older mass of Hebrew 
literature wrought the revolution of the 
Reformation. But the one revolution was 
far deeper and wider in its effects than the 
other. No version could transfer to another 
tongue the peculiar charm of language which 
gave their value to the authors of Greece and 
Rome. Classical letters, therefore, remained 
in the possession of the learned, that is,_ of 
the few; and among these, with the excep- 
tion of Colet and More, or of the pedants 
who revived a Pagan worship in the gardens 
of the Florentine Academy, their direct in- 
fluence was purely intellectual. But the 
tongue of the Hebrew, the idiom of the 
Hellenistic Greek, lent themselves with a 
curious felicity to the purposes of transla- 
tion. As a mere literary monument, the 
English version of the Bible remains the 
noblest example of the English tongue, while 
its perpetual use made it from the instant 
of its appearance the standard of our lan- 
guage. For the moment, however, its lit- 
erary effect was less than its social. The 
power of the book over the mass of English- 
men showed itself in a thousand superficial 
ways, and in none more conspicuously than 



110 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



in the influence it exerted on ordinary 
speech. It formed, we must repeat, the 
whole literature which was practically ac- 
cessible to ordinary Englishmen; and when 
we recall the number of common phrases 
which we owe to great authors, the bits of 
Shakespeare, or Milton, or Dickens, or 
Thackeray, which unconsciously interweave 
themselves in our ordinary talk, we shall 
better understand the strange mosaic of 
Biblical words and phrases which colored 
English talk two hundred years ago. The 
mass of picturesque allusion and illustration 
which we borrow from a thousand books, 
our fathers were forced to borrow from one ; 
and the borrowing was the easier and the 
more natural that the range of the Hebrew 
literature fitted it for the expression of 
every phase of feeling. When Spenser 
poured forth his warmest love-notes in the 
"Epithalamion," he adopted the very words 
of the Psalmist, as he bade the gates open 
for the entrance of his bride. When Crom- 
well saw the mists break over the hills of 
Dunbar, he hailed the sun-burst with the 
cry of David: "Let God arise, and let his 
"enemies be scattered. Like as the smoke 
vanisheth, so shalt thou drive them away!" 
Even to common minds this familiarity with 
grand poetic imagery in prophet and 
apocalypse gave a loftiness and ardor of 
expression, that with all its tendency to ex- 
aggeration and bombast we may prefer to 
the slipshod vulgarisms of today. 

But far greater than its effect on litera- 
ture or social phrase was the effect of the 
Bible on the character of the people at large. 
Elizabeth might silence or tune the pulpits ; 
but it was impossible for her to silence or 
tune the great preachers of justice, and 
mercy, and truth, who spoke from the book 
which she had again opened for her people. 
The whole moral effect which is produced 
now-a-days by the religious newspaper, the 
tract, the essay, the lecture, the missionary 
report, the sermon, was then produced by 
the Bible alone; and its effect in this way, 
however dispassionately we examine it, was 
simply amazing. One dominant influence 
told on human action : and all the activities 
that had been called into life by the age that 
was passing away were seized, concentrated, 
and steadied to a definite aim by the spirit 
of religion. The whole temper of the nation 
felt the change. A new conception of life 
and of man superseded the old. A new 
moral and religious impulse spread through 



every class. Literature reflected the general 
tendency of the time ; and the dumpy little 
quartos of controversy and piety, which still 
crowd our older libraries, drove before them 
the classical translations and Italian nov- 
elettes of the age of the Eenascence. 
"Theology rules there," said Grotius of Eng- 
land only two years after Elizabeth's death ; 
and when Casaubon, the last of the great 
scholars of the sixteenth century, was invited 
to England by King James, he found both 
King and people indifferent to pure letters. 
"There is a great abundance of theologians 
in England," he says, "all point their studies 
in that direction." Even a country gentle- 
man like Colonel Hutchinson felt the theo- 
logical impulse. "As soon as he had im- 
proved his natural understanding with the 
acquisition of learning, the first studies he 
exercised himself in were the principles of 
religion." The whole nation became, in fact, 
a Church. The great problems of life and 
death, whose questionings found no answer 
in the higher minds of Shakespeare's day, 
pressed for an answer not only from noble 
and scholar but from farmer and shop- 
keeper in the age that followed him. We 
must not, indeed, picture the early Puritan 
as a gloomy fanatic. The religious move- 
ment had not as yet come into conflict with 
general culture. With the close of the Eliza- 
bethan age, indeed, the intellectual freedom 
which had marked it faded insensibly away : 
the bold philosophical speculations which 
Sidney had caught from Bruno, and which 
had brought on Marlowe and Ralegh the 
charge of atheism, died like her own re- 
ligious indifference, with the Queen. But 
the lighter and. more elegant sides of the 
Elizabethan culture harmonized well enough 
with the temper of the Puritan gentleman. 
The figure of Colonel Hutchinson, one of 
the Regicides, stands out from his wife's 
canvas with the grace and tenderness of a 
portrait by Vandyck. She dwells on the per- 
sonal beauty which distinguished his youth, 
on "his teeth even and white as the purest 
ivory," "his hair of brown, very thickset in 
his youth, softer than the finest silk, curling 
with loose great rings at the ends." Serious 
as was his temper in graver matters, the 
young squire of Owthorpe was fond of 
hawking, and piqued himself on his skill 
in dancing and fence. His artistic taste 
showed itself in a critical love of "paintings, 
sculpture, and all liberal arts," as well as in 
the pleasure he took in his gardens, "in the 



PURITANS AND KINGS 



111 



improvement of his grounds, in planting 
groves and walks and forest trees." If he 
was "diligent in his examination of the 
Scriptures," "he had a great love for music, 
and often diverted himself with a viol, on 
which he played masterly." We miss, in- 
deed, the passion of the Elizabethan time, its 
caprice, its largeness of feeling and sjrmpa- 
thy, its quick pulse of delight; but, on the 
other hand, life gained in moral grandeur, 
in a sense of the dignity of manhood, in 
orderliness and equable force. The temper 
of the Puritan gentleman was just, noble, 
and self -controlled. The larger geniality of 
the age that had passed away was replaced 
by an intense tenderness within the nar- 
rower circle of the home. "He was as kind 
a father," says Mrs. Hutchinson of her hus- 
band, "as dear a brother, as good a master, 
as faithful a friend as the world had." The 
wilful and lawless passion of the Renascence 
made way for a manly purity. "Neither in 
youth nor riper years could the most fair or 
enticing woman ever draw him into unneces- 
sary familiarity or dalliance. Wise and 
virtuous women he loved, and delighted in 
all pure and holy and unblamable conversa- 
tion with them, but so as never to excite 
scandal or temptation. Scurrilous discourse 
even among men he abhorred; and though 
he sometimes took pleasure in Avit and mirth," 
yet that which was mixed with impurity he 
never could endure." To the Puritan the 
wilfulness of life, in which the men of the 
Renascence had reveled, seemed unworthy 
of life's character and end. His aim was 
to attain self-command, to be master of him- 
self, of his thought and speech and acts. 
A certain gravity and reflectiveness gave its 
tone to the lightest details of his converse 
with the world about him. His temper, quick 
as it might naturally be, was kept under 
strict control. In his discourse he was ever 
on his guard against talkativeness or fri- 
volity, striving to be deliberate in speech and 
"ranking the words beforehand." His life 
was orderly and methodical, sparing of diet 
and of self-indulgence; he rose early, "he 
never was at any time idle, and hated to see 
any one else so." The new sobriety and 
self-restraint marked itself even in his 
change of dress. The gorgeous colors and 



jewels of the Renascence disajDpeared. 
Colonel Hutchinson "left off very early the 
wearing of anything that was costly, yet in 
his iDlainest negligent habit appeared very 
much a gentleman." The loss of color and 
variety in costume reflected no doubt a cer- 
tain loss of color and variety in life itself; 
but it was a loss compensated by solid gains. 
Greatest among these, perhaps, was the new 
conception of social equality. Their com- 
mon calling, their common brotherhood in 
Christ, annihilated in the mind of the Puri- 
tans that overpowering sense of social dis- 
tinctions which characterized the age of 
Elizabeth. The meanest peasant felt him- 
self ennobled as a child of God. The proud- 
est noble recognized a spiritual equality in 
the poorest "saint." The great social revolu- 
tion of the Civil Wars and the Protectorate 
was already felt in the demeanor of gentle- 
men like Hutchinson. "He had a loving and 
sweet courtesy to the poorest, and would 
often employ many spare hours with the 
commonest soldiers and poorest laborers." 
"He never disdained the meanest nor flat- 
tered the greatest." But it was felt even 
more in the new dignity and self-respect 
with which the consciousness of their "call- 
ing" invested the classes beneath the rank 
of the gentry. Take such a portrait as that 
which Nehemiah Wallington, a turner in 
Eastcheap, has left us of a London house- 
wife, his mother. "She was very loving," 
he says, "and obedient to her parents, lov- 
ing and kind to her husband, very tender- 
hearted to her children, loving all that were 
godly, much misliking the wicked and pro- 
fane. She was a pattern of sobriety unto 
many, very seldom was seen abroad except 
at church ; when others recreated themselves 
at holidays and other times, she would take 
her needle-work and say, 'here is my recrea- 
tion.' . . . God had given her a preg- 
nant wit and an excellent memory. She 
was very ripe and perfect in all stories of 
the Bible, likewise in all the stories of the 
Martyrs, and could readily turn to them; 
she was also perfect and well seen in the 
English Chronicles, and in the descents of 
the Kings of England. She lived in holy 
wedlock with her husband twenty years, 
wanting but four days." 



112 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



2. THE CONFLICT IN THE SOUL 



The Collar 

george herbert 

I struck the board, and cried, "No more; I 

"will abroad ! 
What ! shall I ever sigh and pine *? 
My lines and life are free ; free as the road, 
Loose as the wind, as large as store. 

Shall I be still in suit? 
Have I no harvest but a thorn 
Tt) let me blood, and not restore 
What I have lost with cordial fruit f 
Sure there was wine 
Before my sighs did dry it; there was 
corn 
Before my tears did drown it ; 
Is the year only lost to me? 
Have I no bays to crown it, 
No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted. 
All wasted? 
Not so, my heart, but there is fruit, 
And thou hast hands. 
Recover all thy sigh-blown age 
On double pleasures ; leave thy cold dispute 
Of what is fit and not; forsake thy cage, 

Thy rope of sands 
Which petty thoughts have made; and made 
to thee 
Good cable, to enforce and draw, 

And be thy law. 
While thou didst wink and wouldst not 
see. 
Away! take heed; 
I will abroad. 
Call iu thy death's head there, tie up thy 
fears : 
He that forbears 
To suit and serve his need 
Deserves his load." 
But as I raved, and grew more fierce and 
wild 
At every word, 
Methought I heard one calling, "Child"; 
And I replied, "My Lord." 



Love 

george herbert 

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew 
back. 
Guilty of dust and sin. 
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow 
slack 
From my first entrance in. 



Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning, 
If I lacked anything. 

"A guest," I answered, "worthy to be here" : 
Love said, "You shall be he." 

"I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear, 
I cannot look on Thee !" 

Love took my hand and smiling did reply, 
"Who made the eyes but I ?" 

"Truth, Lord; but I have marred them: let 
my shame 
Go where it doth deserve." 
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore 
the blame?" 
"My dear, then I will serve." 
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste 
my meat." 
So I did sit and eat. 

Virtue 
george herbert 

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, 
The bridal of the earth and sky ! 

The dew shall weep thy fall tonight; 
For thou must die. 

Sweet rose, whose hue, angry and brave, 
Bids the rash gazer wipe his eye. 

Thy root is ever in its grave, 
And thou must die. 

Sweet spring, full of sweet days and roses, 
A box where sweets compacted lie. 

My music shows ye have your closes. 
And all must die. 

Only a sweet and virtuous soul, 

Like seasoned timber, never gives; 

But though the whole world turn to coal. 
Then chie.'^y lives. 

The Retreat 

henry vaughan 

Happy those early days, when I 
Shined in my angel-infancy ! 
Before I understood this place 
Appointed for my second race. 
Or taught my soul to fancy aught 
But a white, celestial thought; 
When yet I had not walked above 
A mile or two from my first love. 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



113 



And looking- back, at that short space, 
Could see a glimpse of his bright face; 
When on some gilded cloud or flower 
My gazing soul would dwell an hour, 
And in those weaker glories spy 
Some shadows of eternity; 
Before I taught my tongue to wound 
My conscience with a sinful sound. 
Or had the black art to dispense, 
A several sin to every sense. 
But felt through all this fleshly dress 
Bright shoots of everlastingness. 
0, how I long to travel back. 
And tread again that ancient track. 
That I might once more reach that plain. 
Where first I left my glorious train ; 
From whence the enlightened spirit sees 
That shady city .of palm trees. 
But ah ! my soul with too much stay 
Is drunk, and staggers in the way ! 
Some men a forward motion love. 
But I by backward steps would move; 
And when this dust falls to the urn. 
In that state I came, return. 



The World 

henry vaughan 

I saw Eternity the other night. 

Like a great ring of pure and endless light, 

All calm, as it was bright ; 
And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, 
_ years, 

Driv'n by the spheres 
Like a vast shadoAV moved; in which the 
Avorld 

And all her train were hurled. 
The doting- lover in his quaintest strain 

Did there complain ; 
Near him, his lute, his fancy, and his flights, 

Wit's four delights, 
With gloves, and knots, the silly snares of 
pleasure ; 

Yet his dear treasure, 
All scattered lay, while he his eyes did pour 

Upon a flower. 

The darksome statesman, hung with weights 

and woe, 
Like a thick midnight-fog, moved there so 
slow, 
He did not stay, nor go ; 
Condemning thoughts, like sad eclipses, 
scowl 
Upon his soul. 
And clouds of crying witnesses without 
Pursued him with one shout. 



Yet digged the mole, and lest his ways be 
found. 

Worked under ground. 
Where he did clutch his prey; but one did 
see 

That policy; 
Churches and altars fed him; perjuries 

Were gnats and flies; 
It rained about him blood and tears, but he 

Drank them as free. 

The fearful miser on a heap of rust 

Sat pining all his life there, did scarce trust 

His own hands with the dust. 
Yet would not place one piece above, but 
lives 

In fear of thieves. 
Thousands there were as frantic as himself, 

And hugged each one his pelf ; 
The downright epicure placed heaven in 

sense. 

And scorned pretence; 
While others, slipt into a wide excess, 

Said little less; 
The weaker sort, slight, trivial wares en- 
slave. 

Who think them brave; 
And poor, despised Truth sat counting by 

Their victory. 

Yet some, who all this while did weep and 

sing, 
And sing and Aveep, soared up into the ring ; 

But most Avould use no wing. 
fools, said I, thus to prefer dark night 

Before true light! 
To live in grots and caves, and hate the day 

Because it shoAvs the Avay, 
The Avay, which from this dead and dark 
iabode 

Leads up to God; 
A way where you might tread the sun, and be 

More bright than he! 
But, as I did their madness so discuss. 

One Avhispered thus : 
"This ring the Bridegroom did for none 
provide. 

But for his bride." 

Behind the Veil 

HENRY A'AUGHAN 

They are all gone into the world of light ! 

And I alone sit lingering here ; 
Their very memory is fair and bright, 

And my sad thoughts doth clear. 

It glows and glitters in my cloudy breast, 
Like stars upon some gloomy grove. 



114 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Or those faint beams in which this hill is 
drest, 
After the sun's remove. 

I see them walking in an air of glory, 
Whose light doth trample on my days : 

My days, which are at best but dull and 
hoary. 
Mere glimmering and decays. 

holy Hope! and high Humility, 

High as the heavens above ! 
These are your walks, and you have showed 
them me. 

To kindle my cold love. 

Dear, beauteous Death ! the jewel of the just. 
Shining nowhere, but in the dark, 

What mysteries do lie beyond thy dust, 
Could man outlook that mark ! 

He that hath found some fledged bird's nest, 
may know 

At first sight if the bird be flown ; 
But what fair well or grove he sings in now. 

That is to him unknown. 

And yet as angels in some brighter dreams 
Call to the soul, when man doth sleep, 

So some strange thoughts transcend our 
wonted themes. 
And into glory peep. 

If a star were confined mto a tomb. 

The captive flames must needs burn there ; 

But when the hand that locked her up, gives 
room. 
She'll shine through all the sphere. 

Father of eternal life, and all 

Created glories under Thee, 
Eesume Thy spirit from this world of thrall 

Into true liberty. 

Either disperse these mists, which blot and 
fill 

My perspective still as they pass; 
Or else remove me hence unto that hill. 

Where I shall need no glass. 

The Fight with Apollyon 

john bunyan 

[From The Pilgrim's Progress, 1678] 

But now, in this Valley of Humiliation, 
poor Christian was hard put to it; for he 
had gone but a little way before he espied 
a foul fiend coming over the field to meet 
him : his name is Apollyon. Then did Chris- 
tian begin to be afraid, and to cast in his 



mind whether to go back or to stand his 
ground. But he considered again that he 
had no armor for his back, and therefore 
thought that to turn the back to him might 
give him the greater advantage with ease to 
pierce him with his darts. Therefore he re- 
solved to venture and stand his ground ; for, 
thought he, had I no more in mine eye than 
, the saving of my life, 'twould be the best 
, way to stand. 

So he went on, and Apollyon met him. 
Now the monster was hideous to behold : he 
was clothed with scales like a fish (and they 
are his pride) ; he had wings like a dragon, 
feet like a bear, and out of his belly came 
fire and smoke; and his mouth was as the 
mouth of a lion. When he was come up to 
Christian, he beheld him with a disdainful 
countenance, and thus began to question 
with him. 

Apol. Whence come you? and whither 
are you bound? 

Chr. I am come from the City of De- 
struction, which is the place of all evil, and 
am going to the City of Zion. 

Apol. By this I perceive thou art one of 
my subjects; for all that country is mine, 
and I am the prince and god of it. How 
is it then that thou hast run away from thy 
king? Were it not that I hope thou mayest 
do me more service, I would strike thee now 
at one blow to the ground. 

Chr. I was born indeed in your domin- 
ions, but your service was hard, and your 
wages such as a man could not live on ; for 
the wages of sin is death. Therefore when 
I was come to years, I did as other consid- 
erate persons do, look out, if perhaps I 
might mend myself. [Apollyon now tries in 
vain to reclaim Christian, who refuses, say- 
ing that henceforth he owes allegiance only 
to the Prince.] 

Apol. I am an enemy to this Prince; I 
hate his person, his laws, and people ; I am 
come out on purpose to withstand thee. 

Chr. Apollyon, beware what you do, for 
I am in the King's highway, the way of 
holiness ; therefore take heed to yourself. 

Apol. Then Apollyon straddled quite 
over the whole breadth of the way, and said, 
I am void of fear in this matter. Prepare 
thyself to die; for I swear by my infernal 
den that thou shalt go no further; here will 
I spill thy soul. 

And with that he threw a flaming dart 
at his breast; but Christian had a shield in 
his hand, with which he caught it, and so 
prevented the danger of that. 



PURITANS AND KINGS 



115 



Then did Christian draw, for he saw 'twas 
time to bestir him; and ApoUyon as fast 
made at him, throwing darts as thick as 
hail; by the which, notwithstanding all that 
Christian could do to avoid it, ApoUyon 
wounded him in his head, his hand, and 
foot. This made Christian give a little back ; 
ApoUyon therefore followed his work 
amain, and Christian again took courage, 
and resisted as manfully as he could. This 
sore combat lasted for above half a day, 
even till Christian was almost quite spent; 
for you must know that Christian, by reason 
of his wounds, must needs grow weaker and 
weaker. 

Then ApoUyon, espying his opportunity, 
began to gather up close to Christian, and 
wrestling with him, gave him a dreadful 
fall; and with that Christian's sword flew 
out of his hand. Then said ApoUyon, I am 
sure of thee now; and with that he had al- 
most pressed him to death, so that Christian 
began to despair of life. But as God would 
have it, while ApoUyon was fetching of his 
last blow, thereby to make a full end of this 
good man, Christian nimbly reached out his 
hand for his sword, and caught it, saying, 
Rejoice not against me, mine enemy ! 
when I fall I shall arise ; and with that gave 
him a deadly thrust, which made him give 
back, as one that had received his mortal 
wound. Christian perceiving that, made at 
him again, saying. Nay, in all these things, 
we are more than conquerors, through him 
that loved us. And with that ApoUyon 
spread forth his dragon's wings, and sped 
him away, that Christian for a season saw 
him no more. 

In this combat no man can imagine, un- 
less he had seen and heard as I did, wliat 
yelling and hideous roaring ApoUyon made 
all the time of the fight; — ^lie spake like a 
dragon; and on the other side, what sighs 
and groans burst from Christian's heart. I 
never saw him all the while give so much as 
one pleasant look, till he perceived he had 
wounded ApoUyon with his two-edged 
sword; then indeed he did smile and look 
upward. But 'twas the dreadfuUest fight 
that ever I saw. 

So when the battle was over, Christian 
said, I will here give thanks to Him that 
hath delivered me out of the mouth of the 
lion, to Him that did help me against Apol- 
lyon. And so he did, saying, 

Great Beelzebub, the Captain of this fiend, 
Design'd my ruin; therefore to this end 



He sent him harness'd out ; and he with rage 
That hellish was, did fiercely me engage: 
But blessed Michael helped me, and I 
By dint of sword did quickly make him fly. 
Therefore to Him let me give lasting praise. 
And thank and bless His holy name always. 

Then there came to him a hand with some 
of the leaves of the Tree of Life, the which 
Christian took and applied to the wounds 
that he had received in the battle, and was 
healed immediately. He also sat down in 
that place to eat bread, and to drink of the 
bottle that was given him a little before : so 
being refreshed, he addressed himself to his 
journey, with his swoi'd drawn in his hand; 
for he said, I know not but some other 
enemy may be at hand. But he met with no 
other atfront from ApoUyon quite through 
this valley. 

Vanity Fair 

john buntan 

[From The Pilgrim's Progress] 

Then I saw in my dream, that when they 
were got out of the wilderness, they pres- 
ently saw a town before them, and the name 
of that town is Vanity. And at the town 
there is a fair kept, called Vanity Fair; it 
is kept all the year long; it beareth the name 
of Vanity Fair, because the town where 'tis 
kept is lighter than Vanity; and lalso be- 
cause all that is there sold, or that cometh 
thither, is Vanity. As is the saying of the 
wise, "All that cometh is Vanity." 

This fair is no new-erected business, but 
a thing of ancient standing ; I will show you 
the original of it. 

Almost five thousand years agone, there 
were pilgrims walking to the celestial city, 
as these two honest persons are ; and Beelze- 
bub, ApoUyon, and Legion, with their com- 
panions, perceiving by the path that the 
pilgrims made, that their way to the city lay 
through this town of Vanity, they contrived 
here to set up a fair; a fair wherein should 
be sold all sorts of Vanity, and that it should 
last all the year long: therefore at this fair 
are all such merchandise sold, as houses, 
lands, trades, places, honors, preferments, 
titles, countries, kingdoms, lusts, pleasures, 
and delights of all sorts, as lives, blood, 
bodies, souls, silver, gold, pearls, precious 
stones, and what not. 

And moreover, at this fair there is at all 
times to be seen juggling, cheats, games. 



116 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



plays, fools, apes, knaves, and rogues, and 
that of all sorts. 

Here are to be seen too, and that for 
nothing, thefts, murders, adulteries, false- 
swearers, and that of a blood-red color. 

And as in other fairs of less moment there 
are the several rows and streets under their 
proper names, where such and such wares 
are vended, so here likewise you have the 
projDer places, roAVS, streets, (viz., countries 
and kingdoms) where the wares of this fair 
are soonest to be found : Here is the Britain 
Row, the French Eow, the Italian Row, the 
Spanish Row, the German Row, where sev- 
eral sorts of vanities are to be sold. 

Now, as I said, the way to the celestial 
city lies just through this town where this 
lusty fair is kept; and he that will go to the 
city, and yet not go through this town, must 
needs go out of the world. The Prince of 
Princes himself, when here, went through 
this town to his own country, and that upon 
a fair-day too; yea, and as I think, it was 
Beelzebub, the chief lord of this fair, that 
invited him to buy of his vanities : yea, 
would have made him lord of the fair, would 
he but have done him reverence as he went 
through the town. Yea, because he was 
such a person of honor, Beelzebub had him 
from street to street, and showed him all the 
kingdoms of the world in a little time, that 
he might (if possible) allure that Blessed 
One to cheapen and buy some of his vani- 
ties ; but he had no mind to the merchandise, 
and therefore left the town, without laying 
out so much as one farthing upon these van- 
ities. This fair therefore is an ancient 
thing, of long standing and a very great 
fair. 

Now these pilgrims, as I said, must needs 
go through this fair. Well, so they did ; but 
behold, even as they entered into the fair, 
all the people in the fair were moved, and 
the town itself as it were in a hubbub about 
them; and that for several reasons: for 

First : The pilgTims were clothed with 
such kind of raiment as was diverse from 
the raiment of -any that traded in that fair. 
The people therefore of the fair made a 
great gazing upon them : some said they 
were fools, some they were bedlams, and 
some they are outlandish-men. 

Secondly: And as they wondered at 
their apparel, so they did likewise at their 
speech ; for few could understand what they 
said: they naturally sjDoke the language 
_ of Canaan but they that kept the fair were 
the men of this world ; so that from one end 



of the fair to the other they seemed bar- 
barians each to the other. 

Thirdly: But that which did not a lit- 
tle amuse the merchandisers was, that these 
pilgrims set very light by all their wares; 
they cared not so much as to look upon 
them ; and if they called upon them to buy, 
they would put their fingers in their ears, 
and cry, ''Turn away mine eyes from be- 
holding vanity," and look upwards, signi- 
fying that their trade and traf&e was in 
Heaven. 

One chanced, mockingly, beholding the 
carriages of the men, to say unto them, 
"What will ye buy?" But they, looking 
gravely upon him, answered, ''We buy the 
Truth." At that there was an occasion 
taken to despise the men the more; some 
mocking, some taunting, some speaking re- 
proachfully, and some calling upon others 
to smite them. At last things came to a 
hubbub and a great stir in the fair, inso- 
much that all order was confounded. Now 
was word presently brought to the great 
one of the fair, who quickly came down and 
deputed some of his most trusty friends 
to take those men into examination, about 
whom the fair was almost overturned. So 
the men were brought to examination; and 
they that sat upon them, asked them whence 
they came, whither they went, and what 
they did there in such an unusual garb? 
The men told them that they were pilgrims 
and strangers in the world, and that they 
were going to their own country, which was 
the heavenly Jerusalem; and that they had 
given no occasion to the men of the town, 
nor yet to the merchandisers, thus to abuse 
them, and to let them in their journey, ex- 
cept it was for that, when one asked them 
what they would buy, they said they would 
buy the truth. But they that were ap- 
pointed to examine them did not believe 
them to be any other than bedlams and mad, 
or else such as came to put all things into 
a confusion in the fair. Therefore they 
took them and beat them, and besmeared 
them with dirt, and then put them into tlie 
cage, that they might be made a spectacle 
to all the men of the fair. There there- 
fore they lay for some time, and were made 
the objects of any man's sport, or malice, 
or revenge, the great one of the fair laugh- 
ing still at all that befell them. But the 
men being patient, and not rendering rail- 
ing for railing, but contrariwise blessing, 
and giving good words for bad, and kind- 
ness for injuries done, some men in the 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



117 



fair that were more observing, and less 
prejudiced than the rest, began to check 
and blame the baser sort for their continual 
abuses done by them to the men ; they there- 
fore in angry manner let fly at them again, 
counting them as bad as the men in the 
cage, and telling them that they seemed 
confederates, and should be made partakers 
of their misfortunes. The other replied, 
that for aught they could see, the men were 
quiet, and sober, and intended nobody any 
harm ; and that there were many that traded 
in their fair that were more worthy to be 
put into the cage, yea, and pillory too, 
than were the men that they had abused. 
Thus, after divers words had passed on 
both sides, (the men behaving themselves 
all the while very wisely and soberly be- 
fore them) they fell to some blows among 
themselves, and did harm one to another. 
Then were these two poor men brought 
before their examiners again, and there 
charged as being guilty of the late hubbub 
that had been in the fair. So they beat 
them pitifully and hanged irons upon them, 
and led them in chains up and down the 
fair, for an example and a terror to others, 
lest any should speak in their behalf, or 
join themselves unto them. But Christian 
and Faithful behaved themselves yet more 



wisely, and received the ignominy and shame 
that were cast upon them, with so much 
meekness and patience, that it won to their 
side (though but a few in comparison of 
the rest) several of the men in the fair. 
This put the other party yet into a greater 
rage, insomuch that they concluded the 
death of these two men. Wherefore they 
threatened, that the cage, nor irons should 
serve their turn, but that they should die,* 
for the abuse they had done, and for de- 
luding the men of the fair. 

Then were they remanded to the cage 
again, until further order should be taken 
with them. So they put them in, and made 
their feet fast in the stocks. 

Here also they called again to mind what 
they had heard from their faithful friend 
Evangelist, and were the more confirmed 
in their way and sufferings, by what he told 
them would happen to them. They also 
now comforted each other, that whose lot 
it was to suffer, even he should have the 
best of it; therefore each man secretly 
wished that he might have that preferment : 
but committing themselves to the All-wise 
dispose of Him that ruleth all things, with 
much content they abode in the condition 
in which they were, until they should be 
otherwise disposed of. 



3. CARPE DIEM : ROBERT HERRICK 



[From Hesperides and Noble Numbers, 
1648] 

CoRiNNA^s Going a-Maying 

Get up, get up for shame, the blooming- 
morn 

Upon her wings presents the god unshorn. 
See how Aurora throws her fair 
Fresh-quilted colors through the air : 
Get up, sweet slug-a-bed, and see 
The dew bespangling herb and tree. 

Each flower has wept and bow'd toward the 
east 

Above an hour since : yet you not dress'd ; 
Nay ! not so much as out of bed 1 
When all the birds have matins said 
And sung their thankful hymns, 'tis sin. 
Nay, profanation, to keep in, 

Whenas a thousand virgins on this day 

Spring, sooner than the lark, to fetch in 
May. 

Rise and put on your foliage, and be seen 
To come forth, like the spring-time, fresh 
and green. 



And sweet as Flora. Take no care 
For jewels for your gown or hair: 
Fear not ; the leaves will strew 
Gems in abundance upon you : 

Besides, the childhood of the day has kept, 

Against you come, some orient pearls un- 
wept; 
Come and receive them while the light 
Hangs 'on the dew-locks of the night^ 
And Titan on the eastern hill 
Retires himself, or else stands still 

Till you come forth. Wash, dress, be brief 
in praying: 

Few beads are best when once we go a-May- 
ing. 

Come, my Corinna, come; and, coming, 

mark 
How each fleld turns a street, each street a 
park 
Made green and trimm'd with trees; see 

how 
Devotion gives each house a bough 
Or branch: each porch, each door ere 
this 



118 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



An ark, a tabernacle is, 

Made U23 of white-thorn, neatly interwove; 

As if here were those cooler shades of love. 
Can such delights be in the street 
And open fields and we not see't? 
Come, we'll abroad; and let's obey 
The proclamation made for May: 

And sin no more, as we have done, by 

staying ;_ 
e-But, my Corinna, come, let's go a-Maying. 

There's not a budding boy or girl this day 

But is got up, and gone to bring in May. 

A deal of youth, ere this, is come 

Back, and with white-thorn laden home. 

Some have dispatched their cakes and 

cream 
Before that we have left to dream : 
And some have wept, and woo'd, and 

plighted troth. 
And chose their priest, ere we can cast off 
sloth : 
Many a green-gown has been given; 
Many a kiss, both odd and even : 
Many a glance too has been sent 
From out the eye, love's firmament; 
Many a jest told of the key's betraying 
This night, and locks pick'd, yet we're hot 
a-Maying. 

Come, let us go while we are in our prime; 

And take the harmless folly of the time. 
We shall grow old apace, and die 
Before we know our liberty. 
Our life is short, and our days run 
As fast away as does the sun; 

And, as a vapor or a drop of rain. 

Once lost, can ne'er be found again, 
So when or yovi or I are made 
A fable, song, or fleeting shade. 
All love, all liking, all delight 
Lies drowned with us in endless night. 

Then while time serves, and we are but de- 
caying. 

Come, my Corinna, come, let's go a-Maying. 

To THE ViRGINS;, TO MakE MuCH 

OF Time 

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may. 

Old Time is still a-flying; 
And this same flower that smiles today. 

Tomorrow will be dying. 

The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, 

The higher he's a-getting, 
The sooner will his race be run. 

And nearer he's to setting. 



That age is best which is the first. 
When youth and blood are warmer; 

But being spent, the worse, and worst 
Times still succeed the former. 

Then be not coy, but use your time, 

And while ye may, go marry; 
Tor, having lost but once your prime. 

You may forever tarry. 

To Daffodils 

Pair Daffodils, we weep to see 

You haste away so soon; 
As yet the early rising sun 
Has not attained his noon. 
Stay, stay. 
Until the hasting day 

Has run 
But to the even-song; 
And, having prayed together, we 
Will go with you along. 
• 
We have short time to stay, as ^ ou. 

We have as short a spring; 
As quick a growth to meet decay. 
As you, or anything. 
We die 
As your hours do, and dry 

Away, 
Like to the summer's rain; 
Or as the pearls of morning's dew, 
Ne'er to be found again. 

A Thanksgiving to God for His House 

Lord, thou hast given me a cell 

Wherein to dwell, 
A little house, whose humble roof 

Is weather-proof. 
Under the spars of which I lie 

Both soft and dry; 
Where thou, my chamber for to ward, 

Hast- set a guard 
Of harmless thoughts to watch and keep 

Me, while I sleep. 
Low is my porch, as is my fate. 

Both void of state; 
And yet the threshold of my door 

Is worn by th' poor. 
Who thither come and freely get 

Good words, or meat. 
Like as my parlor,, so my hall 

And kitchen's small; 
A little buttery, and therein 

A little bin, 
Which keeps my little loaf of bread 

Unchipped, unflead; 



PURITANS AND KINGS 



119 



Some brittle sticks of thorn or briar 

Make me a fire, 
Close by whose living coal I sit, 

And glow like it. 
Lord, I confess, too, when I dine, 

The pulse is thine. 
And all those other bits that be 

There placed by thee; 
The worts, the purslain, and the mess 

Of water-cress. 
Which of thy kindness thou hast sent ; 

And my content 
Makes those, and my beloved beet. 

To be more sweet. 
'Tis thou that crown'st my glittering 
hearth 

With guiltless mirth. 
And giv'st me wassail bowls to drink. 

Spiced to the brink. 
Lord, 'tis thy plenty-dropping hand 

That soils my land, 
And giv'st me, for my bushel sown, 

Twice ten for one; 
Thou mak'st my teeming hen to lay 

Her egg each day ; 
Besides my healthful ewes to bear 

Me twins each year; 
The while the conduits of my kine 

Run cream, for wine. 
All these, and better thou dost send 

Me, to this end. 
That I should render, for my part, 

A thankful heart, 
Which, fired with incense, I resign, 



As wholly thine; 
But the acceptance, that must be, 
My Christ, by thee. 



To Keep a True Lent 

Is this a fast, to keep 
The larder lean. 
And clean 
From fat of veals and sheep" 

Is it to quit the dish 

Of flesh, yet still 
To fill 
The platter high with fish? 

Is it to fast an hour. 

Or ragg'd to go. 
Or show 
A downcast look, and sour"? 

No; 'tis a fast, to dole 

Thy sheaf of wheat 
And meat 
Unto the hungry soul. 

It is to fast from strife. 
From old debate. 
And hate; 
To circumcise thy life. 

To show a heart grief -rent; 
To starve thy sin. 
Not bin; 
And that's to keep thy Lent. 



11. FAITH AND FEEEDOM: JOHN MILTON 



1. THE MAKER OF AN HEROIC POEM 



Himself a True Poem 

[From An Apology for Smectymnuus, 1642] 

Nor blame it, readers, in those years to 
propose to themselves such a reward as 
the noblest dispositions above other things 
in this life have sometimes preferred; 
whereof not to be sensible when good and 
fair in one person meet argues both a gross 
and shallow judgment, and withal an un- 
gentle and swainish breast. For by the 
firm settling of these persuasions, I became, 
to my best memory, so much a proficient, 
that if I found those authors anywhere 
speaking unworthy things of themselves, or 
unchaste of those names which before they 
had extolled ; this effect it wrought with me, 



from that time forward their art I still ap- 
plauded, but the men I deplored ; and above 
them all, preferred the two famous renown- 
ers of Beatrice and Laura, who never write 
but honor of them to whom they devote 
their verse, displaying sublime and pure 
thoughts, without transgression. And long 
it was not after, when I was confirmed in 
this oiDinion, that he who would not be frus- 
trate of his hope to write well hereafter in 
laudable things, ought himself to be a true 
poem; that is, a composition and pattern 
of the best and honorablest things ; not pre- 
suming to sing high praises of heroic men 
or famous cities unless he have in himself 
the experience and the practice of all that 
which is praiseworthy. . . . 



120 



THE GREAT TEADITION 



Next, (for hear me out now, readers,) 
that I may tell ye whither my younger feet 
wandered; I betook me among those lofty 
fables and romances, which recount in sol- 
emn cantos the deeds of knighthood founded 
by our victorious kings, and from hence had 
in renown over all Christendom. There I 
read it -in the oath of every knight, that 
he should defend to the expense of his best 
blood, or of his life, if it so befell him, the 
honor and chastity of virgin or matron; 
from whence even then I learned what a 
noble virtue chastity sure must be, to the 
defence of which so many worthies, by such 
a dear adventure of themselves, had sworn. 
And if I found in the story afterward, any 
of them, by word or deed, breaking that 
oath, I judged it the same fault of the poet, 
as that which is attributed to Homer, to 
have written indecent things of the gods. 
Only this my mind gave me, that every free 
and gentle spirit, without that oath, ought 
to be born a knight, nor needed to expect 
the gilt spur, or the laying of a sword upon 
his shoulder to stir him tip both by his 
counsel and his arms, to secure and protect 
the weakness of any attempted chastity. . . . 

Thus, from the laureat fraternity of 
poets, riper years and the ceaseless round 
of study and reading led me to the shady 
spaces of philosophy; but chiefly to the 
divine volumes of Plato, and his equal 
Xenophon: where, if I should tell ye what 
I learnt of chastity and love, I mean that 
which is truly so, whose charming cup is 
only virtue, which she bears in her hand 
to those who are worthy; (the rest are 
cheated with a thick intoxicating potion, 
which a certain sorceress, 'the abuser of 
love's name, carries about;) and how the 
first and chiefest office of love begins and 
ends in the soul, producing those happy 
twins of her divine generation, knowledge 
and virtue. 

[From A Letter to Diodati, 1637] 

But that you may indulge any excess of 
menace I must inform you, that I cannot 
help loving you such as you are; for what- 
ever the Deity may have bestowed upon me 
in other respects, he has certainly inspired 
me, if any ever were inspired, with a pas- 
sion for the good and fair. Nor did Ceres, 
according to the fable, ever seek her daugh- 
ter Proserpine with such unceasing solici- 
tude, as I have sought this perfect model 



of the beautiful in all the forms and ap- 
pearances of things. I am wont day and 
night to continue my search, and I follow 
in the way in which you go before. Hence, 
I feel an irresistible impulse to cultivate - 
the friendship of him who, despising the 
prejudices and false conceptions of the 
vulgar, dares to think, to speak, and to be 
that which the highest wisdom has in every 
age taught to be the best. But if my dis- 
position or my destiny were such that I 
could without any conflict or any toil emerge 
to the highest pitch of distinction and of 
praise, there would nevertheless be no pro- 
hibition, either human or divine, against my 
constantly cherishing and revering those 
who have either obtained the same degree 
of glory, or are successfully laboring to ob- 
tain it. But now I am sure that you wish 
me to gratify your curiosity, and to let you 
know what I have been doing, or am medi- 
tating to do. Hear me, my Diodati, and 
suffer me for a moment to speak without 
blushing in a more lofty strain. Do you 
ask what I am meditating? By the help 
of Heaven, an immortality of fame. 

L' Allegro 

Hence, loathed Melancholy, 

Of Cerberus and blackest Midnight born 
In Stygian cave forlorn, 

'Mongst horrid shapes and shrieks and 
sights unholy ! 
Find out some uncouth cell, ^ 

Where brooding darkness spreads his 
jealous wings. 
And the night-raven sings; 

There under ebon shades and low-browed 
rocks, 
As ragged as thy locks. 

In dark Cimmerian desert ever dwell, i*' 
But come, thou Goddess fair and free, 
In heaven yclept Euphrosyne, 
And by men heart-easing Mirth; 
Whom lovely Venus, at a birth, 
With two sister Graces more, ^^ 

To ivy-crowned Bacchus bore ; 
Or whether (as some sager sing) 
The frolic wind that breathes the spring. 
Zephyr, with Aurora playing. 
As he met her once a-Maying, 20 

There on beds of violets blue 
And fresh-blown roses washed in dew, 
Filled her with thee, a daughter fair. 
So buxom, blithe, and debonair. 
Haste thee, nymph, and bring with thee ^^ 



PURITANS AND KINGS 



121 



Jest, and youthful Jollity, 

Quips and cranks and wanton wiles, 

Nods and becks and wreathed smiles, 

Such as hang on Hebe's cheek. 

And love to live in dimple sleek ; 30 

Sport that wrinkled Care derides. 

And Laughter holding both his sides. 

Come, and trip it as you go, 

On the light fantastic toe; 

And in thy right hand lead with thee ^^ 

The mountain nymph, sweet Liberty; 

And if I give thee honor due, 

Mirth, admit me of thy crew. 

To live with her, and live with thee, 

In unreproved pleasures free: ^^ 

To hear the lark begin his flight. 

And singing, startle the dull night, 

From his watch-tower in the skies, 

Till the dappled dawn doth rise; 

Then to come in spite of sorrow, 45 

And at my window bid good-morrow, 

Through the sweet-briar or the vine, 

Or the twisted eglantine; 

While the cock, with lively din. 

Scatters the rear of darkness thin, ^ 

And to the stack, or the barn-dooi*. 

Stoutly struts his dames before : 

Oft listening how the hounds and horn 

Cheer ly rouse the slumbering morn. 

From the side of some hoar hill, ^^ 

Through the high wood echoing shrill: 

Sometime walking, not unseen. 

By hedge-row elms, on hillocks green, 

Right against the eastern gate 

Where the great sun begins his state, ^^ 

Robed in flames and amber light, 

The clouds in thousand liveries dight; 

While the plowman, near at hand. 

Whistles o'er the furrowed land. 

And the milkmaid singeth blithe, ^^ 

And the mower whets his scythe. 

And every shepherd tells his tale 

Under the hawthorn in the dale. 

Straight mine eye hath caught new pleasures 

Whilst the landskip round it measures; ^^ 

Russet lawns and fallows gray, 

Where the nibbling flocks do stray; 

Mountains on whose barren breast 

The laboring clouds do often rest; 

Meadows trim with daisies pied, "^5 

Shallow brooks and rivers wide; 

Towers and battlements it sees 

Bosomed high in tufted trees. 

Where perhaps some beauty lies. 

The cynosure of neighboring eyes. ^® 

Hard by, a cottage chimney smokes 

From betwixt two aged oaks, 



85 



Where Corydon and Thyi'sis met 
Are at their savory dinner set 
Of herbs and other country messes, 
Which the neat-handed Phyllis dresses ; 
And then in haste her boAvei' she leaves, 
With Thestylis to bind the sheaves ; 
Or, if the earlier season lead. 
To the tanned haycock in the mead. 90 

Sometimes, with secure delight. 
The upland hamlets will invite. 
When the merry bells ring round. 
And the jocund rebecks sound 
To many a youth and many a maid ^5 

Dancing in the chequered shade; 
And young and old come forth to play 
On a sunshine holiday, 
'Till the livelong daylight fail: 
Then to the spicy nut-brown ale, lOO 

With stories told of many a feat. 
How faery Mab the junkets eat. 
She was pinched and pulled, she said; 
And he, by friar's lantern led. 
Tells how the drudging goblin sweat 105 
To earn his cream-bowl duly set. 
When in one night, ere glimpse of morn. 
His shadowy flail hath threshed the corn 
That ten day-laborers could not end; 
Then lies him down, the lubber fiend, HO 
And, stretched out all the chimney's length. 
Basks at the fire his hairy strength. 
And crop-full out of doors he flings, 
Ere the first cock his matin rings. 
Thus done the -tales, to bed they creep, HS 
By whispering winds soon lulled asleep. 
Towered cities please us then. 
And the busy hum of men, 
Where throngs of knights and barons bold. 
In weeds of peace high triumphs hold, 120 
With store of ladies, whose bright eyes 
Rain influence, and judge the prize 
Of wit or arms, while both contend 
To win her grace whom all commend. 
There let Hymen oft appear 125 

In saffron robe, with taper clear. 
And pomp and feast and revelry. 
With mask and antique pageantry ; 
Such sights as youthful poets dream 
On summer eves by haunted stream. 130 
Then to the well-trod stage anon. 
If Jonson's learned sock be on. 
Or sweetest Shakespeare, Fancy's child. 
Warble his native wood-notes wild. 
And ever, against eating cares, 135 

' Lap me in soft Lydian airs. 
Married to immortal verse. 
Such as the meeting soul may pierce. 
In notes with many a winding bout 



122 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



150 



Of linked sweetness long drawn out, • ^^ 

With wanton heed and giddy cunning, 

The melting voice through mazes running, 

Untwisting all the chains that tie 

The hidden soul of harmony; 

That Orpheus' self may heave his head 1^° 

From golden slumber on a bed 

Of heaped Elysian flowers, and hear 

Such strains as would have won the ear 

Of Pluto to have quite set free 

His half -regained Eurydiee. 

These delights if thou canst give, 
Mirth, with thee I mean to live. 

Il Penseroso 

Hence, vain deluding Joys, 

The brood of Folly without father bred ! 
How little you bested. 

Or fill the fixed mind with all your toys ! 
Dwell in some idle brain, ^ 

And fancies fond with gaudy shapes pos- 
sess, 
As thick and numberless 

As the gay motes that people the sun- 
beams. 
Or likest hovering dreams. 

The fickle pensioners of Morpheus' 
train. ^^ 

But hail, thou Goddess sage and holy, 
Hail, divinest Melancholy ! 
Whose saintly visage is too bright 
To hit the sense of human .sight. 
And therefore to our weaker view ^^ 

O'erlaid with black, staid Wisdom's hue ; 
Black, but such as in esteem 
Prince Memnon's sister might beseem. 
Or that starred Ethiop queen that strove 
To set her beauty's praise above 20 

The sea nymphs, and their powers offended. 
Yet thou art higher far descended : 
Thee bright-haired Vesta long of yore 
To solitary Saturn bore; 
His daughter she (in Saturn's reign 25 

Such mixture was not held a stain). 
Oft in glimmering bowers and glades 
He met her, and in secret shades 
Of woody Ida's inmost grove. 
Whilst yet there was no fear of Jove. ^^ 
Come, pensive Nun, devout and pure. 
Sober, steadfast, and demure, 
All in a robe of darkest grain. 
Flowing with majestic train. 
And sable stole of cyjDress lawn ^^ 

Over thy decent shoulders drawn. 
Come, but keep thy wonted state. 
With even step, and musing gait. 



And looks commercing with the skies, 

Thy rapt soul sitting in thine eyes: ^o 

There, held in holy passion still, 

Forget thyself to marble, till 

With a sad leaden downward cast 

Thou fix them on the earth as fast. 

And join with thee calm Peace, and Quiet, ''^ 

Spare Fast, that oft with gods doth diet. 

And hears the Muses in a ring 

Aye round about Jove's altar sing; 

And add to these retired Leisure, 

That in trim gardens takes his pleasure; 50 

But first, and chiefest, with thee bring 

Him that yon soars on golden wing. 

Guiding the fiery-wheeled throne, 

The cherub Contemplation; 

And the mute Silence hist along, ^5 

'Less Philomel will deign a song. 

In her sweetest, saddest plight. 

Smoothing the rugged brow of Night, 

While Cynthia checks her dragon yoke 

Gently o'er the accustomed oak: 6o 

Sweet bird, that shunn'st the noise of folly. 

Most musical, most melancholy ! 

Thee, ehauntress, oft the woods among, 

I woo to hear thy even-song; 

And missing thee, I walk unseen ^^ 

On the dry smooth-shaven green, 

To behold the wandei-ing moon, 

Biding near her highest noon. 

Like one that had been led as"tray 

Through the heaven's wide pathless way, ''''' 

And oft, as if her head she bowed. 

Stooping through a fleecy cloud. 

Oft on a plat of rising ground, 

I hear the far-off curfew sound, 

Over some wide-watered shore, '^^ 

Swinging slow with sullen roar ; 

Or if the air will not permit. 

Some still removed place will fit. 

Where glowing embers through the room 

Teach light to counterfeit a gloom, ^o 

Far from all resort of mirth. 

Save the cricket on the hearth. 

Or the bellman's drowsy charm 

To bless the doors from nightly harm. 

Or let my lamp at midnight hour ^^ 

Be seen in some high lonely tower. 

Where I may oft out-watch the Bear, 

With thrice-great Hermes ; or unsphere 

The spirit of Plato, to unfold 

What worlds or what vast regions hold ^o 

The immortal mind that hath forsook 

Her mansion in J:his fleshly nook; 

And of those demons that are found 

In fire, air, fiood, or underground. 

Whose power hath a true consent ^ 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



123 



100 



105 



With planet or with element. 

Sometime let gorgeous Tragedy 

In sceptered pall come sweeping by, 

Presenting Thebes, or Pelops' line. 

Or the tale of Troy divine. 

Or what (though rare) of later age 

Ennobled hath the buskined stage. 

But, sad Virgin ! that thy power 

Might raise Musseus from his bower; 

Or bid the soul of Orpheus sing 

Such notes as, warbled to the string, 

Drew iron tears down Pluto's cheek, 

And made Hell grant what love did seek ; 

Or call up him that left half -told 

The story of Cambuscan bold, no 

Of Camball, and of Algarsife, 

And who had Canaee to wife, 

That owned the virtuous ring and glass. 

And of the wondrous horse of brass 

On which the Tartar king did ride; i^^ 

And if aught else great bards beside 

In sage and solemn tunes have sung, 

Of tourneys, and of trophies hung. 

Of forests, and enchantments drear. 

Where more is meant than meets the ear. 120 

Thus, Night, oft see me in thy pale career, 

Till civil-suited Morn appear, 

Not tricked and frounced as she was wont 

With the Attic boy to hunt, 

But kerchieft in a comely cloud, 125 

While rocking winds are jDiping loud. 

Or ushered with a shower still. 

When the gust hath blown his fill. 

Ending on the rustling leaves. 

With minute-drops from off the eaves. i^o 

And when the sun begins to fling 

His flaring beams, me. Goddess, bring 

To ai'ched walks of twilight groves. 

And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves. 

Of pine, or monumental oak, 135 

Where the rude axe with heaved stroke 

Was never heard the nymphs to daunt. 

Or fright them from their hallowed haunt. 

There in close covert by some brook. 

Where no profaner eye may look, i^o 

Hide me from day's garish eye. 

While the bee with honeyed thigh. 

That at her flowery work doth sing. 

And the waters murmuring. 

With such consort as they keep, 1^5 

Entice the dewy-feathered Sleep; 

And let some strange mysterious dream 

Wave at his wings in airy stream 

Of lively portraiture displayed. 

Softly on my eyelids laid; 150 

And as I wake, sweet music breathe 

Above, about, or underneath, 



Sent by some spirit to mortals good, 

Or the unseen Genius of the wood. 

But let my due feet never fail 155 

To walk the studious cloister's pale, 

And love the high embowed roof, 

With antique pillars massy proof. 

And storied windows richly dight. 

Casting a dim religious light. 16*^ 

There let the pealing organ blow. 

To the full-voiced quire below. 

In service high and anthems clear, 

As may with sweetness, through mine ear. 

Dissolve me into ecstasies, 165 

And bring all Heaven before mine eyes. 

And may at last my weary age 

Find out the peaceful hermitage. 

The hairy gown, and mossy cell. 

Where I may sit and rightly spell I'^o 

Of eveiy star that heaven doth shew, 

And every herb that sips the dew. 

Till old experience do attain 

To something like proiDhetic strain. 

These pleasures. Melancholy, give, 175 

And I with thee will choose to live. 



Lycidas 

Yet once more, ye laurels, and once more, 
Ye myrtles brown, with ivy never sere, 
I come to pluck your berries harsh and 

crude, 
And with forced fingers rude 
Shatter your leaves before the mellowing 

year. B 

Bitter constraint and sad occasion dear 
Compels me to disturb your season due; 
For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, 
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer. 
Who would not sing for Lycidas? he 

knew 10 

Himself to sing, and build the lofty rhyme. 
He must not float upon his watery bier 
Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, 
Without the meed of some melodious tear. 
Begin then, Sisters of the sacred well 15 
That from beneath the seat of Jove doth 

spring ; 
Begin, and somewhat loudly sweep the 

string. 
Hence with denial vain and coy excuse; 
So may some gentle Muse 
With lucky words favor my destined urn, 20 
And as he passes turn, 
And bid fair peace be to my sable shroud. 
For Ave were nursed upon the self -same 

hill, 



124 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



Fed the same floek, by fountain, shade, and 

rill; 
Together both, ere the high lawns ap- 
peared 2^ 
Under the opening eyelids of the morn, 
We drove a-field, and both together heard 
What time the gray-fly winds her sulti'y 

horn, 
Battening our flocks with the fresh dews of 

night, 
Oft till the star that rose at evening- 
bright 30 
Toward heaven's descent had sloped his 

westering wheel. 
Meanwhile the rural ditties were not mute, 
Tempered to the oaten flute; 
Rough Satyrs danced, and Fauns with 

cloven heel 
From the glad sound would not be absent 

long; 
And old Damoetas loved to hear our song. ^6 
But, oh! the heavy change, now thou art 

gone, ■ 
Now thou art gone, and never must return ! 
Thee, Shepherd, thee the woods and desert 

caves. 
With wild thyme and the gadding vine 

o ergrown, ^" 

And 'all their echoes, mourn. 
The willows and the hazel copses green 
Shall now no more be seen. 
Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. 
As killing as the canker to the rose, ^^ 

Or taint-worm to the weanling herds that 

graze. 
Or frost to flowers, that their gay wardrobe 

wear, 
When first the white-thorn blows; 
Such, Lycidas, thy loss to shepherd's ear. 
Where were ye. Nymphs, when the re- 
morseless deep ^^ 
Closed o'er the head of your loved Lycidas ? 
For neither were ye playing on the steep 
Where your old bards, the famous Druids, 

lie. 
Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high. 
Nor yet where Deva spreads her wizard 

stream. • ^^ 

Ay me, I fondly dream ! 
Had ye been there — for what could that 

have done? 
What could the Muse herself that Orpheus 

bore. 
The Muse herself, for her enchanting son, 
Whom universal nature did lament, ^^ 

When by the rout that made the hideous 

roar 



His gory visage down the stream was sent, 
Down the. swift Hebrus to the Lesbian 

shore ? 
Alas ! what boots it with uncessant care 
To tend the homely, slighted, shepherd's 

trade, ^5 

And strictly meditate the thankless Muse 1 
Were it not better done, as others use, 
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade, 
Or with the tangles of Neasra's hair? 
Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth 

raise '^'^ 

(That last inflrniity of noble mind) 
To scorn delights and live laborious days; 
But the fair guerdon Avhen we hope to 

find. 
And think to burst out into sudden blaze. 
Comes the blind Fury with the abhorred 

shears, '^^ 

And slits the thin-spun life. "But not the 

praise," 
Phcebus replied, and touched my trembling 

ears : 
"Fame is no plant that grows on mortal 

soil. 
Nor in the glistering foil 
Set off to the world, nor in broad rumor 

lies; 80 

But lives and spreads aloft by those pure 

eyes 
And perfect witness of all-judging Jove; 
As he pronounces lastly on each deed. 
Of so much fame in heaven expect thy 

meed." 
fountain Arethuse, and thou honored 

flood, 85 

Smooth-sliding Mineius, crowned with vocal 

reeds. 
That strain I heard was of a higher mood : 
But now my oat proceeds, 
And listens to the herald of the sea, 
That came in Neptune's plea. ^^ 

He asked the waves, and asked the felon 

winds. 
What hard mishap hath doomed this gentle 

swain ? 
And questioned every gust of rugged 

wings 
That blows from off each beaked jpromon- 

tory : 
They knew not of his story; ^^ 

And sage Hippotade's their answer larings. 
That not a blast was from his dungeon 

strayed ; 
The air was calm, and on the level brine 
Sleek Panope with all her sisters played. 
It was that fatal and perfidious bark, ^^o 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



125 



Built in the eclipse, and rigged with curses 

dark, 
That sunk so low that sacred head of thine. 
Next, Camus, reverend sire, went footing 

slow, 
His mantle hairy, and his bonnet sedge. 
Inwrought with figures dim and on the 

edge ^^^ 

Like to that sanguine flower inscribed with 

woe. 
"Ah! who hath reft," quoth he, "my dear- 
est pledge?" 
Last came, and last did go, 
The pilot of the Galilean lake; 
Two massy keys he bore of metals twain 11^ 
(The golden opes, the iron shuts amain). 
He shook his mitred locks, and stern be- 
spake : 
"How well could I have spared for thee, 

young swain, 
.Enow of such as for their bellies' sake, 
Creep and intrude and climb into the 

fold! 115 

Of other care they little reckoning make 
Than how to scramble at the shearers' feast, 
And shove away the worthy bidden guest. 
Blind mouths ! that scarce themselves know 

how to hold 
A sheep-hook, or have learnt aught else the 

least 120 

That to the faithful herdman's art belongs ! 
What recks it them? What need they? They 

are sped; 
And when they list, their lean and flashy 

songs 
Grate on their scrannel pipes of wretched 

straw ; 
The hungry sheep look up, and are not 

fed, 125 

But swoln with wind and the rank mist they 

draw, 
Rot inwardly, and foul contagion spread; 
Besides what the grim wolf with privy paw 
Daily devours apace, and nothing said. 
But that two-handed engine at the door l^^ 
Stands ready to smite once, and smite no 

more." 
Return, Alpheus; the dread voice is 

past 
That shrunk thy streams; return, Sicilian 

Muse, 
And call the vales, and bid them hither cast 
Their bells and -flowerets of a thousand 

hues. 1^ 

Ye valleys low, where the mild whispers use 
Of shades and wanton winds and gushing 

brooks, 



145 



On whose fresh lap the swart star sparely 

looks, 
Throw hither all your quaint enameled eyes, 
That on the green turf suck the honeyed 
showers, i^** 

And purple all the ground with vernal flow- 
ers. 
Bring the rathe primrose that forsaken dies. 
The tufted crow-toe, and pale jessamine, 
The white pink, and the pansy freaked with 

jet. 
The glowing violet. 
The musk-rose, and the well-attired wood- 
bine. 
With cowslips wan that hang the pensive 

head. 
And every flower that sad embroidery 

wears ; 
Bid amaranthus all his beauty shed, 
And daffadillies fill their cups with tears, 150 
To strew the laureate hearse where Lycid 

lies. 
For so to interpose a little ease, 
Let our frail thoughts dally with false sur- 
mise. 
Ay me, whilst thee the shores and sound- 
ing seas 
Wash far away, where'er thy bones are 
hurled; 155 

Whether beyond the stormy Hebrides, 
Where thou perhaps under the whelming 

tide 
Visit'st the bottom of the monstrous world ; 
Or whether thou, to our moist vows denied, 
Sleep'st by the fable of Bellerus old, 160 

Where the great vision of the guarded 

mount 
Looks toward Namancos and Bayona's hold. 
Look homeward. Angel, now, and melt with 

ruth; 
And ye dolphins, waft the hapless youth. 
Weep no more, woeful shepherds, weep 
no more, 1^5 

For Lycidas, your sorrow, is not dead, 
Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor; 
So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, 
And yet anon repairs his drooping head. 
And tricks his beams, and with new span- 
gled ore 1^*^ 
Flames in the forehead of the morning sky ; 
So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high. 
Through the dear might of Him that walked 

the waves. 
Where, other groves and other streams 

along. 
With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves, i'^5 
And hears the unexpressive nuptial song. 



126 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love. 
There entertain him all the Saints above, 
In solemn troops and sweet societies, 
That sing, and singing in their glory 



move, 



180 



And wipe the tears for ever from his eyes. 
Now, Lyeidas, the shepherds weep no more ; 
Henceforth thou art the Genius of the shore, 
In thy large recompense, and shalt be good 
To all that wander in that perilous flood. 1^5 
Thus sang the uncouth swain to the oaks 

and rills, 
While the still morn went out with sandals 

gray; 
He touched the tender stops of various 

quills, 
With eager thought warbling his Doric lay : 
And now the sun had stretched out all the 

hills, 190 

And now was dropt into the western bay. 
At last he rose, and twitched his mantle 

blue : ' 
Tomorrow to fresh woods and pastures new. 

On His Having Arrived at the Age or 
Twenty-three 

How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of 

youth, 
Stolen on his wing my three and twentieth 

year ! 
My hasting days fly on with full career, 
But my late spring no bud or blossom 

shew'th. 
Perhaps my semblance might deceive the 

truth 
That I to manhood am arinved so near; 
And inward ripeness doth much less ap- 
pear, 
That some more timely-happy spirits 

endu'th. 
Yet be it less or more, or soon or slow. 
It shall be still in strictest measure even 
To that same lot, however mean 'or high. 
Toward which Time leads me, and the will 

of Heaven; 
All is, if I have- grace to use it so. 
As ever in my gTeat Task-Master's eye. 

On His Blindness 

When I consider how my light is spent 
Ere half my days, in this dark world and 

wide, 
And that one talent which is death to hide 
Lodged with me useless, though my soul 
more bent 
To serve therewith my Maker, and present 



My true aeeoimt, lest he returning chide; 

"Doth God exact day-labor, light de- 
nied f ' 

I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent 
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not 
need 

Either man's work or his own gifts. Who 
best 

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. 
His state 
Is kingly : thousands at his bidding speed, 

And. post o'er land and ocean without 
rest ; 

They also serve who only stand and 
wait." 

To Cyriack Skinner 

Cyriaek, this three years' day these eyes, 

though clear 

To outward view, of blemish or of spot. 

Bereft of light, their seeing have forgot; 

Nor to their idle orbs doth sight appear 

Of sun or moon or star throughout the 

year. 
Or man or woman. Yet I argue not 
Against Heaven's hand or will, nor bate 

a jot 
Of heart or hope, but still bear up and 

steer 
Right onward. What supports me, dost 

thou ask? 
The conscience, friend, to have lost them 

overplied 
In Liberty's defense, my noble task, 
Of which all Europe talks from side to side. 
This thought might lead me through the 

world's vain mask 
Content, though blind, had I no better 

guide. 

Of Darkness Visible 

[From The Second Defense^ 1654] 

Nor was I ever prompted to such ex- 
ertions by the influence of ambition, by 
the lust of lucre or of praise; it was only 
by the conviction of duty and the feeling 
of patriotism, a disinterested passion for 
the extension of civil and religious liberty. 
Thus, therefore, when I was publicly so- 
licited to write a reply to the Defense 
of the royal cause, when I had to contend 
with the pressure of sickness, and with the 
apprehension of soon losing the sight of 
my remaining eye, and when my medical 
attendants clearly announced that if I did 
engage in the work it would be irreparably 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



127 



lost, their premonitions caused no iiesi- 
tation and inspired no dismay. I would 
not have listened to the voice even of 
Esculapius himself from the shrine of 
Epidauris, in preference to the sugges- 
tions of the heavenly monitor within my 
breast; my resolution was unshaken, 
though the alternative was either the loss 
of my sight, or the aesertion of my duty : 
and I called to mind those two destinies, 
which the oracle of Delphi announced to 
the son of Thetis: 

"Two fates may lead me to the realms of 

night. 
If staying here, around Troy's wall I 

fight. 
To my dear home no more must I return; 
But lastmg glory will adorn my urn. 
But, if I withdraw from the martial strife. 
Short is my fame, but long will be my life." 

I considered that many had purchased a 
less good by a greater evil, the need of 
glory by the loss of life: but that I might 
procure great good by little suffering; that 
though I am blind, I might still discharge 
the most honorable duties, the performance 
of which, as it is something more durable 
than glory, ought to be, an object of supe- 
rior admiration and esteem; I resolved, 
therefore, to make the short interval of 
sight, which was left me to enjoy, as bene- 
ficial as possible to the public interest. 
Thus it is clear by what motives I was gov- 
erned in the measures which I took, and 
the losses which I sustained. Let then the 
calumniators of the divine goodness cease 
to revile, or make me the object of their 
superstitious imaginations. Let them con- 
sider, that my situation, such as it is^ is 
neither an object of my shame or my re- 
gret, that my resolutions are too firm to be 
shaken, that I am not depressed by any 
sense of the divine displeasure ; that, on the 
other hand, in the most momentous periods, 
I have had full experience of the divine 
favor and protection; and that, in the sol- 
ace and the strength which have been in- 
fused into me from above, I have been 
enabled to do the will of God; that I may 
oftener think on what he has bestowed, 
than on what he has withheld; that, in short, 
I am unwilling to exchange my conscious- 
ness of rectitude with that of any other per- 
son ; and that I feel the recollection a treas- 
ured store of tranquillity and delight. But, 
if the choice were necessary, I would, sir, 
prefer my blindness to yours; yours is a 



cloud spread over the mind, which darkens 
both the light of reason and of conscience; 
mine keeps from my view only the coloi'ed 
surfaces of things, while it leaves me at 
liberty to contemplate the beauty and sta- 
bility of virtue and of truth. How many 
things are there besides which I would not 
willingly see; how many which I must see 
against my will; and how few which I 
feel any anxiety to see ! There is, as the 
apostle has remarked, a way to strength 
through weakness. Let me then be the most 
feeble creature alive, as long as that feeble- 
ness serves to invigorate the energies of my 
rational and immortal spirit; as long as in 
that obscurity, in which I am enveloped, 
the light of the divine presence more clearly 
shines, then, in proportion as I am weak, I 
shall be invincibly strong; and in propor- 
tion as I am blind, I shall more clearly see. 
! that I may thus be perfected by feeble- 
ness, and irradiated by obscurity ! 

Of Celestial Light 

[From Paradise Lost, III, 1-55] 

Hail, holy Light, offspring of Heaven first- 
born ! 
Or of the Eternal coeternal beam 
May I express thee unblamed? since God 

is light, 
And never but in unapproached light 
Dwelt from eternity — dwelt then in thee. 
Bright effluence of bright essence increate! 
Or hear'st thou rather pure Ethereal 

stream, 
Whose fountain who shall tell? Before the 

Sun, 
Before the Heavens, thou wert, and at the 

voice 
Of God, as with a mantle, didst invest 
The rising World of waters dark and deep. 
Won from the void and formless Infinite ! 
Thee I revisit now Avith bolder wing, 
Escaped the Stygian Pool, though long de- 
tained 
In that obscure sojourn, while in my flight. 
Through utter and through middle Darkness 

borne. 
With other notes than to the Orphean lyre 
I sung of Chaos and eternal Night, 
Taught by the Heavenly Muse to venture 

down 
The dark descent, and up to re-aseend, 
Though hard and rare. Thee I revisit safe, 
And feel thy sovran vital lamp; but thou 
Eevisit'st not these eyes, that roll in vain 



128 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



To find thy piercing ray, and find no 

dawn; 
So thick a drop serene liath quenched their 

orbs, 
Or dim suffusion veiled. Yet not the more 
Cease I to wander where the Muses haunt 
Clear spring, or shady grove, or sunny hill, 
Smit with the love of sacred song; but 

chief 
Thee, Sion, and the flowery brooks beneath. 
That wash thy hallowed feet, and warbling 

flow, 
Nightly I visit : nor sometimes forget 
Those other two equaled with me in fate, 
So were I equaled with them in renown. 
Blind Thamyris and blind Mseonides, 
And Tiresias and Phineus, prophets old: 
Then feed on thoughts that voluntary move 
Harmonious numbers; as the wakeful bird 
Sings darkling, and, in shadiest covert hid. 
Tunes her nocturnal note. Thus with the 

year 
Seasons return; but not to me returns 
Day, or the sweet approach of even or morn 
Or sight of vernal bloom, or summer's rose, 
Or flocks, or herds, or human face divine; 
But cloud instead and ever-during dark 
Surrounds me, from the cheerful ways of 

men 
Cut off, and, for the book of knowledge 

fair, 
Presented with a universal blank 
Of Nature's works, to me expunged and 

rased. 
And wisdom at one entrance quite shut out. 
So much the rather thou. Celestial Light, 
Shine inward, and the mind through all her 

powei'S 
Irradiate; there plant eyes; all mist from 

thence 
Purge and disperse, that I may see and tell 
Of things invisible to mortal sight. 

The Poet's Service to the State 

[From Reason of Church Government, 
1641] 

After I had for my first years, by the 
ceaseless diligence and care of my father, 
(whom God recompense!) been exercised to 
the tongues, and some sciences, as my age 
would suffer, by sundry masters and teach- 
ers, both at home and at the schools, it was 
found that whether aught was imposed me 
by them that had the overlooking, or be- 
taken to of mine own choice in English, or 
other tongue, prosing or versing, but chiefly 



by this latter, the style, by certain vital 
signs it had, was likely to live. But much 
latelier in the private academies of Italy, 
whither I was favored to resort, perceiving 
that some trifles which I had in memory, 
composed at under twenty or thereabout, 
(for the manner is, that every one must give 
some proof of his wit and reading there,) 
met with acceptance above what was looked 
for; and other things, which I had shifted 
in scarcity of books and conveniences to 
patch up amongst them, were received with 
written encomiums, which the Italian is not 
forward to bestow on men of this side the 
Alps; I began thus far to assent both to 
them and divers of my friends here at 
home, and not less to an inward prompting 
which now grew daily upon me, that by 
labor and intense study, (which I take to be 
my portion in this life,) joined with the 
strong propensity of nature, I might per- 
haps leave something so written to after- 
times, as they should ' not willingly let it 
die. . . . 

Time serves not now, and perhaps I 
might seem too profuse to give any certain 
account of what the mind at home, in the 
spacious circuits of her musing, hath liberty 
to propose to herself, though of highest 
hope and hardest attempting; whether th'at 
epic form whereof the two poems of Homer, 
and those other two of Virgil and Tasso, 
are a diffuse, and the book of Job a brief 
model : or whether the rules of Aristotle 
herein are strictly to be kept, or nature to 
be followed, which in them that know art, 
and use judgment, is no transgression, but 
an enriching of art : and lastly, what king 
or knight, before the conquest, might be 
chosen in whom to lay the jDattern of a 
Christian hero. . . . 

These abilities, wheresoever they be 
found, are the inspired gift of God, rarely 
bestowed, but yet to some (though most 
abuse) in every nation; and are of power, 
beside the office of a pulpit, to inbreed and 
cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue 
and public civility, to allay the perturba- 
tions of the mind, and set the affections in 
right tune; to celebrate in glorious and 
lofty hymns the throne and equipage of 
God's almightiness, and what he works, and 
what he suffers to be wrought with his 
providence in his church ; to sing victorious 
agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds 
and triumphs of just and jdIous nations, 
doing valiantly through faith against the en- 
emies of Christ; to deplore the general re- 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



129 



lapses of kingdoms and states from justice 
land God's true worship. Lastly, whatso- 
ever in religion is holy and sublime, in vir- 
tue amiable or grave, whatsoever hath pas- 
sion or admiration in all the changes of 
that which is called fortune from without, 
or the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's 
thoughts from within; all these things with 
a solid and treatable smoothness to paint out 
and describe. Teaching over the whole book 
of sanctity and virtue, through all the in- 
stances of example, with such delight to 
those especially of soft and delicious tem- 
per, who will not so much as look upon 
truth herself, unless they see her elegantly 
dressed; that whereas the paths of honesty 
and good life appear now rugged and diffi- 
cult, though they be indeed easy and pleas- 
ant, they will then appear to all men both 
easy and pleasant, though they were rugged 
and difficult indeed. And what a benefit 
this would be to our youth and gentry, may 
'be soon guessed by what we know of the 
corruption and bane which they suck in 
daily from the writings and interludes of 
libidinous and ignorant poetasters, who 
having scarce ever heard of that which is 
the main consistence of a true poem, the 
choice of such persons as they ought to in- 
troduce, and what is moral and decent to 
each one; do for the most part lay up vi- 
cious principles in sweet pills to be swal- 
lowed down, and make the taste of virtuous 
documents harsh and sour. 

But because the spirit of man cannot 
demean itself lively in this body, without 
some recreating intermission of labor and 
serious things, it were happy for the eom- 
rsonwealth, if our magistrates, as in those 
famous governments of old, would take into 
their care, not only the deciding of our 
contentious lawcases and brawls, but the 
managing of our public sports and festival 
pastimes; that they might be, not such as 
were authorized a while smce, the provoca- 
tions of drunkenness and lust, but such as 
may inure and harden our bodies by martial 
exercises to all warlike skill and perform- 
ance; and may civilize, adorn, and make 
discreet our minds by the learned and affa- 
ble meeting of frequent academies, and the 
procurement of wise and artful recitations, 
sweetened with eloquent and graceful en- 
ticements to the love and practice of justice, 
temperance, and fortitude, instructing and 
bettering the nation at all opportunities, 
that the call of wisdom and virtue may be 
heard everywhere, as Solomon saith : "She 



crieth without, she uttereth her voice in the 
streets, in the top of high places, in the 
chief concourse, and in the opening of the 
gates." Whether this may not be, not only 
in pulpits, but after another persuasive 
method, at set and solemn paneguries, in 
theaters, porches, or what other place or 
way may win most upon the people to re- 
ceive at once both recreation and instruc- 
tion, let them in authority consult. 

The thing which I had to say, and those 
intentions which have lived within me ever 
since I could conceive myself anything 
worth to my country, I return to crave 
excuse that urgent reason hath plucked 
from me, by an abortive and foredated dis- 
coveiy. And the accomplishment of them 
lies not but in a power above man's to 
promise; but that none hath by more stu- 
dious ways endeavored, and with more un- 
wearied spirit that none shall, that I dare 
almost aver of myself, as far as life and 
free leisure will extend; and that the land 
had once enfranchised herself from this 
impertinent yoke of prelaty, under whose 
inquisitorious and tyrannical duncery no 
free and splendid wit can flourish. Neither 
do I think it shame to covenant with any 
knowing reader, that for some few years yet 
I may go on trust with him toward the pay- 
ment of what I am now indebted, as being 
a work not to be raised from the heat of 
youth, or the vapors of wine; like that 
which flows at waste from the pen of some 
vulgar amorist, or the trencher fury of a 
rhyming parasite; nor to be obtained by 
the invocation of Dame Memory and her 
siren daughters, but by devout prayer to 
that eternal Spirit, who can enrich with 
all utterance and knowledge, and sends out 
his seraphim, with the hallowed fire of his 
altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom 
he pleases: to this must be added indus- 
trious and select reading, steady observa- 
tion, insight into all seemly and generous 
arts and affairs ; till Avhich in some measure 
be compassed, at mine own peril and cost, 
I refuse not to sustain this expectation from 
as many as are not loth to hazard so much 
credulity upon the best pledges that I can 
give them. Although it nothing content me 
to have disclosed thus much beforehand, but 
that I trust hereby to make it manifest 
with what small willingness I endure to in- 
terrupt the pursuit of no less hopes than 
these, and leave a calm and pleasant soli- 
tariness, fed with cheerful and confident 
thoughts, to embark in a troubled sea of 



130 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



noises and hoarse disputes, put from behold- 
ing the bright countenance of truth in the 
quiet and still air of delightful studies, 
to come into the dim reflection of hol- 
low antiquities sold by the seeming bulk, 
and Ihere be fain to club quotations with 
men whose learning and belief lies in mar- 
ginal stuffings, who, when they have, like 
good sumpters, laid ye down their horse- 
loads of citations and fathers at your door, 
with a rhapsody of who and who were bish- 
ops here or there, ye may take o& their 
paeksaddles, their day's work is done. 

Fallen ok Evil Days 

[From Paradise Lost, VII, 1-39] 

Descend from Heaven, Urania, by that 

name 
If rightly thou art called, whose voice di- 
vine 
Following, above the Olympian hill I soar, 
Above the flight of Pegasean wing! 
The meaningv not the name, I call ; for thou 
Nor of the Muses nine, nor on the top 
Of old Olympus dwell' st; but, heavenly- 
born, 
Before the hills appeared or fountain 

flowed. 
Thou with Eternal Wisdom didst converse, 
Wisdom thy sister, and with her didst play 
In presence of the Almighty Father, 

pleased 
With thy celestial song. Up led by thee. 
Into the Heaven of Heavens 1 have pre- 
sumed. 
An earthly guest, and drawn empyreal air. 
Thy tempering. With like safety guided 

down. 
Return me to my native element ; 
Lest, from this flying steed unreined (as 

once 
Bellerophon, though from a lower clime) 
Dismounted, on the Aleian field I fall, 
Erroneous there to wander and forlorn. 
Half yet remains unsung, but narrower 

bound 
Within the visible Diurnal Sphere. 
Standing on Earth, not rapt above the pole, 
More safe I sing with mortal voice, un- 
changed 
To hoarse or mute, though fallen on evil 

days. 
On evil days though fallen, and evil tongues. 
In darkness, and with dangers compassed 

round, 
And solitude; yet not alone, while thou 



Visit'st my slumbers nightly, or when Morn 
Purples the East. Still govern thou my 

song, 
Urania, and fit audience find, though few. 
But drive far off the barbarous dissonance 
Of Bacchus and his revelers, the race 
Of that wild rout that tore the Thracian 

bard 
In Rhodope, where woods and rocks had 

ears 
To rapture, till the savage clamor drowned 
Both harp and voice; nor could the Muse 

defend 
Her son. So fail not thou who thee im- 
plores; 
For thou art heavenly, she an empty 
dream. 

[From Samson Agonistes^ 

But, chief of all, 
loss of sight, of thee I most complain ! 
Blind among enemies ! worse than chains. 
Dungeon, or beggary, or decrepit age ! 
Light, the prime work of God, to me is 

extinct. 
And all her various objects of delight 
Annulled, which might in part my grief 

have eased. 
Inferior to the vilest now become 
Of man or worm, the vilest here excel 

me: 
They creep, yet see ; I, dark in light, exposed 
To daily fraud, contempt, abuse, and 

wrong. 
Within doors, or without, still as a fool. 
In power of others, never in my own — 
Scarce half I seem to live, dead more than 

half. 
dark, dark, dark, amid the blaze of noon. 
Irrecoverably dark, total eclipse 
Without all hope of day ! 
first-created beam, and thou great Word, 
"Let there be light, and light was over 

all," 
Why am I thus bereaved thy prime decree? 
The Sun to me is dark 
And silent as the Moon, 
When she deserts the night, 
Hid in her vacant interlunar cave. 
Since light so necessary is to life. 
And almost life itself, if it be true 
That light is in the soul, 
She all in every part, why was the sight 
To such a tender ball as the eye confined. 
So obvious and so easy to be quenched. 
And not, as feeling, through all parts dif- 
fused. 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



131 



That she might look at will through every 

pore ? 
Then had I not been thus exiled from light, 
As in the land of darkness, yet in light, 
To live a life half dead, a living death, 
And buried; but, yet more miserable! 
Myself my sepulcher, a moving grave; 
Buried, yet not exempt. 
By privilege of death and burial. 
From worst of other evils, pains, and 

wrongs ; 
But made hereby obnoxious more 
To all the miseries of life, 
Life in captivity 
Among inhuman foes. 



"Servant of God^ Well Done!" 
[From Paradise Lost, VI, 29-37] 

''Servant of God, well done! Well hast 

thou fought 
The better fight, who single hast maintained 
Against revolted multitudes the cause 
Of truth, in word mightier than they in 

arms, 
And for the testimony of truth hast borne 
Universal reproach, far worse to bear 
Than violence; for this was all thy care — 
To stand approved in sight of God, though 

worlds 
Judged thee perverse." 



2. THE POEM 



Paradise Lost^ Book I 



Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit 
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste 
Brought death into the world, and all our 

woe, 
With loss of Eden, till one greater Man 
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat, 
Sing, Heavenly Muse, that on the secret top 
Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire 
That shepherd who first taught the chosen 

seed 
In the beginning how the Heavens and Earth 
Rose out of Chaos : or, if Sion hill ^^ 

Delight thee more, and Siloa's brook that 

flowed 
Fast by the oracle of God, I thence 
Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song. 
That with no middle flight intendsito soar 
Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues 
Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. 
And chiefly Thou, Spirit, that dost prefer 
Before all temples the upright heart and 

pure, 
Instruct me, for Thou know'st; Thou from 

the first 
Wast present, and, with mighty wings out- 
spread, ^ 
Dove-like sat'st brooding on the vast Abyss, 
And mad'st it pregnant : what in me is dark 
Illumine, what is low raise and support; 
That to the highth of this great argument 
I may assert Eternal Providence, 
And justify the ways of God to men. 

Say first — for Heaven hides nothing from 

Thy view, 
Nor the deep tract of Hell — say first what 

cause 



Moved our grand parents, in that happy 

state, 
Favored of Heaven so highly, to fall off 30 
From their Creator, and transgi-ess his will 
For one restraint, lords of the world besides. 
Who first seduced them to that foul revolt? 
The infernal Serpent; he it was, whose 

guile, 
Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived 
The mother of mankind, what time his pride 
Had cast him out from Heaven, with all his 

host 
Of rebel Angels, by whose aid, aspiring 
To set himself in glory above his peers, 
He trusted to have equaled the Most High, 40 
If he opposed ; and with ambitious aim 
Against the throne and monarchy of God 
Raised impious war in Heaven, and battle 

proud, 
With vain attempt. Him the Almighty 

Power 
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal 

sky, 
With hideous ruin and combustion, down 
To bottomless perdition ; there to dwell 
In adamantine chains and penal fire, 
Who durst defy the Omnipotent to arms. 
Nine times the space that measures day 

and night ^^ 

To mortal men, he with his horrid crew 
Lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf. 
Confounded, though immortal. But his doom 
Reserved him to mor-e wrath; for now the 

thought 
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain 
Torments him; round he throws his baleful 

eyes. 
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay, 



132 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast 

hate. 
At once, as far as Angels ken, he views 
The dismal situation waste and wild : ^o 

A dungeon horrible on all sides round 
As one great furnace flamed ; yet from those 

flames 
No light ; but rather darkness visible 
Served only to discover sights of woe, 
Regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where 

peace 
And rest can never dwell, hope never comes 
That comes to all; but torture without end 
Still urges, and a fiery deluge, fed 
With ever-burning sulphur unconsumed. 
Such place Eternal Justice had prepared '^^ 
For those rebellious; here their prison 

ordained 
In utter darkness, and their portion set. 
As far removed from God and light of 

Heaven 
As from the center thrice to the utmost pole. 
Oh how unlike the place from whence they 

fell ! 
There the companions of his fall, o'er- 

whelmed 
With floods and whirlwinds of tempestuous 

fire, 
He soon discerns; and, weltering by his 

side, 
One next himself in power, and next in 

crime, 
Long after known in Palestine, and named ^^ 
Beelzebub. To w^hom the Arch-Enemy, 
And thence in Heaven called Satan, with 

bold words 
Breaking the horrid silence, thus began: — 
"If thou beest he— but Oh how fallen! 

how changed 
From him, who in the happy realms of light, 
Clothed with transcendent brightness, didst 

outshine 
Myriads, though bright ! — if he whom mutual 

league. 
United thoughts and counsels, equal hope 
And hazard in the glorious enterprise, 
Joined with me once, now misery hath joined 
In equal ruin — into what pit thou seest ^i 
From what highth fallen: so much the 

stronger proved 
He with his thunder : and till then who knew 
The force of those dire arms? Yet not for 

those, 
Nor what the potent Victor in his rage 
Can else inflict, do I repent, or change, 
Though changed in outward luster, that fixed 

mind, 



And high disdain from sense of injured 

merit, 
That with the Mightiest raised me to con- 
tend, 
And to the fierce contention brought along i^o 
Innumerable force of Spirits armed, 
That durst dislike his reign, and, me pre- 
ferring. 
His utmost power with adverse power 

opposed 
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven, 
And shook his throne. What though the 

field be lost? 
All is not lost : the unconquerable will. 
And study of revenge, immortal hate, 
And courage never to submit or yield, 
And what is else not to be overcome. 
That glory never shall his wrath or might i^*^ 
Extort from me. To bow and sue for grace 
With suppliant knee, and deify his power 
Who, from the terror of this arm, so late 
Doubted his empire — that were low indeed ; 
That were an ignominy and shame beneath 
This downfall ; since by fate the strength of 

gods 
And this empyreal substance cannot fail ; 
Since, through experience of this great event, 
In arms not worse, in foresight much ad- 
vanced, 
We may with more successful hope resolve ^"'^ 
To wage by force or guile eternal war, 
Irreconcilable to our grand Foe, 
Who now triumphs, and in the excess of joy 
Sole reigning holds the tyranny of Heaven." 
So spake the apostate Angel, though in 
pain. 
Vaunting aloud, but racked with deep 

despair; 
And him thus answered soon his bold com- 
peer : — 
"0 Prince! Chief of many throned 
powers 
That led the embattled. Seraphim to war 
Under thy conduct, and, in dreadful deeds ^^o 
Fearless, endangered Heaven's perpetual 

King, 
And put to proof his high supremacy. 
Whether upheld by strength, or chance, or 

fate ! 
Too well I see and rue the dire event 
That with sad overthrow and foul defeat 
Hath lost us Heaven, and all this mighty 

host 
In horrible destruction laid thus low. 
As far as gods and heavenly essences 
Can perish : for the mind and spirit remains 
Invincible, and vie:or soon returns, i^*^ 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



133 



Though all our glory extinct, and happy 

state 
Here swallowed up in endless misery. 
But what if he our Conqueror (whom I now 
Of force believe almighty, since no less 
Than such could have o'erpowered such force 

as ours) 
Have left us this our spirit and strength 

entire, 
Strongly to suffer and support our pains. 
That we may so suffice his vengeful ire. 
Or do him mightier service as his thralls 
By right of war, whate'er his business be, '^^^ 
Here in the heart of Hell to work in fire, 
Or do his errands in the gloomy Deep ? 
What can it then avail, though yet we feel 
Strength undiminished, or eternal being 
To undergo eternal punishment?" 

Whereto with speedy words the Arch- 

Fiend replied: — 
''Fallen Cherub, to be weak is miserable, 
Doing or suffering : but of this be sure — 
To do aught good never will be our task, 
But ever to do ill our sole delight, ^^^ 

As being the contrary to his high will 
Whom we resist. If then his providence 
Out of our evil seek to bring forth good, 
Our labor must be to pervert that end. 
And out of good still to find means of evil ; 
Which ofttimes may succeed so as perhaps 
Shall grieve him, if I fail not, and disturb 
His inmost counsels from their destined aim. 
But see ! the angry Victor hath recalled 
His ministers of vengeance and pursuit 1''*' 
Back to the gates of Heaven ; the sulphurous 

hail. 
Shot after us in storm, o'erblown hath laid 
The fiery surge that from the precipice 
Of Heaven received us falling; and the 

thunder. 
Winged with red lightning and impetuous 

rage, 
Perhaps hath spent his shafts, and ceases 

now 
To bellow through the vast and boundless 

Deep. 
Let us not slip the occasion, whether scorn 
Or satiate fury yield it from our Foe. 
Seest thou yon dreary plain, forlorn and 

wild, 
The seat of desolation, void of light, 1^1 

Save what the glimmering of these livid 

flames 
Casts pale and dreadful? Thither let us tend 
From off the tossing of these fiery waves ; 
There rest, if any rest can harbor there ; 
And, reassembling our afflicted powers, 



Consult how we may henceforth most offend 
Our Enemy, our own loss how repair, 
How overcome this dire calamity, 
What reinforcement we may gain from hope, 
If not what resolution from despair." i^l 

Thus Satan, talking to his nearest mate, 
With head uplift above the wave, and eyes 
That sparkling blazed; his other parts be- 
sides, 
Prone on the flood, extended long and large. 
Lay floating many a rood, in bulk as huge 
As whom the fables name of monstrous size, 
Titanian, or Earth-born, that warred on 

Jove, 
Briareos or Typhon, whom the den 
By ancient Tarsus held, or that sea-beast 200 
Leviathan, which God of all his works 
Created hugest that swim the ocean-stream. 
Him, haply slumbering on the Norway foam, 
The i^ilot of some small night-foundered 

skiff 
Deeming some island, oft, as seamen tell, 
With fixed anchor in his scaly rind, 
Moors by his side under the lee, while night 
Invests the sea, and wished morn delays. 
So stretched out huge in length the Arch- 

Fiend lay, 209 

Chained on the burning lake; nor ever 

thence 
Had risen or heaved his head, but that the 

will 
And high permission of all-ruling Heaven 
Left him at large to his own dark designs, 
That with reiterated crimes he might 
Heap on himself damnation, while he sought 
Evil to others, and enraged might see 
How all his malice served but to bring forth 
Infinite goodness, grace, and mercy, shewn 
On Man by him seduced ; but on himself 219 
Treble confusion, wrath, and vengeance 

poured. 
Forthwith upright he rears from off the 

pool 
His mighty stature ; on each hand the flames 
Driven backward slope their pointing spires, 

and, rolled 
In billows, leave i' the midst a horrid vale. 
Then with exjDanded wings he steers his 

flight 
Aloft, incumbent on the duslvy air. 
That felt unusual weight; till on dry land 
He lights — if it were land that ever burned 
With solid, as the lake with liquid fire. 
And such appeared in hue, as when the 

force 
Of subterranean wind transports a hill 231 
Torn from Pelorus, or the shattered side 



134 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



Of thundering ^tna, wKose combustible 
And fueled entrails thence conceiving fire, 
Sublimed with mineral fury, aid the winds. 
And leave a singed bottom all involved 
With stench and smoke : such resting found 

the sole 
Of unblest feet. Him followed his next 

mate, 
Both glorying to have scaped the Stygian 

flood 
As gods, and by their own recovered 

strength, 240 

Not by the sufferance of supernal power. 

"Is this the region, this the soil, the clime," 
Said then the lost Archangel, "this the seat 
That we must change for Heaven? this 

mournful gloom 
For that celestial light? Be it so, since he 
Who now is sovran can dispose and bid 
What shall be right : farthest from him is 

best, 
Whom reason hath equaled, force hath made 

supreme 
Above his equals. Farewell, happy fields, 
Where joy forever dwells ! Hail, horrors ! 

hail, 250 

Infernal world ! and thou, prof oundest Hell, 
Receive thy new possessor, one who brings 
A mind not to be changed by place or time. 
The mind is its own place, and in itself 
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of 

Heaven. 
What matter where, if I be still the same. 
And what I should be, all but less than he 
Whom thunder hath made gi-eater? Here at 

least 
We shall be free; the Almighty hath not 

built 
Here for his envy, will not drive us hence : 260 
Here we may reign secure, and in my choice 
To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell : 
Better to reign in Hell than serve in 

Heaven. 
But wherefore let we then our faithful 

friends, 
The associates and co-partners of our loss. 
Lie thus astonished on the oblivious pool, 
And call them not to share with us their part 
In this unhappy mansion, or once more 
With rallied arms to try what may be yet 
Regained in Heaven, or what more lost in 

Hell?" 270 

So Satan spake ; and him Beelzebub 
Thus answered: — "Leader of those armies 

bright 
Which but the Omnipotent none could have 

foiled, 



If once they hear that voice, their liveliest 

pledge 
Of hope in fears and dangers — heard so oft 
In worst extremes, and on the perilous edge 
Of battle when it raged, in all assaults 
Their surest signal — they will soon resume 
New courage and revive, though now they lie 
Groveling and prostrate on yon lake of fire, 
As we erewhile, astounded and amazed : 28i 
No wonder, fallen such a pernicious highth !" 
He scarce had ceased when the superior 

Fiend 
Was moving toward the shore ; his ponderous 

shield. 
Ethereal temper, massy, large, and round, 
Behind him cast. The broad circumference 
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose 

orb 
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views 
At evening from the top of Fesole, 
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands, 290 
Rivers, or mountains, in her spotty globe. 
His spear — to equal which the tallest pine 
Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the mast 
Of some great ammiral, were but a wand — 
He walked with, to support uneasy steps 
Over the burning marie, not like those steps 
On Heaven's azure ; and the torrid clime 
Smote on him sore besides, vaulted with fire. 
Nathless he so endured, till on the beach 
Of that inflamed sea he stood, and called 300 
His legions. Angel forms, who lay entranced. 
Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the 

brooks 
In Vallombrosa, where the Etrurian shades 
High over-arched embower; or scattered 

sedge 
Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion armed 
Hath vexed the Red-Sea coast, whose waves 

o'erthrew 
Busiris and his Memphian chivalry. 
While with perfidious hatred they pursued 
The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld 
From the safe shore their floating carcases ^^^ 
And broken chariot-wheels : so thick be- 

strown, 
Abject and lost, lay these, covering the flood. 
Under amazement of their hideous change. 
He called so loud that all the hollow deep 
Of Hell resounded : — "Princes, Potentates, 
Warriors, the Flower of Heaven — once 

yours, now lost, 
If such astonishment as this can seize 
■ Eternal Spirits! Or have ye chosen this 

place 
After the toil of battle to repose 
Your wearied virtue, for the ease you find ^20 



PURITANS AND KINGS 



135 



To slumber here, as in the vales of Heaven *? 
Or in this abject posture have ye sworn 
To adore the Conqueror, who now beholds 
Cherub and Seraph rolling in the flood 
With scattered arms and ensigns, till anon 
His swift pursuers from Heaven-gates dis- 
cern 
The advantage, and descending tread us 

down 
Thus drooping, or with linked thunderbolts 
Transfix us to the bottom of this gulf? 
Awake, arise, or be forever fallen !" 330 

They heard, and were abashed, and up 

they sprung 
Upon the wing, as when men wont to watch. 
On duty sleeping found by whom they dread. 
Rouse and bestir themselves ere well awake. 
Nor did they not perceive the evil plight 
In which they were, or the fierce pains not 

feel; 
Yet to their General's voice they soon obeyed 
Innumerable. As when the potent rod 
Of Amram's son, in Egypt's evil day. 
Waved round the coast, up called a pitchy 

cloud 340 

Of locusts, warping on the eastern wind. 
That o'er the realm of impious Pharaoh hung 
Like night, and darkened all the land of 

Nile: 
So numberless were those bad Angels seen 
Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell, 
'Twixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires ; 
Till, as a signal given, the uplifted spear 
Of their great Sultan waving to direct 
Their course, in even balance down they 

light 
On the firm brimstone, and fill all the 

plain : 350 

A multitude like which the populous North 
Poured never from her frozen loins, to pass 
Rhene or the Danaw, when her barbarous 

sons 
Came like a deluge on the South, and spread 
Beneath Gibraltar to the Libyan sands. 
Forthwith, from every squadron and each 

band. 
The heads and leaders thither haste where 

stood 
Their great Commander ; godlike shapes, and 

forms 
Excelling human, princely Dignities, 
And Powers that erst in Heaven sat on 

thrones ; 360 

Though of their names in Heavenly records 

now 
Be no memorial, blotted out and rased 
By their rebellion from the Books of Life. 



Nor had they yet among the sons of Eve 
Got them new names, till, wandering o'er the 

Earth, 
Through God's high sufferance for the trial 

of man. 
By falsities and lies the greatest part 
Of mankind they corrupted to forsake 
God their Creator, and the invisible 
Glory of him that made them, to transform 
Oft to the image of a brute, adorned 371 
With gay religions full of pomp and gold. 
And devils to adore for deities : 
Then were they known to me by various 

names, 
And various idols through the heathen world. 
Say, Muse, their names then known, who 

first, who last. 
Roused from the slumber on that fiery 

couch, 
At their great Emperor's call, as next in 

worth 
Came singly where he stood on the bare 

strand, 
While the promiscuous crowd stood yet 

aloof. 380 

The chief were those who, from the pit of 

Hell 
Roaming to seek their prey on Earth, durst 

fix 
Their seats, long after, next the seat of God, 
Their altars by his altar, gods adored 
Among the nations round, and durst abide 
Jehovah thundering out of Sion, throned 
Between the Cherubim ; yea, often placed 
Within his sanctuary itself their shrines, 
Abominations ; and with cursed things 
His holy rites and solemn feasts profaned, 390 
And with their darkness durst affront his 

light. 
First Moloch, horrid king, besmeared with 

blood 
Of human sacrifice, and parents' tears. 
Though, for the noise of drums and timbrels 

loud, 
Their children's cries unheard that passed 

through fire 
To his grim idol. Him the Ammonite 
Worshiped in Rabba and her watery plain, 
In Argob and in Basan, to the stream 
Of utmost Anion. Nor content with such 
Audacious neighborhood, the wisest heart ■*00 
Of Solomon he led by fraud to build 
His temple right against the temple of God 
On that opprobrious hill, and made his grove 
The pleasant valley of Hinnom, Tophet 

thence 
And black Gehenna called, the type of Hell. 



136 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



Next Chemos, the obscene dread of Moab's 

sons, 
From Aroar to Nebo and the wild 
Of southmost Abarim ; in Hesebon 
And Horonaim, Seon^s realm, beyond 
The flowery dale of Sibma clad with vines,'*!^ 
And Eleale to the Asphaltic pool; 
Peor his other name, when he enticed 
Israel in Sittim, on their march from Nile, 
To do him wanton rites, which cost them 

woe. 
Yet thence his lustful orgies he enlarged 
Even to that hill of scandal, by the grove 
Of Moloch homicide, lust hard by hate, 
Till good Josiah drove them thence to Hell. 
With these came they who, from the border- 
ing flood 
Of old Euphrates to the brook that parts ^20 
Egypt from Syrian ground, had general 

names 
Of Baalim and Ashtaroth — those male. 
These feminine. For Spirits, when they 

please, 
Can either sex assume, or both; so soft 
And uncompounded is their essence pure. 
Not tied or manacled with joint or limb. 
Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones. 
Like cumbrous flesh ; but, in what shape they 

choose, 
Dilated or condensed, bright or obscure. 
Can execute their aery purposes, ^^ 

And works of love or enmity fulfil. 
For those the race of Israel oft forsook 
Their living Strength, and unfrequented left 
His righteous altar, Jsowing lowly down 
To bestial gods ; for which their heads as low 
Bowed down in battle, sunk before the spear 
Of despicable foes. With these in troop 
Came Astoreth, whom the Phoenicians called 
Astarte, Queen of Heaven, with crescent 

horns ; 
To whose bright image nightly by the 

moon 440 

Sidonian virgins paid their vows and songs ; 
In Sion also not unsung, where stood 
Her temple on the offensive mountain, built 
By that uxorious king whose heart, though 

large. 
Beguiled by fair idolatresses, fell 
To idols foul. Thammuz came next behind. 
Whose annual wound in Lebanon allured 
The Syrian damsels to lament his fate 
In amorous ditties all a summer's day. 
While smooth Adonis from his native rock "^^O 
Ran purple to the sea, supposed with blood 
Of Thammuz yearly wounded : the love-tale 
Infected Sion's daughters with like heat, 



Whose wanton passions in the sacred porch 
Ezekiel saw, when, by the vision led. 
His eye surveyed the dark idolatries 
Of alienated Judah. Next came one 
Who mourned in earnest, when the captive 

ark 
Maimed his brute image, head and hands 

lopt off 
In his own temple, on the grunsel-edge, ^60 
Where he fell flat, and shamed his worship- 
ers: 
Dagon his name, sea-monster, upward man 
And downward fish ; yet had his temple high 
Reared in Azotus, dreaded through the coast 
Of Palestine, in Gath and Ascalon, 
And Aecaron and Gaza's frontier bounds. 
Him followed Rimmon, whose delightful seat 
Was fair Damascus, on the fertile banks 
Of Abbana and Pharphar, lucid streams. 
He also against the house of God was bold : 
A leper once he lost, and gained a king, 471 
Ahaz, his sottish conqueror, whom he drew 
God's altar to disparage and displace 
For one of Syrian mode, whereon to burn 
His odious offerings, and adore the gods 
Whom he had vanquished. After these ap- 
peared 
A crew who, under names of old renown, 
Osiris, Isis, Orus, and their train. 
With monstrous shapes and sorceries abused 
Fanatic Egypt and her priests, to seek ^80 
Their wandering gods disguised in brutish 

forms 
Rather than human. Nor did Israel scape 
The infection, when their borrowed gold 

composed 
The calf in Oreb, and tlie rebel king 
Doubled that sin in Bethel and in Dan, 
Likening his Maker to the grazed ox — 
Jehovah, Avho, in one night, when he passed 
From Egypt marching, equaled with one 

stroke 
Both her first-born and all her bleating gods. 
Belial came last, than whom a Spirit more 
lewd 490 

Fell not from Heaven, or more gross to love 
Vice for itself. To him no temple stood 
Or altar smoked; yet who more oft than he 
In tei pies and at altars, when the priest 
Turns atheist, as did Eli's sons, who filled 
With lust and violence the house of God? 
In courts and palaces he also reigns, 
And in luxurious cities, where the noise 
Of riot ascends above their loftiest towers. 
And injury and outrage; and when night ^^o 
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the 
sons 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



137 



Of Belial, flown with insolence and wine. 
Witness the streets of Sodom, and that 

night 
In Gibeah, when the hospitable door 
Exposed a matron, to avoid worse rape. 
These were the prime in order and in 
might ; 
The rest were long to tell, though far re- 
nowned 
The Ionian gods — of Javan's issue held 
Gods, yet confessed later than Heaven and 

Earth, 
Their boasted jDarents; — Titan, Heaven's 
first-born, 5io 

With his enormous brood, and birthright 

seized 
By younger Saturn ; he from mightier Jove, 
His own and Rhea's son, like measure found ; 
So Jove usurping reigned. These, first in 

Crete 
And Ida known, thence on the snowy top 
Of cold Olympus ruled the middle air, 
Their highest Heaven; or on the Delphian 

cliff. 
Or in Dodona, and through all the bounds 
Of Doric land ; or who with Saturn old 
Fled over Adria to the Hesperian fields, ^20 
And o'er the Celtic roamed the utmost isles. 
All these and more came flocking ; but with 
looks 
Downcast and damp, yet such wherein ap- 
peared 
Obscure some glimpse of joy, to have found 

their Chief 
Not in despair, to have found themselves not 

lost 
In loss itself; which on his countenance east 
Like doubtful hue. But he, his wonted pride 
Soon recollecting, with high words that bore 
Semblance of worth, not substance, gently 

raised 
Their fainting courage, and dispelled their 
fears : 530 

Then straight commands that at the warlike 

sound 
Of trumpets loud and clarions, be upreared 
His mighty standard. That proud honor 

claimed 
Azazel as his right, a Cherub tall : 
Who forthwith from the glittering staff un- 
furled 
The imiDerial ensign, which, full high ad- 
vanced. 
Shone like a meteor streaming to the wind. 
With gems and golden luster rich emblazed. 
Seraphic arms and trophies ; all the while 
Sonorous metal blowing martial sounds : 540 



At which the universal host up-sent 
A shout that tore Hell's concave, and beyond 
Frighted the reign of Chaos and old Night. 
All in a moment through the gloom were 

seen 
Ten thousand banners rise into the air, 
With orient colors waving ; with them rose 
A forest huge of spears; and thronging 

helms 
Appeared, and serried shields in thick array 
Of dejDth immeasurable. Anon they move 
In perfect phalanx to the Dorian mood 550 
Of flutes and soft recorders — such as raised 
To highth of noblest temper heroes old 
Arming to battle, and instead of rage 
Deliberate valor breathed, firm and unmoved 
With dread of death to flight or foul retreat ; 
Nor wanting power to mitigate and SAvage, 
With solemn touches, troubled thoughts, and 

chase 
Anguish and doubt and fear and sorrow and 

pain 
From mortal or immortal minds. Thus they, 
Breathing united force with fixed thought, 560 
Moved on in silence to soft pipes that 

charmed 
Their painful steps o'er the burnt soil; and 

now 
Advanced in view they stand, a horrid front 
Of dreadful length and dazzling arms, in 

guise 
Of warriors old, with ordered sjDear and 

shield, 
Awaiting what command their mighty Chief 
Had to impose. He through the armed files 
Darts his experienced eye, and soon traverse 
The whole battalion views — their order due, 
Their visages and stature as of gods ; 570 
Their number last he sums. And now his 

heart 
Distends with pride, and hardening in his ' 

strength 
Glories ; for never, since created man. 
Met such embodied force as, named with 

these. 
Could merit more than that small infantry 
Warred on by cranes : though all the giant 

brood 
Of Phlegra with the heroic race were joined 
That fought at Thebes and Ilium, on each 

side 
Mixed with auxiliar gods ; and what resounds 
In fable or romance of Uther's son, 580 

Begirt with British and Armoric knights ; 
And all who since, baptized or infidel. 
Jousted in Aspramont, or Montalban, 
Damasco, or Marocco, or Trebisond; 



138 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



Or whom Biserta sent from Afrie shore 
When Charlemain with all his peerage fell 
By Fontarabbia. Thus far these beyond 
Compare of mortal prowess, yet observed 
Their dread commander. He, above the rest 
In shape and gesture proudly eminent, ^90 
Stood like a tower ; his form had yet not lost 
All her original brightness, nor appeared 
Less than Archangel ruined, and the excess 
Of glory obscured: as when the sun new- 
risen 
Looks through the horizontal misty air 
Shorn of his beams, or from behind the 

moon. 
In dim eclipse, disastrous twilight sheds 
On half the nations,' and with fear of change 
Perplexes monarchs. Darkened so, yet shone 
Above them all the Archangel; but his 
face 600 

Deep scars of thunder had intrenched, and 

care 
Sat on his faded cheek, but under brows 
Of dauntless courage, and considerate pride 
Waiting revenge. Cruel his eye, but cast 
Signs of remorse and passion, to behold 
The fellows of his crime, the followers rather 
(Far other once beheld in bliss), condemned 
Forever now to have their lot in pain ; 
Millions of Spirits for his fault amerced 
Of Heaven, and from eternal splendors 
flung 610 

For his revolt ; yet faithful how they stood. 
Their glory withered : as, when Heaven's fire 
Hath scathed the forest oaks or mountain 

pines. 
With singed top their stately growth, though 

bare. 
Stands on the blasted heath. He now pre- 
pared 
To speak ; whereat their doubled ranks they 

bend 
From wing to wing, and half enclose him 

round 
With all his peers : attention held them 

mute. 
Thrice he assayed, and thrice, in spite of 

scorn, 
Tears, such as Angels weep, burst forth : at 
last 620 

Words interwove with sighs found out their 
way : — 
"0 myriads of immortal Spirits ! Pow- 
ers 
Matchless, but with the Almighty ! — and that 

strife 
Was not inglorious, though the event was 
dire, 



As this place testifies, and this dire change. 
Hateful to utter. But what power of mind. 
Foreseeing or presaging, from the depth 
Of knowledge past or present, could have 

feared 
How such united force of gods, how such 
As stood like these, could ever know repulse ? 
For who can yet believe, though after loss, 631 
That all these puissant legions, whose exile 
Hath emptied Heaven, shall fail to reaseend. 
Self -raised, and repossess their native seat? 
For me, be witness all the host of Heaven, 
If counsels different, or danger shunned 
By me, have lost our hopes. But he who 

reigns 
Monarch in Heaven, till then as one secure 
Sat on his throne, upheld by old repute. 
Consent or custom, and his regal state 640 
Put forth at full, but still his strength con- 
cealed ; 
Which tempted our attempt, and wrought 

our fall. 
Henceforth his might we know, and know 

our own 
So as not either to provoke, or dread 
New war provoked. Our better part remains 
To work in close design, by fraud or guile. 
What force effected not ; that he no less 
At length from us may find, who overcomes 
By force hath overcome but half his foe. 
Space may produce new worlds ; whereof so 

rife 650 

There went a fame in Heaven that he ere 

long 
Intended to create, and therein plant 
A generation whom his choice regard 
Should favor equal to the Sons of Heaven. 
Thither, if but to pry, shall be perhaps 
Our first eruption : thither or elsewhere ; 
For this infernal pit shall never hold 
Celestial Si3irits in bondage, nor the Abyss 
Long under darkness cover. But these 

thoughts, 
Full counsel must mature. Peace is de- 
spaired, ' 660 
For who can think svibmission ? War, then, 

war 
Open or understood, must be resolved." 
He spake; and, to confirm his words, 

out-flew 
Millions of flaming swords, drawn from the 

thighs 
Of mighty Cherubim ; the sudden blaze 
Far round illumined Hell. Highly they 

raged 
Against the Highest, and fierce with grasped 

arms 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



139 



Clashed on their sounding shields the din of 

war, 
Hurling defiance toward the vault of 

Heaven. 
There stood a hill not far, whose grisly 

top _ 670 

Belched fire and rolling smoke; the rest 

entire 
Shone with a glossy scurf, undoubted sign 
That in liis womb was hid metallic ore, 
The work of sulphur. Thither, winged with 

speed, 
A numerous brigad hastened : as when bands 
Of pioneers, with spade and pickaxe armed, 
Forerun the royal camp, to trench a field. 
Or cast a rampart. Mammon led them on, 
Mammon, the least erected Spirit that 

fell 
From Heaven, for even in Heaven his looks 

and thoughts ^^^ 

Were always downward bent, admixing more 
The riches of Heaven's pavement, trodden 

gold. 
Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed 
In vision beatific. By him first 
Men also, and by his suggestion taught. 
Ransacked the Center, and with impious 

hands 
Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth 
For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew 
Opened into the hill a spacious wound. 
And digged out ribs of gold. Let none 

admire ^^^ 

That riches grow in Hell ; that soil may best 
Deserve the precious bane. And here let 

those 
Who boast in mortal things, and wondering 

tell 
Of Babel, and the works of Memphian kings. 
Learn how their greatest monuments of 

fame. 
And strength, and art, are easily outdone 
By Spirits reprobate, and in an hour 
What in an age they, with incessant toil 
And hands innumerable, scarce perform. 
Nigh on the plain, in many cells prepared, '^^^ 
That underneath had veins of liquid fire 
Sluiced from the lake, a second multitude 
With wondrous art founded the massy ore. 
Severing each kind, and scummed the bullion 

dross. 
A third as soon had formed within the 

ground 
A various mold, and from the boiling cells 
By strange conveyance filled each hollow 

nook: 
As in an organ, from one blast of wind, 



720 



To many a row of pipes the sound-board 

breathes. 
Anon out of the earth a fabric huge ™ 

Rose like an exhalation, with the sound 
Of dulcet symphonies and voices sweet — 
Built like a temple, where pilasters round 
Were set, and Doric pillars overlaid 
With golden architrave ; nor did there want 
Cornice or frieze, with bossy sculptures 

graven : 
The roof was fretted gold. Not Babylon, 
Nor great Alcairo, such magnificence 
Equaled in all their glories, to enshrine 
Belus or Serapis their gods, or seat 
Their kings, when Egypt with Assyria strove 
In wealth and luxury. The ascending pile 
Stood fixed her stately highth, and straight 

the doors. 
Opening their brazen folds, discover, wide 
Within, her ample spaces o'er the smooth 
And level pavement : from the arched I'oof , 
Pendent by subtle magic, many a row 
Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed 
With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light 
As from a sky. The hasty multitude '^^^ 
Admiring entered, and the work some praise, 
And some the architect. His hand was 

known 
In Heaven by many a towered structure 

high. 
Where sceptered Angels held their residence, 
And sat as Princes, whom the supreme King 
Exalted to such power, and gave to rule. 
Each in his hierarchy, the Orders bright. 
Nor was his name unheard or unadored 
In ancient Greece ; and in Ausonian land 
Men called him Mulciber ; and how he fell "^40 
From Heaven they fabled, thrown by angry 

Jove 
Sheer o'er the crystal battlements : from 

morn 
To noon he fell, from noon to dewy eve, 
A summer's day; and with the setting sun 
Droi^t from the zenith, like a falling star, 
On Lemnos, the JEgsean isle. Thus they 

relate, 
Erring; for he with this rebellious rout 
Fell long before ; nor aught availed him now 
To have built in Heaven high towers; nor 

did he scape 
By all his engines, but was headlong sent '^^^ 
With his industrious crew to build in Hell. 
Meanwhile the winged heralds, by com- 
mand 
Of sovran power, with awful ceremony 
And trumpet's sound, throughout the host 

proclaim 



140 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



A solemn council forthwith to be held 

At Pandemonium, the high capital 

Of Satan and his peers. Their summons 

cal|ed 
From every band and squared regiment 
By place or choice the worthiest; they 

anon 
With hundreds and with thousands trooping 

came "^60 

Attended, All access was thronged; the 

gates 
And porches wide, but chief the spacious hall 
(Though like a covered field, where cham- 
pions bold 
Wont ride in armed, and at the Soldan's 

chair 
Defied the best of Panim chivalry 
To mortal combat, or career with lance) 
Thick swarmed, both on the ground and in 

the air, 
Brushed with the hiss of rustling wings. As 

bees 
In spring-time, when the Sun with Taurus 

rides, 
Pour forth their populous youth about the 

hive 770 

In clusters; they among fresh deAvs and 

flowers 
Fly to and fro, or on the smoothed plank, 
The suburb of their straw-built citadel. 
New rubbed Avith balm, expatiate and confer 
Their state-affairs. So thick the aery crowd 
Swarmed and were straitened; till, the sig- 
nal given. 
Behold a wonder; they but now who seemed 
In bigness to surpass Earth's giant sons. 
Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow 

room 
Throng numberless, like that pygmean race 
Beyond the Indian mount ; or faery elves, "^^i 
Whose midnight revels, by a forest-side 
Or fountain, some belated peasant sees. 
Or dreams he sees, while overhead the Moon 
Sits arbitress, and nearer to the Earth 
Wheels her pale course ; they, on their mirth 

and dance 
Intent, with jocund music ehai'm his ear; 
At once with joy and fear his heart rebounds. 
Thus incorporeal Spirits to smallest forms 
Reduced their shapes immense, and were at 

large, 790 

Though without number still, amidst the hall 
Of that infernal court. But far within. 
And in their own dimensions like themselves. 
The great Seraphic Lords and Cherubim 
In close recess and secret conclave sat, 
A thousand demi-gods on golden seats. 



Frequent and full. After short silence then, 
And summons read, the great consult bagan. 

Book II' 

High on a throne of royal state, which far 
Outshone the wealth of Ormus and of Ind, 
Or where the gorgeous East with richest 

hand 
Showers on her kings barbaric pearl and 

gold, 
Satan exalted sat, by merit raised 
To that bad eminence; and, from despair 
Thus high uplifted beyond hope, aspires 
Beyond thus high, insatiate to pursue 
Vain war with Heaven ; and, by success un- 
taught. 
His proud imaginations thus displayed : — lo 
"Powers and Dominions, Deities of 

Heaven ! 
For since no deep within her gulf can hold 
Immortal vigor, though oppressed and 

fallen, 
I give not Heaven for lost: from this de- 
scent 
Celestial Virtues rising will appear 
More glorious and more dread than from no 

fall. 
And trust themselves to fear no second fate. 
Me though just right, and the fixed laws of 

Heaven, 
Did first create your leader, next, free 

choice, 
With what besides, in council or in fight, 20 
Hath been achieved of merit, yet this loss. 
Thus far at least recovered, hath much more 
Established in a safe, unenvied throne, 
Yielded with full consent. The happier state 
In Heaven, which follows dignity, might 

draw 
Envy from each inferior; but who here 
Will envy whom the highest place exposes 
Foremost to stand against the Thunderer's 

aim 
Your bulwark, and condemns to greatest 

share 
Of endless pain? Where there is then no 

good 30 

For which to strive, no strife can grow up 

there 
From faction; for none sure will claim in 

Hell 
Precedence, none whose portion is so small 
Of present pain that with ambitious mind 
Will covet more. With this advantage then 
To union, and firm faith, and fii"m accord. 
More than can be in Heaven, we now return 



PURITANS AND KINGS 



141 



To claim our just inheritance of old, 
Surer to prosper than prosperity 
Could have assured us; and by what best 
way, . ^^ 

Whether of open war or covert guile, 
We now debate ; who can advise may speak." 
He ceased; and next him Moloch, scep- 
tered king, 
Stood up, the strongest and the fiercest 

Spirit 
That fought in Heaven, now fiercer by de- 
spair. 
His trust was with the Eternal to be deemed 
Equal in strength, and rather than be less 
Cared not to be at all ; with that care lost 
Went all his fear : of God, or Hell, or worse. 
He recked not, and these words thereafter 
spake : — ^^ 

"My sentence is for open war. Of wiles, 
More unexpert, I boast not : them let those 
Contrive who need, or when they need; not 

now. 
For while they sit contriving, shall the rest — 
Millions that stand in arms, and longing wait 
The signal to ascend — sit lingering here. 
Heaven's fugitives, and for their dwelling- 
place 
Accept this dark opprobrious den of shame. 
The prison of his tyranny who reigns 
By our delay ? No ! let us rather choose, ^^ 
Armed with Hell-flames and fury, all at once 
O'er Heaven's high towers to force resistless 

way. 
Turning our tortures into horrid arms 
Against the Torturer ; when to meet the noise 
Of his almighty engine he shall hear 
Infernal thunder, and for lightning see 
Black fire and horror shot with equal rage 
Among his Angels, and his throne itself 
Mixed with Tartarean sulphur and strange 

fire. 
His own invented torments. But perhaps ™ 
The way seems difficult and steep to scale 
With upright Aving against a higher foe. 
Let such bethink them, if the sleepy drench 
Of that forgetful lake benumb not still. 
That in our proper motion we ascend 
Up to our native seat; descent and fall 
To us is adverse. Who but felt of late. 
When the fierce foe hung on our broken rear 
Insulting, and pursued us through the deep, 
With what compulsion and laborious flight ^^ 
We sunk thus low ? The ascent is easy then ; 
The event is feared ! Should we again pro- 
voke 
Our stronger, some worse way his wrath 
may find 



To our destruction — if there be in Hell 
Fear to be worse destroyed ! What can be 

worse 
Than to dwell here, driven out from bliss, 

condemned 
In this abhorred deep to utter woe ; 
Where pain of unextinguishable fire 
Must exercise us, without hope of end. 
The vassals of his anger, when the scourge ^^ 
Inexoi'ably, and the torturing hour. 
Calls us to penance? More destroyed than 

thus. 
We should be quite abolished, and expire. 
What fear we then? what doubt we to in- 
cense 
His utmost ire ? which, to the highth enraged. 
Will either quite consume us, and reduce 
To nothing this essential — happier far 
Than miserable to have eternal being! — 
Or if our substance be indeed divine. 
And cannot cease to be, we are at worst ^^^ 
On this side nothing ; and by proof we feel 
Our power sufficient to disturb his Heaven, 
And with perpetual inroads to alarm. 
Though inaccessible, his fatal throne : 
Which, if not victory, is yet revenge." 
He ended frowning, and his look de- 
nounced 
Desperate revenge, and battle dangerous 
To less than gods. On the other side up rose 
Belial, in act more gTacef ul and humane ; 
A fairer person lost not Heaven ; he seemed 
For dignity composed, and high exploit. ^^^ 
But all was false and hollow; though his 

tongue 
Dropt manna, and could make the worse ap- 
pear 
The better reason, to perplex and dash 
Maturest counsels: for his thoughts were 

low; 
To vice industrious, but to nobler deeds 
Timorous and slothful; yet he pleased the 

ear: 
And with persuasive accent thus began : — 

"I should be much for open war, Peers, 
As not behind in hate, if what was urged 120 
Main reason to persuade immediate war 
Did not dissuade me most, and seem to cast 
Oniinous conjecture on the whole success; 
When he who most excels in fact of arms. 
In what he counsels and in what excels 
Mistrustful, grounds his courage on despair 
And utter dissolution, as the scope 
Of all his aim, after some dire revenge. 
First, what revenge? The towers of Heaven 

are filled 
With armed watch, that render all access ^30 



142 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



140 



Impregnable: oft on the bordering deep 
Encamp their legions, or with obscure wing 
Scout far and wide into the realm of Night, 
Scorning surprise. Or could we break our 

way 
By force, and at our heels all Hell should 

rise 
With blackest insurrection, to confound 
Heaven's purest light, yet our great Enemy, 
All incorruptible, would on his throne 
Sit unpolluted, and the ethereal mold, 
Incapable of stain, would soon expel 
Her mischief, and purge off the baser fire, 
Victorious. Thus repulsed, our final hope 
Is flat despair: we must exasperate 
The Almighty Victor to spend all his rage; 
And that must end us, that must be our 

cure — 
To be no more. Sad cure ! for who would 

lose. 
Though full of pain, this intellectual being, 
Those thoughts that wander through eternity. 
To perish rather, swallowed up and lost 
In the wide womb of uncreated Night, ^^ 
Devoid of sense and motion? And who 

knows, 
Let this be good, whether our angry foe 
Can give it, or will ever ? How he can 
Is doubtful ; that he never will is sure. 
Will he, so wise, let loose at once his ire. 
Belike through impotence, or unaware. 
To give his enemies their wish, and end 
Them in his anger, whom his anger saves 
To punish endless? 'Wherefore cease we 

then?' 
Say they who counsel war ; 'we are decreed, 
Reserved, and destined to eternal woe: ^^o 
Whatever doing, what can we suffer more. 
What can we suffer worse?' Is this then 

worst. 
Thus sitting, thus consulting, thus in ai'ms? 
What when we fled amain, pursued and 

struck 
With Heaven's afflicting thunder, and be- 
sought 
The Deep to shelter us? This Hell then 

seemed 
A refuge from those wounds. Or when we 

lay 
Chained on the burning lake ? That sure was 

worse. 
What if the breath that kindled those grim 

fires, 1^0 

Awaked, should blow them into sevenfold 

rage. 
And plunge us ii> the flames ; or from above 
Should intermitted vengeance arm again 



His red right hand to plague us? What if 

all 
Her stores were opened, and this firmament 
Of Hell should spout her cataracts of fire. 
Impendent horrors, threatening hideous fall 
One day upon our heads ; while we perhaps 
Designing or exhorting glorious war. 
Caught in a fiery tempest, shall be hurled, i^o 
Each on his rock transfixed, the sport and 

prey 
Of racking whirlwinds, or forever sunk 
Under yon boiling ocean, wrapt in chains; 
There to converse with everlasting groans, 
Unrespited, unpitied, unreprieved. 
Ages of hopeless end ! This would be worse. 
War therefore, open or concealed, alike 
My voice dissuades: for what can force or 

guile 
With him, or who deceive his mind, whose 

eye 
Views all things at one view? He from 

Heaven's highth ^^ 

All these our motions vain sees and derides ; 
Not more almighty to resist our might 
Than wise to frustrate all our plots and 

wiles. 
Shall we then live thus vile, the race of 

Heaven 
Thus trampled, thus expelled to suffer here 
Chains and these torments? Better these 

than worse. 
By my advice ; since fate inevitable 
Subdues us, and omnipotent decree. 
The Victor's will. To suffer, as to do, 
Our strength is equal, nor the law unjust ^00 
That so ordains : this was at first resolved. 
If we were wise, against so great a foe 
Contending, and so doubtful what might 

fall. 
I laugh, when those who at the spear are 

bold 
And venturous, if that fail them, shrink, and 

fear 
What yet they know must follow — to endure 
Exile, or ignominy, or bonds, or pain. 
The sentence of their conqueror. This is 

now 
Our doom ; which if we can sustain and bear. 
Our Supreme Foe in time may much remit 2io 
His anger, and perhaps, thus far removed. 
Not mind us not offending, satisfied 
With what is punished; whence these rag- 
ing fires 
Will slacken, if his breath stir not their 

flames. 
Our purer essence then will overcome 
Their noxious vapor, or, inured, not feel; 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



143 



Or, changed at length, and to the place 

conformed 
In temper and in nature, will receive 
Familiar the fierce heat; and, void of 

pain, 
This horror will grow mild, this darkness 
light; 220 

Besides what hope the never-ending flight 
Of future days may bring, what chance, 

what change 
Worth waiting, — since our present lot ap- 
pears 
For happy though but ill, for ill not worst. 
If we procure not to ourselves more woe." 
Thus Belial, with words clottied in rea- 
son's garb, 
Counselled ignoble ease, and peaceful sloth. 
Not peace; and after him thus Mammon 
spake : — 
"Either to disenthrone the King of Heaven 
We war, if war be best, or to regain 230 

Our own right lost. Him to unthrone we 

then 
May hope, when evei'lasting Fate shall yield 
To fickle Chance, and Chaos judge the 

strife. 
The former, vain to hope, argues as vain 
The latter; for what place can be for us 
Within Heaven's bound, unless Heaven's 

Lord Supreme 
We overpower? Suppose he should relent. 
And publish grace to all, on promise made 
Of new subjection; with what eyes could 

we 
Stand in his presence, humble, and re- 
ceive 240 
Strict laws imposed, to celebrate his throne 
With warbled hymns, and to his Godhead 

sing 
Forced Halleluiahs ; while he lordly sits 
Our envied sovran, and his altar breathes 
Ambrosial odors and ambrosial flowers, 
Our servile offerings? This must be our 

task 
In Heaven, this our delight. How weari- 
some 
Eternity so spent in worship paid 
To whom we hate ! Let us not then pur- 
sue — 
By force impossible, by leave obtained 250 
Unacceptable — though in Heaven, our state 
Of splendid vassalage; but rather seek 
Our own good from ourselves, and from our 

own 
Live to ourselves, though in this vast recess, 
Free, and to none accountable, preferring 
Hard liberty before the easy yoke 



Of servile pomp. Our greatness will ap- 
pear 
Then most conspicuous, when great things 

of small. 
Useful of hurtful, prosperous of adverse. 
We can ci'eate, and in what place soe'er 260 
Thrive under evil, and work ease out of pain 
Through labor and endurance. This deep 

world 
Of darkness do we dread? How oft amidst 
Thick clouds and dark doth Heaven's all- 
ruling Sire 
Choose to reside, his glory unobscured, . 
And with the majesty of darkness round 
Covers his throne, from whence deep thun- 
ders roar, 
Mustering their rage, and Heaven resembles 

Hell! 
As he our darkness, cannot we his light 
Imitate when we please? This desert 
soil 270 

Wants not her hidden luster, gems, and 

gold ; 
Nor want we skill or art, from whence to 

raise 
Magnificence; and what can Heaven show 

more? 
Our torments also may in length of time 
Become our elements, these piercing fires 
As soft as now severe, our temper changed 
Into their temper; which must needs re- 
move 
The sensible of pain. All things invite 
To peaceful counsels, and the settled state 
Of order, how in safety best we may 280 
Compose our present evils, with regard 
Of what we are and wliere, dismissing quite 
All thoughts of war. Ye have what I ad- 
vise." 
He scarce had finished, when such mur- 
mur filled 
The assembly, as when hollow rocks retain 
The sound of blustering winds, which all 

night long 
Had roused the sea, now with hoarse ca- 
dence lull 
Seafaring men o'erwatched, whose bark by 

chance. 
Or pinnace, anchors in a craggy bay 
After the tempest: such applause was 
heard 290 

As Mammon ended, and his sentence 

pleased, 
Advising peace; for such another field 
They dreaded worse than Hell; so much the 

fear 
Of thunder and the sword of Michael 



144 



THE GEEAT TKADITION 



Wrought still within them; and no less de- 

si'^e 
To found this nether empire, which might 

rise, 
By policy, and long process of time, 
In emulation opposite to Heaven. 
Which when Beelzebub perceived, than 

whom, 
Satan except, none higher sat, with grave ^^^ 
Aspect he rose, and in his rising seemed 
A pillar of state ; deep on his front engraven 
Deliberation sat and public care; 
And princely counsel in his face yet shone. 
Majestic, though in ruin. Sage he stood. 
With Atlantean shoulders fit to bear 
The weight of mightiest monarchies; his 

look 
Drew audience and attention still as night 
Or summer's noontide air, while thus he 

spake : — - 
"Thrones and Imperial Powers, Offspring 

of Heaven, 310 

Ethereal Virtues ! or these titles now 
Must we renounce, and changing style, be 

called 
Princes of Hell? for so the popular vote 
Inclines^here to continue, and build up 

here 
A growing empire; doubtless! while we 

dream, 
And know not that the King of Heaven 

hath doomed 
This place our dungeon — not our safe re- 
treat 
Beyond his potent arm, to live exempt 
From Heaven's high jurisdiction, in new 

league 
Banded against his throne, but to remain ^20 
In strictest bondage, though thus far re- 
moved. 
Under the inevitable curb, reserved 
His captive multitude. For he, be sure. 
In highth or depth, still first and last will 

reign 
Sole king, and of his kingdom lose no part 
By our revolt, but over Hell extend 
His empire, and with iron scepter rule 
Us here, as with his golden those in Heaven. 
What sit we then projecting peace and war 1 
War hath determined us, and foiled with 

loss 330 

Irreparable ; terms of peace yet none 
Vouchsafed or sought; for what peace will 

be given 
To us enslaved, but custody severe. 
And stripes, and arbitrary punishment 
Inflicted? and what peace can we return. 



But, to our power, hostility, and hate. 
Untamed reluctance, and revenge, though 

slow, 
Yet ever plotting how the Conqueror least 
May reap his conquest, and may least re- 
joice' 
In doing what we most in suffering feel ? 340 
Nor will occasion want, nor shall we need 
With dangerous expedition to invade 
Heaven, whose high walls fear no assault or 

siege. 
Or ambush from the Deep. What if we 

find 
Some easier enterprise? There is a place 
(If ancient and prophetic fame in Heaven 
Err not), another World, the happy seat 
Of some new race called Man, about this 

time 
To be created like to us, though less 
In power and excellence, but favored 
more 350 

Of him who rules above; so was his will 
Pronounced among the gods, and by an oath 
That shook Heaven's whole circumference, 

confirmed. 
Thither let us bend all our thoughts, to 

learn 
What creatures there inhabit, of what mold 
Or substance, how endued, and what their 

power, 
And where their weakness : how attempted 

best, 
By force or subtlety. Though Heaven be 

shut, 
And Heaven's high Arbitrator sit secure 
In his own strength, this place may lie ex- 
posed, 360 
The utmost border of his kingdom, left 
To their defence who hold it ; here, perhaps, 
Some advantageous act may be achieved 
By sudden onset : either with Hell-fire 
To waste his whole creation, or possess 
All as our own, and drive, as we were 

driven, 
The puny habitants ; or if not drive. 
Seduce them to our party, that their God 
May prove their foe, and with repenting 

hand 
Abolish his own works. This would sur- 
pass 370 
Common revenge, and interrupt his joy 
In our confusion, and our joy upraise 
In his disturbance ; when his darling sons. 
Hurled headlong to partake with us, shall 

curse 
Their frail original, and faded bliss — 
Faded so soon ! Advise if this be worth 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



145 



Attempting, or to sit in darkness here 
Hatching vain empires." Thus Beelzebub 
Pleaded his devilish counsel, first devised 
By Satan, and in part proposed; for 

whence ^^^ 

But from the author of all ill, could spring 
So deep a malice, to confound the race 
Of mankind in one root, and Earth with Hell 
To mingle and involve, done all to spite 
The great Creator? But their spite still 

serves 
His glory to augment. The bold design 
Pleased highly those Infernal States, and 

joy 
Sparkled in all their eyes; with full assent 
They vote: whereat his speech he thus re- 
news : — 
''Well have ye judged, well ended long 

debate, ^^ 

Synod of gods ! and, like to what ye are, 
Great things resolved; which from the Ioav- 

est deep 
Will once more lift us up, in spite of fate. 
Nearer our ancient seat — perhaps in view 
Of those bright confines, whence, with neigh- 
boring arms 
And opportune excursion, we may chance 
Re-enter Heaven ; or else in some mild zone 
Dwell not unvisited of Heaven's fair light. 
Secure, and at the brightening orient beam 
Purge off this gloom; the soft delicious 

air, 400 

To heal the scar of these corrosive fires, 
Shall breathe her balm. But first, whom 

shall we send 
In search of this new world? whom shall 

we find 
Sufficient? who shall tempt with wandering 

feet 
The dark, unbottomed, infinite Abyss, 
And through the palpable obscure find out 
His uncouth way, or spread his aery flight. 
Upborne with indefatigable wings 
Over the vast abrupt, ere he arrive 
The happy isle? What strength, what art, 

can then 4lo 

Suffice, or what evasion bear him safe 
Through the strict senteries and stations 

thick 
Of Angels watching round? Here he had 

need 
All circumsi3eetion, and we now no less 
Choice in our suffrage; for on whom we 

send. 
The weight of all, and our last hope, relies." 

This said, he sat ; and expectation held 
His look suspense, awaiting who appeared 



To second, or oppose, or undertake 

The perilous attemjDt ; but all sat mute, 420 

Pondering the danger with deep thoughts; 

and each 
In other's countenance read his own dismay, 
Astonished. None among the choice and 

prime 
Of those Heaven-warring champions could 

be found 
So hardy as to profiler or accept. 
Alone, the dreadful voyage; till at last 
Satan, whom now transcendent glory raised 
Above his fellows, with monarchal pride 
Conscious of highest worth, unmoved thus 

spake : — 
"0 Progeny of Heaven! Empyreal 

Thrones ! 431 

With reason hath deep silence and demur 
Seized us, though undismayed. Long is the 

way 
And hard, that out of Hell leads up to 

Light; 
Our prison strong, this huge convex of fire. 
Outrageous to devour, immures us round 
Ninefold; and gates of burning adamant, 
Barred over us, prohibit all egress. 
These passed, if any pass, the void pro- 
found 
Of unessential Night receives him next, 
Wide-gaping, and with utter loss of be- 



ing 



440 



Threatens him, plunged in that abortive 

gulf. 
If thence he scape, into whatever world. 
Or unknown region, what remains him less 
Than unknown dangers and as hard escape? 
But I should ill become this throne, Peers, 
And this imperial sovranty, adorned 
With splendor, armed with power, if aught 

proposed 
And judged of public moment, in the shape 
Of difficulty or danger, could deter 
Me from attempting. Wherefore do I a«:- 

sume 450 

These royalties, and not refuse to reign. 
Refusing to accept as great a share 
Of hazard as of honor, due alike 
To him who reigns, and so much to him 

due 
Of hazard more, as he above the rest 
High honored sits? Go therefore, mighty 

Powers, 
Terror of Heaven, though fallen ; intend at 

home 
While here shall be our home, what best may 

ease 
The present misery, and render Hell 



146 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



More tolerable ; if there be cure or charm ^60 
To respite, or deceive, or slack the pain 
Of this ill mansion ; intermit no watch 
Against a wakeful foe, Avhile I abroad 
Through all the coasts of dark destruction 

seek 
Deliverance for us all : this enterprise 
None shall partake with nie." Thus saying, 

rose 
The Monarch, and prevented all reply; 
Prudent, lest, from his resolution raised. 
Others among the chief might offer now 
(Certain to be refused) what erst they 

feared, 470 

And, so refused, might in opinion stand 
His rivals, winning cheap the high repute 
Which he through hazard huge must earn. 

But they 
Dreaded not more the adventure than his 

voice 
Forbidding ; and at once with him they rose. 
Their rising all at once was as the sound 
Of thunder heard remote. Towards him 

they bend 
With awful reverence prone; and as a god 
Extol him equal to the Highest in Heaven. 
Nor failed they to express how much they 

praised "^^^ 

That for the general safety he despised 
His own ; for neither do the Spirits damned 
Lose all their virtue, — lest bad men should 

boast 
Their specious deeds on Earth, which glory 

excites, 
Or close ambition varnished o'er with zeal. 
Thus, they their doubtful consultations 

dark 
Ended, rejoicing in their matchless Chief; 
As when from mountain-tops the dusky 

clouds 
Ascending, .vhile the North-wind sleeps, 

o'er-spread 
Heaven's cheerful face, the louring ele- 
ment ^^^ 
Scowls o'er the darkened landskip snow or 

shower ; 
If chance the radiant sun with farewell 

sweet 
Extend his evening beam, the fields revive. 



The birds their notes renew, and bleating 

herds 
Attest their joy, that hill and valley rings. 
O shame to men ! Devil with devil damned 
Firm concord holds; men only disagree 
Of creatures rational, though under hope 
Of heavenly grace; and, God proclaiming 

peace. 
Yet live in hatred, enmity, and strife ^^^ 
Among themselves, and levy cruel wars, 
Wasting the Earth, each other to destroy : 
As if (which might induce us to accord) 
Man had not hellish foes enow besides. 
That day and night for his destruction wait ! 
The Stygian council thus dissolved; and 
forth 
In order came the grand Infernal Peers; 
Midst came their mighty Paramount, and 

seemed 
Alone the antagonist of Heaven, nor less 
Than Hell's dread Emperor, with pomp su- 
preme, 510 
And god-like imitated state ; him round 
A globe of fiery Seraphim enclosed 
With bright emblazonry, and horrent arms, 
Then of their session ended they bid cry 
With trumpet's regal sound the great re- 
sult: 
Toward the four winds four speedy Cheru- 
bim 
Put to their mouths the sounding alehymy, 
By herald's voice explained; the hollow 

Abyss 
Heard far and wide, and all the host of Hell 
With deafening shout returned them loud 
acclaim. ^^^ 

Thence more at ease their minds, and some- 
what raised 
By false jDresumptuous hope, the ranged 

powers 
Disband; and, wandering, each his several 

way 
Pursues, as inclination or sad choice 
Leads him perplexed, where he may likeli- 
est find 
Truce to his restless thoughts, and enter- 
tain 
The irksome hours, till his great Chief re- 
turn. 



3. LIBERTY AND DISCIPLINE 



[From Areopagitica, 1644] 

The Virtue of Books 

I deny not but that it is of greatest con- 
cernment in the church and commonwealth 



to have a vigilant eye how books demean 
themselves, as well as men; and thereafter 
to confine, imprison, and do sharpest jus- 
tice on them as malefactors; for books are 
not absolutely dead things, but do contain 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



147 



a progeny of life in them to be as active 
as that soul was whose progeny they. are; 
nay, they do preserve as in a vial the 
purest efficacy and extraction of that living- 
intellect that bred them. I know they are 
as lively, and as vigorously productive, as 
those fabulous dragon's teeth: and being- 
sown up and down, may chance to spring 
up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, 
unless wariness be used, as good almost kill 
a man as kill a good book. Who kills a 
man kills a reasonable creature, God's im- 
age; but he who destroys a good book, kills 
reason itself, kills the image of God, as it 
were, in the eye. Many a man lives a bur- 
den to the earth; but a good book is the 
precious life-blood of a master-spirit, em- 
balmed and treasured up on purpose to a 
life beyond life. It is true, no age can 
restore a life, whereof, perhaps, there is no 
great loss; and revolutions of ages do not 
oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, 
for the want of which whole nations fare 
the worse. We should be wary, therefore, 
what persecution we raise against the liv- 
ing labors of public men, how we spill 
that seasoned life of man, preserved and 
stored up in books; since we see a kind of 
homicide may be thus committed, some- 
times a martyrdom; and if it extend to the 
whole impression, a kind of massacre, where- 
of the execution ends not in the slayjiig of 
an elemental life, but strikes at the ethereal 
and fifth essence, the breath of reason 
itself; slays an immortality rather than a 
life. ... 

Good and evil we know in the field of this 
world grow up together almost inseparably ; 
and the knowledge of good is so involved 
and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, 
and in so many cunning resemblances hard- 
ly to be discerned, that those confused seeds 
which were imposed upon Psyche as an in- 
cessarit labor to cull oiut, and sort asunder, 
were not more intermixed. It was from out 
the rind of one apple tasted, that the knowl- 
edge of good and evil, as two twins cleav- 
ing together, leaped fortii into the world. 
And perhaps this is that doom which Adam 
fell into of knowing good and evil: that 
is to say, of knowing good by.eviL 

As therefore the state of man now is, 
what wisdom can there be to choose, what 
continence to forbear, without the knowl- 
edge of evil? He that can apprehend and 
consider vice with all her baits and seeming 
pleasures, and yet abstain, and yet distin- 
guish, and yet prefer that which is truly 



better, he is the true warfaring Christian. 
I cannot praise a fugitive and cloistered vir- 
tue, unexercised and uubreathed, that never 
sallies out and seeks her adversary, but 
slinks out of the race where that immortal 
garland is to be run for, not without dust 
and heat. Assuredly we bring not inno- 
cence into the world, we bi-ing impurity 
much rather ; that which purifies us is trial, 
and trial is by what is contrary. That vir- 
tue therefore which is but a youngluag in 
the contemplation of evil, and knows not 
the utmost that vice promises to her follow- 
ers and rejects it, is but a blank virtue, not 
a pure ; her w^hiteness is but an excremental 
whiteness; which was the reason why our 
sage and serious poet Spenser, (whom I 
dare be known to think a better teacher 
than Scotus or Aquinas,) describing true 
temperance under the person of Guyon, 
brings him in with his palmer through the 
cave of Mammon, and the bower of earthly 
bliss, that he might see and know, and yet 
abstain. 

Smce therefore the knowledge and sur- 
vey of vice is in this world so necessary to 
the constituting of human virtue, and the 
scanning of error to the confirmation of 
truth, how can we more safely, and with 
less danger, scout into the regions of sin 
and falsity, than by reading all manner of 
tractates, and hearing all manner of rea- 
son? And this is the benefit which may be 
had of books promiscuously read. 

Of Restraints 

For if they fell upon one kind of strict- 
ness, unless their care were equal to regulate 
all other things of like aptness to corrupt 
the mind, that single endeavor they knew 
would be but a fond labor.; to shut and 
fortify one gate against corruption, and be 
necessitated to leave others round about 
wid^ open. If we think to regulate print- 
ing, therelay to rectify manners, we must 
regulate all recreations and pastimes, all 
that is delightful to man. No music must 
be heard, no song be set or sung, but what 
is grave and Doric. There must be licens- 
ing dancers, that no gesture, motion, or de- 
portment be taught our youth, but what 
by their allowance shall be thought honest ; 
for such Plato was provided of. It will ask 
more than the work of twenty licensers to 
examine all the lutes, the violins, and the 
guitars in every house; they must not be 
suffered to prattle as they do, but must be 



148 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



licensed what they may say. And who shall 
silence all the airs and madrigals that whis- 
per softness in chambers'? The windows 
also, and the balconies, must be thought on ; 
these are shrewd books, with dangerous 
frontispieces, set to sale: who shall pro- 
hibit them, shall twenty licensers? The 
villages also must have their visitors to in- 
quire what lectures the bagpipe and the 
rebec reads, even to the ballatry and the 
gamut of every municipal fiddler; for these 
are the countryman's Areadias, and his 
Montemayors. 

Next, what more national corruption, for 
which England hears ill abroad, than house- 
hold gluttony'? Who shall be the rectors 
of our daily rioting? And what shall be 
done to inhibit the multitudes that fre- 
quent those houses where drunkenness is 
sold and harbored? Our garments also 
should be referred to the licensing of some 
more sober workmasters, to see them cut 
into a less wanton garb. Who shall regu- 
late all the mixed conversation of our youth, 
male and female together, as is the fashion 
of this country? Who shall still appoint 
what shall be discoursed, what presumed, 
and no further? Lastly, who shall forbid 
and separate all idle resort, all evil com- 
pany? These things will be, and must be; 
but how they shall be least hurtful, how least 
enticing, herein consists the grave and gov- 
erning wisdom of a state. 

To sequester out of the world into At- 
lantic and Utopian politics, which never can 
be drawn into iise, will not mend our condi- 
tion; but to ordain wisely as in this world 
of evil, in the midst whereof God hath 
placed us unavoidably. Nor is it Plato's 
licensing of books will do this, which neces- 
sarily pulls along with it so many other 
kinds of licensing, as will make us all both 
ridiculous and weary, and yet frustrate; but 
those unwritten, or at least unconstraining 
laws of virtuous education, religious and 
civil nurture, which Plato there mentions, 
as the bonds and ligaments of the common- 
wealth, the pillars an.d the sustainers of 
evei'y written statute; these they be, which 
will bear chief sway in such matters as 
these, when all licensing will be easily 
eluded. Impunity and remissness for cer- 
tain are th^ bane of a commonwealth; but 
here the greiat art lies, to discern in what 
the law is to bid restraint and punishment, 
and in what things persuasion only is to 
work. If every action which is good or evil 
in man at ripe years were to be under pit- 



tance, prescription, and compulsion, what 
were virtue but a name, what praise could 
be then due to well doing, what gramercy 
to be sober, just, or continent? 

Many there be that complain of divine 
Providence for suffering Adam to trans- 
gress. Foolish tongues! when God gave 
him reason, he gave him freedom to choose, 
for reason is but choosing; he had been else 
a mere artificial Adam, such an Adam as he 
is in the motions. We ourselves esteem not 
of that obedience, or love, or gift, which is 
of force; God therefore left him free, set 
before him a provoking object ever almost 
in his eyes; herein consisted his merit, here- 
in the right of his reward, the praise of 
his abstinence. Wherefore did he create 
passions within us, but that these rightly 
tempered are the very ingredients of virtue? 
They are not skilful considerers of human 
things who imagine to remove sin by remov- 
ing the matter of sin; for, besides that it is 
a huge heap increasing under the very act 
of diminishing, though some part of it may 
for a time be withdrawn from some persons, 
it cannot from all, in such a universal thing 
as books are; and when this is done, yet 
the siri remains entire. Though ye take 
from a covetous man all his treasure, he 
has yet one jewel left, ye cannot bereave 
him of his covetousness. Banish all objects 
of lust, shut up all youth into the severest 
discipline that can be exercised in any 
hermitage, ye cannot make them chaste that 
came not thither so : such great care and 
wisdom is required to the right managing 
of this point. 

Suppose we could expel sin by this 
means ; look how much ye thus expel of sin, 
so much we expel of virtue : for the matter 
of them both is the same : remove that, and 
ye remove them both alike. This justifies 
the high providence of God, who, though 
he commands us temperance, justice, conti- 
nence, yet pours out before us even to a 
profuseness all desirable things, and gives 
us minds that can wander beyond all limit 
and satiety. Why should we then affect a 
rigor contrary to the manner of God and 
of nature, by abridging or scanting those 
means, which books freely permitted are, 
both to the trial of virtue and the exercise 
of truth? 

Liberty of Thought 

I lastly proceed from the no good it ^ 

can do, to the manifest hurt it causes, in be- 

^ i. e., requiring a license for the publication of 
books. 



PURITANS AND KINGS 



149 



ing first the greatest discouragement and 
affront that can be offered to learning and 
to learned men. It was the complaint and 
lamentation of prelates, upon every least 
of a motion to remove pluralities, and dis- 
tribute more equally church revenues, that 
then all learning would be forever dashed 
and discouraged. But as for that opinion, 
I never found cause to think that the tenth 
part of learning stood or fell with the 
clergy: nor could I ever but hold it for a 
sordid and unworthy speech of any church- 
man, who had a competency left him. If 
therefore ye be loath to dishearten utterly 
and discontent, not the mercenary crew of 
false pretenders to learning, but the free 
and ingenious sort of such as evidently were 
born to study and love learning for itself, 
not for lucre, or any other end, but the 
service of God and of truth, and perhaps 
that lasting fame and perpetuity of praise 
which God and good men have consented 
shall be the reward of those whose pub- 
lished labors advance the good of mankind, 
then know, that so far to distrust the 
judgment and the honesty of one who hath 
but a common repute in learning, and never 
yet offended, as' not to count him fit to print 
his mind without a tutor and examiner, lest 
he should drop a schism or something of 
corruption, is the greatest displeasure and 
indignity to a free and knowing spirit that 
can be put upon him. 

What advantage is it to a man, over it is 
to be a boy at school, if we have only es- 
caped ther ferula, to come under the fescue 
of an imprimatur? If serious and elabo- 
rate writings, as if they were no more than 
the theme of a grammar-lad under his ped- 
agogue,- must not be uttered without the 
cursory eyes of a temporizing and extem- 
porizing licenser? He who is not trusted 
with his ovi^n actions, his drift not being 
known to be evil, and standing to the hazard 
of law and penalty, has no greater argu- 
ment to thmk himself reputed in the com- 
monwealth wherein he was born for other 
than a fool or a foreigner. When a man 
writes to the world, he summons up all his 
reason and deliberation to assist him; he 
searches, meditates, is industrious, and 
likely consults and confers with his judi- 
cious friends ; after all whie"h done, he takes 
himself to be informed in what he writes, 
as well as any that wrote before him; if in 
this, the most consvimmate act of his fidelity 
and ripeness, no years, no industry, no 
former proof of his abitties, can bring him 



to that state of maturity, as not to be still 
mistrusted and suspected, unless he carry 
all his considerate diligence, all his mid- 
night watchings and expense of Palladian 
oil, to the hasty view of an unleisured licen- 
ser, perhaps much his younger, perhaps far 
his inferior in judgment, perhaps one who 
never knew the labor of bookwriting; and 
if he be not repulsed, or slighted, must ap- 
pear in print like a puny with his guardian, 
and his censor's hand on the back of his title 
to be his bail and surety, that he is no idiot 
or seducer; it cannot be but a dishonor and 
derogation to the author, to the book, to the 
privilege and dignity of learning. 

And what if the author shall be one so 
copious of fancy as to have many things 
well worth the adding come into his mind 
after licensing, while the book is yet under 
the press, which not seldom happens to the 
best and diligentest writers; and that per- 
haps a dozen times in one book. The 
printer dares not go beyond his licensed 
copy ; so often then must the author trudge 
to his leave-giver, that those his new inser- 
tions may be viewed; and many a jaunt 
will be made, ere found, or found at leisure ; 
meanwhile either the press must stand still, 
which is no small damage, or the author* lose 
his aecuratest thoughts, and send the book 
forth worse than he had made it, which to 
a diligent writer is the greatest melancholy 
and vexation that can befall. 

And how can a man teach with authority, 
which is the life of teaching; how can he 
be a doctor in his book, as he ought to be, 
or else had better be silent, whenas all he 
teaches, all he delivers, is but under the tui- 
tion, under the correction of his patriarchal 
licenser, to blot or alter what precisely ac- 
cords not with the hide-bound humor which 
he calls his judgment? When every acute 
reader, upon the first sight of a pedantic 
license, will be ready with these like words 
to ding the book a quoit's distance from 
him : "I hate a pupil teacher ; I endure not 
an instructor that comes to me under the 
wardship of an overseeing fist. I know 
nothing of the licenser, but that I have his 
own hand here for his arrogance ; who shall 
warrant me his judgment?" "The state, 
sir," replies the stationer; but has a quick 
return: "The state shall be my governors, 
but not my critics; they may be mistaken 
in the choice of a licenser, as easily as this 
licenser may be mistaken in an author. 
This is some common stuff" : and he might 
add from Sir Francis Bacon, that "such 



150 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



authorized books are but the language of 
the times." For though a licenser should 
happen to be judicious more than ordinary, 
which will be a great jeopardy of the next 
succession, yet his very office and his com- 
mission enjoins him to let pass nothing but 
what is vulgarly received already. 

A Heretic in the Truth 

Well knows he who uses to consider, 
that our faith and knowledge thrives by 
exercise, as well as our limbs and complex- 
ion. Truth is compared in scripture to a 
streaming fountain; if her waters flow not 
in a perpetual progression they sicken into 
a muddy pool of conformity and tradition. 
A man may be a heretic in the truth; and 
if he believes things only because his pas- 
tor says so, or the assembly so determines, 
without knowing other reason, though his 
belief be true, yet the very truth he holds 
becomes his heresy. There is not any bur- 
den that some would giadlier post off to 
another than the charge and care of their 
religion. There be, v;ho knows not that 
there be? of protestants and professors, 
who live and die in as errant and implicit 
faith as any lay papist of Loretto. 

A wealthy man, addicted to his pleasure 
and to his profits, finds religion to be a traf- 
fic so entangled, and of so many piddling- 
accounts, that of all mysteries he cannot 
skill to keep a stock going upon that trade. 
What should he dof Fain he would have 
the name to be religious, fain he would 
bear up with his neighbors in that. What 
does he therefore, but resolves to give over 
toiling, and to find himself out some fac- 
tor, to whose care and credit he may com- 
mit the whole managing of his religious af- 
fairs; some divine of note and estimation 
that must be. To him he adheres, resigns 
the whole warehouse of his religion, with 
all the locks and keys, into his custody ; and 
indeed makes the very person of that man 
his religion; esteems his associating with 
him a sufficient evidence and commendatory 
of his own piety. So that a man may say 
his religion is now no more within himself, 
but is became a dividual moveable, and goes 
and comes near him, according as that good 
man frequents the house. He entei'tains 
him, gives him gifts, feasts him, lodges him ; 
his religion comes home at night, prays, is 
liberally supped, and sumptuously laid to 
sleep ; rises, is saluted, and after the malm- 
sey, or some well-spiced bruage, and better 



breakfasted than He whose morning appe- 
tite would have gladly fed on green figs 
between Bethany and Jerusalem, his re- 
ligion walks abroad at eight, and leaves 
his kind entertainer in the shop trading all 
day without his religion. 

Another sort there be, who when they 
hear that all things shall be ordered, all 
things regulated and settled; nothing writ- 
ten but what passes through the custom- 
house of certain publicans that have the 
tonnaging and poundaging of all free-spo- 
ken truth, will straight give themselves up 
into your hands, make them and cut them 
out what religion ye please : there be de- 
lights, there be recreations and jolly pas- 
times, that will fetch the day about from 
sun to sun, and rock the tedious year as in 
a delightful dream. What need they tor- 
ture their heads with that which others have 
taken so strictly and so unalterably into 
their own purveying? These are the fruits 
which a dull ease and cessation of our 
knowledge will bring forth among the peo- 
ple. How goodly, and how to be wished 
were such an obedient unanimity as this! 
What a fine conformity would it starch us 
all into ! Doubtless a staunch and solid 
piece of framework as any January could 
freeze together. 

Liberty the Nurse of All Great Wits 

Truth indeed came once into the world 
with her divine master, and was a perfect 
shape most glorious to look on : but when 
he ascended and his apostles after him were 
laid asleep, then straight arose a wicked 
race of deceivers, who, as that story goes of 
the Egyptian Typhon with his conspirators, 
how they dealt with the good Osiris, took 
the virgin Ti-uth, hewed her lovely form 
into a thousand pieces, and scattered them 
to the four winds. From that time ever 
since, the sad friends of Truth, such as 
durst appear, imitating the careful search 
that Isis made for the mangled body of 
Osiris, went up and down gathering up 
limb by limb still as they could find them. 
We have not yet found them all, lords and 
commons, nor ever shall do, till her Mas- 
ter's second coming; he shall bring together 
every joint and member, and shall mold 
them into an immortal feature of loveli- 
ness and perfection. Suffer not these licens- 
ing prohibitions to stand at every place 
of opportunity forbidding and disturbing 
them that continue seeking, that continue to 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



151 



do our obsequies to the torn body of our 
martyred saint. 

We boast our light; but if we look not 
wisely on the sun itself, it smites us into 
darkness. Who can discern those planets 
that are oft combust, and those stars of 
brightest magnitude that rise and set with 
the sun, until the opposite motion of their 
orbs bring them to such a place in the 
firmament, where they may be seen evening 
or morning? The light which we have 
gained was given us, not to be ever star- 
ing on, but by it to discover onward things 
more remote from our knowledge. It is 
not the unfrocking of a priest, the unmi- 
tering of a bishop, and the removing him 
from off the presbyterian shoulders, that 
will make us a happy nation; no, if other 
things as great in the church, and in the rule 
of life both economical and political, be not 
looked into and reformed, we have looked so 
long upon the blaze that Zuinglius and Cal- 
vin have beaconed up to us that we are stark 
blind. 

There be who perpetually complain of 
schisms and sects, and make it such a calam- 
ity that any man dissents from their max- 
ims. It is their own pride and ignorance 
which causes the disturbing, who neither 
will hear with meekness, nor can convince, 
yet all must be sujjpressed which is not 
found in their Syntagma. They are the 
troublers, they are the dividers of unity, 
who neglect and permit not others to unite 
those dissevered pieces, which are yet want- 
ing to the body of truth. To be still search- 
ing what we know not, by what we know, 
still closing up truth to truth as we find it 
(for all her body is homogeneal, and pro- 
portional), this is the golden rule in theol- 
ogy as well as in arithmetic, and makes up 
the best harmony in 'a church ; not the 
forced and outAvard union of cold and neu- 
tral and inwardly divided minds. 

Lords and commons of England ! con- 
sider what nation it is whereof ye are, and 
whereof ye are the governors : a nation not 
slow and dull, but of a quick, ingenious, and 
piercing spirit; acute to invent, subtile and 
sinewy to discourse, not beneath the reach 
of any point the highest that human ca- 
pacity can soar to. Therefore the studies 
of learning in her deepest sciences have 
been so ancient, and so eminent among us, 
that writers of good antiquity and able 
judgment have been persuaded that even 
the school of Pythagoras and the Persian 
wisdom took beginning from the old philos- 



ophy of this island. And that wise and civil 
Roman, Julius Agricola, who governed once 
here for Caesar, preferred the natural wits 
of Britain before the labored studies of the 
French. 

Nor is it for nothing that the grave and 
frugal Transylvaniaii sends out yearly from 
as far as the mountainous borders of Rus- 
sia, and beyond the Hercynian wilderness, 
not their youth, but their staid men, to learn 
our language and our theological arts. Yet 
that which is above all this, the favor and 
the love of Heaven, we have great argu- 
ment to think in a peculiar manner propi- 
tious and propending towards us. Why 
else was this nation chosen before any 
other, that out of her, as out of Sion, 
should be proclaimed and sounded forth the 
first tidings and trumpet of reformation 
to all Europe? And had it not been the 
obstinate perverseness of our prelates 
against the divine and admirable spirit of 
Wickliffe, to suppress him as a schismatic 
and innovator, perhaps neither the Bohe- 
mian Husse and Jerome, no, nor the name 
of Luther or of Calvin, had been ever 
known : the glory of reforming all our 
neighbors had been completely ours. But 
now, as our obdurate clergy have with vio- 
lence demeaned the matter, we are become 
hitherto the latest and the backwardest 
scholars of whom God offered to have made 
us the teachers. 

Now once again by all concurrence of 
signs, and by the general instinct of holy 
and devout men, as they daily and solemnly 
express their thoughts, God is decreeing to 
begin some new and great period in his 
church, even to the reforming of reforma- 
tion itself; what does he then but to reveal 
himself to his servants, and as his manner 
is, first to his Englishmen'? I say, as his 
manner is, first to us, though we mark not 
the method of his counsels, and are un- 
worthy. Behold now, this vast city, a city of 
refuge, the mansion-house of liberty, en- 
compassed and surrounded with his pro- 
tection; the shop of war hath not there 
more anvils and hammers working, to fash- 
ion out the plates and instruments of armed 
justice in defense of beleaguered truth, than 
there be pens and heads there, sitting by 
their studious lamps, musing, searching, re- 
volving new notions and ideas wherewith to 
present, as with their homage and their 
fealty, the approaching reformation: others 
as fast reading, trying all things, assenting 
to the force of reason and convin cement. 



152 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



What could a man require more from a 
nation so pliant and so prone to seek after 
knowledge? What wants there to such a 
towardly and pregnant soil, but wise and 
faithful laborers, to make a knowing peo- 
ple, a nation of prophets, of sages, and of 
worthies ? We reckon more than five months 
yet to the harvest; there need not be five 
weeks, had we but eyes to lift up, the fields 
are white already. Where there is much 
desii'e to learn, there of necessity will be 
much arguing, much writing, many opin- 
ions; for opinion in good men is but knowl- 
edge in the making. Under these fantastic 
terrors of sect and schism, we wrong the 
earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge 
and understanding which God hath stirred 
up in this city. What soipe lament of we 
rather should rejoice at, should rather 
praise this pious foiTvardness among men, 
to reassume the ill-deputed care of their re- 
ligion into their own hands again. A lit- 
tle generous prudence, a little forbearance 
of one another, and some grain of charity 
might win all these diligences to join and 
unite into one general and brotherly search 
after truth ; could we but forego this prelat- 
ical tradition of crowding free consciences 
and Christian liberties into canons and pre- 
cepts of. men. I doubt not, if some great 
and worthy stranger should come among us, 
wise to discern the mold and temper of a 
people, and how to govern it, observing the 
high hopes and aims, the diligent alacrity 
of our extended thoughts and reasonings in 
the pursuance of truth and freedom, but 
that he would cry out as Pyrrhus did, ad- 
miring the Roman docility and courage, "If 
such were my Epirots, I would not despair 
the greatest design that could be attempted 
to rbake a church or kingdom happy." 

Yet these are the men cried out against for 
schismatics and sectaries, as if, while the tem- 
ple of the Lord was building, some cutting, 
some squaring the marble, others hewing 
the cedars, there should be a sort of irra- 
tional men, who could not consider there 
must be many schisms and many dissec- 
tions made in the quarry and in the timber 
ere the house of God can be built. And 
when every stone is laid artfully together, 
it cannot be united into a continuity, it 
can but be contiguous in this world : neither 
can every piece of the building be of one 
form; nay, rather the perfection consists 
in this, that out of many moderate varieties 
and brotherly dissimilitudes that are not 
vastly disproportional, arises the goodly 



and the graceful symmetry that commends 
the whole pile and structure. 

Let us therefore be more considerate 
builders, more wise in spiritual architec- 
ture, when great reformation is expected. 
Tor now the time seems come, . whereia 
Moses, the great prophet, may sit in heaven 
rejoicing to see that memorable and glo- 
rious wish of his fulfilled, when not only 
our seventy elders, but all the Lord's peo- 
ple, are become prophets. No marvel then 
though some men, and some good men too 
perhaps, but young in goodness, as Joshua 
then w^as, envy them. They fret, and out 
of their own weakness are in agony, lest 
these divisions and subdivisions will undo 
us. The adversary again applauds, and 
waits the hour : when they have branched 
themselves out, saith he, small enough into 
parties and partitions, then will be our time. 
Fool ! he sees not the firm root, out of which 
we all grow, though into branches; nor will 
beware, until he see our small divided man- 
iples cutting through at every angle of his 
ill-united and unwieldy brigade. And that 
we are to hope better of all these supposed 
sects and schisms, and that we shall not need 
that solicitude, honest perhaps, though 
overtimorous, of them that vex i*i this be- 
half, but shall laugh in the end at those 
malicious applauders of our differences, I 
have these reasons to persuade me. 

First, when a city shall be as it were be- 
sieged and blocked about, her navigable 
river infested, inroads and incursions 
rdund, defiance and battle oft rumored to be 
marching up, even to her walls and suburb 
trenches; that then the people, or the 
greater part, more than at other times, 
wholly taken up with the study of high- 
est and most important matters to be 
reformed, should be disputing, reason- 
ing, reading, inventing, discoursing, even 
to a rarity and admiration, things not be- 
fore discoursed or written of, argues first 
a singular good will, contentedness, and 
confidence in your prudent foresight, and 
safe government, lords and commons; and 
from thence derives itself to a gallant bra- 
very and well-grounded contempt of their 
enemies, as if there were no small number 
of as great spirits among us, as his was 
who, when Rome was nigh besieged 
by Hannibal, being in the city, bought that 
piece of ground at no cheap rate whereon 
Hannibal . himself encamped his own regi- 
ment. 

Next, it is a lively and cheerful presage 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



153 



of our happy success and victory. For as 
in a body when the blood is fresh, the spir- 
its pure and vigorous, not only to vital but 
to rational faculties, and those in the acutest 
and the pertest ojDerations of wit and sub- 
tlety, it argues in what good plight and con- 
stitution the body is; so when the cheerful- 
ness of the people is so sprightly up, as that 
it has not only wherewith to guard well its 
'own freedom and safety, but to spare, and 
to bestow upon the solidest and sublimest 
points of contro: ersy and new invention, it 
betokens us not degenerated, nor drooping 
to a fatal decay, by casting otf the old and 
wrinkled skin of corruption to outlive these 
pangs, and wax young again, entering the 
glorious ways of truth and prosperous vir- 
tue, destined to beconae great and honorable 
in these latter ages. Methinks I see in my 
mind a noble and puissant nation rousing 
herself like a strong man after sleep, and 
shaking her invincible locks; methinks I 
see her as an eagle mewing her mighty 
youth, and kindling her undazzled eyes at 
the full midday beam ; purging and unseal- 
ing her long-abused sight at the fountain 
itself of heavenly radiance ; while the whole 
noise of timorous and flocking birds, with 
those also that love the twilight, flutter 
about, amazed at what she means, and in 
their envious gabble would prognosticate a 
year of sects and schisms. 

What should ye do then, should ye sup- 
press all this flowery crop of knowledge and 
new light sprung up and yet springing 
daily in this city"? Should ye set an oli- 
garchy of twenty engrossers over it, to 
bring a famine upon our minds again, when 
we shall know nothing but what is meas- 
ured to us by their bushel? Believe it, 
lords and commons ! they who counsel ye to 
such a suppressing, do as good as bid ye 
suppress yourselves; and I will soon show 
how. If it be desired to know the imme- 
diate cause of all this free writing and free 
speaking, there cannot be assigned a truer 
than your own mild, and free, and humane 
government ; it is the liberty, lords and com- 
mons, which your own valorous and happy 
counsels have purchased us; liberty which 
is the nurse of all great wits : this is that 
which hath rarified and enlightened our 
spirits like the influence of heaven ; this is 
that which hath enfranchised, enlarged, and 
lined up our apprehensions degrees above 
themselves. Ye cannot make us now less 
capable, less knowing, less eagerly pursuing 
of the truth, unless ye first make yourselves, | 



that made us so, less the lovers, less the 
founders of our true liberty. We can grow 
ignorant again, brutish, formal, and slavish, 
as ye found us; but you then must first be- 
come that which ye cannot be, oppressive, 
arbitrary, and tyrannous, as they were from 
whom ye have freed us. That our hearts 
are now more capacious, our thoughts more 
erected to the search and expectation of 
greatest and exactest things, is the issue of 
your own virtue propagated in us; ye can- 
not suppress that unless ye reinforce an 
abrogated and merciless law, that fathers 
may dispatch at will their own children. 
Aiid who shall then stick closest to ye and 
excite others? Not he who takes up arms 
for coat and conduct, and his four nobles of 
Danegelt. Although I dispraise not the de- 
fence of just immunities, yet I love my 
peace better, if that were all. Give me the 
liberty to know, to utter, and to argue 
freely according to conscience, above all lib- 
erties. 

Of Discipline 

[From B,eason of Church Government, 
1641] 

There is not that thing in the world of 
more grave and urgent importance through- 
out the whole life of man, than is disci- 
pline. What need I instance ? He that hath 
read with judgment of nations and com- 
monwealths, of cities and camps, of peace 
and war, sea and k.nd, will readily agree 
that the flourishing and decaying of all 
civil societies, all the moments and turnings 
of human occasions are moved to and fro 
as upon the axle of discipline. So that 
whatsoever power or sway in mortal things 
weaker men have attributed to fortune, 1 
durst with more confidence (the honor of 
Divine Providence ever saved) ascribe 
either to the vigor or the slackness of dis- 
cipline. Nor is there any sociable perfec- 
tion in this life, civil or sacred, that can be 
above discipline; but she is that which with 
her musical cords preserves and holds all 
the parts thereof together. Hence in those 
perfect armies of Cyrus in Xenophon, and 
Scipio in the Roman stories, the excellence 
of military skill was esteemed, not by the 
not needing, but by the readiest submitting 
to the edicts of their commander. And cer- 
tainly discipline is not only the removal of 
disorder; but if any visible shape can be 
given to divine things, the very visible shape 
and image of virtue, whereby she is not only 



154 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



seen in the regular gestures and motions of 
her heavenly paces as she walks, but also 
makes the harmony of her voice audible to 
mortal ears. 



Britain the Home of True Liberty 

[From the Second Defense, 1654] 

Who is there, who does not identify the 
honor of his country with his own? And 
what can conduce more to the beauty or 
glory of one's country, than the recovery, 
not only of its civil but its religious lib- 
erty? And what nation or state ever ob- 
tained both, by more successful or more val- 
orous exertion? For fortitude is seen re- 
sjDlendent, not only in the field of battle 
and amid the clash of arms, but displays its 
energy under every difficulty and against 
every assailant. Those Greeks and Romans 
who are the objects of our admiration em- 
ployed hardly any other virtue in the extir- 
pation of tyrants, than that love of liberty 
which made them prompt in seizing the 
sword, and gave them strength to use it. 
With facility they accomplished the under- 
taking, amid the general shout of praise and 
joy; nor did they engage in the attempt so 
much as an enterprise of perilous and 
doubtful issue, as in a contest the most 
glorious in which virtue could be signalized ; 
which infallibly led to present recompense; 
which bound their brows with wreaths of 
laurel, and consigned their memories to im- 
mortal fame. For as yet, tyrants were not 
beheld with a supersitious reverence ; as yet 
they were not regarded with tenderness and 
complacency, as the vicegerents or depu- 
ties of Christ, as they have suddenly pro- 



fessed to be ; as yet the vulgai', stupefied by 
the subtle casuistry of the priest, had not 
degenerated into a state of barbarism, more 
gross than that which disgraces the most 
senseless natives of Hindostan. For these 
make mischievous demons, whose malice 
they cannot resist, the objects of their re- 
ligious adoration : while those elevate im- 
potent tyrants, m order to shield them from 
destruction, into the rank of gods; and, to 
their own cost, consecrate the pests of the 
human race. But against this dark array of 
long-received opinions, superstitions, oblo- 
quy, and fears, which some dread even more 
than the enemy himself, the English had to 
contend; and all this, under the light of 
better information, and favored by an im- 
pulse from above, they overcame with such 
singular enthusiasm and bravery, that, 
great as were the numbers engaged in the 
contest, the grandeur of conception, and 
loftiness of spirit which were universally 
displayed, merited for each individual more 
than a mediocrity of fame; and Britain, 
which was formerly styled the hot-bed of 
tyranny, will hereafter deserve to be cele- 
brated for endless ages, as a soil most genial 
to the growth of liberty. During the 
mighty struggle, no anarchy, no licentious- 
ness was seen; no illusions of glory, no 
extravagant emulation of the ancients in- 
flamed them with a thirst for ideal liberty; 
but the rectitude of their lives, and the 
sobriety of their habits, taught them the 
only true and safe road to real liberty; and 
they took up arms only to defend the 
sanctity of the laws and the rights of eon- 
science. Relying on the divine assistance, 
they used every honorable exertion to break 
the yoke of slavery. 



4. THE STATE 



The Masterpiece of a Politician 

[From Reformation in England, 1641] 

It is a work good and prudent to be able 
to guide one man ; of larger extended vir- 
tue to order well one house; but to govern 
a nation piously and justly, which only is 
to say happily, is for a spirit of the great- 
est size, and divinest mettle. And certainly 
of no less a mind, nor of less excellence in 
another way, were they who by writing laid 
the solid and true foundations of this sci- 
ence, which being of greatest importance 
to the life of man, yet there is no art that 
hath been more cankered in her principles, 



more soiled and slubbered with aphorism- 
ing pedantry, than the art of policy; and 
that most, where a man would think should 
least be, in Christian commonwealths. They 
teach not, that to govern well, is to train 
up a nation in true wisdom and virtue, and 
that which springs from thence, magnanim- 
ity, (take heed of that,) and that which is 
our beginning, regeneration, and happiest 
end, likeness to God, which in one word we 
call godliness; and that this is the true 
flourishing of a land. Other things foltow 
as the shadow does the substance : to teach 
thus were mere pulpitry to them. 

This is the niiiaster piece of a modern poll- 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



155 



tieian, how to qualify and mold the suffer- 
ance and subjection of the people to the 
length of that foot that is to tread on their 
necks ; how rapine may serve itself with the 
fair and honorable pretences of public 
good; how the puny law may be brought 
under the wardship and control of lust and 
will : in which attempt if they fall short, 
then must a superficial color of reputation 
by all means, direct or indirect, be gotten 
to wash over the unsightly bruise of honor. 
To make men governable in this manner, 
their precepts mainly tend to break a na- 
tional sjoirit and courage, by countenancing 
open riot, luxury, and ignorance, till hav- 
ing thus disfigured and made men beneath 
men, as Juno ni the fable of lo, they de- 
liver up the poor transformed heifer of the 
commonwealth to be stung and vexed with 
the breese and goad of oppression, under 
the custody of some Argus with a hundred 
eyes of jealousy. To be plainer, sir, how to 
solder, how to stop a leak, how to keep up 
the floating- carcase of a crazy and diseased 
monarchy or state, betwixt wind and water, 
swimming still upon her own dead lees, 
that now is the deep design of a politician. 
Alas, sir! a commonwealth ought to be but 
as one huge Christian personage, one 
mighty growth and stature of an honest 
man, as big and compact in virtue as in 
body; for look what the grounds and causes 
are of single happiness to one man, the 
same ye shall find them to a whole state. 

The Source of Power 

[From Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 
1648-9] 

No man who knows aught can be so 
stupid to deny that all men naturally were 
born free, being the image and resemblance 
of God himself, and were by privilege above 
all the creatures born to command, and not 
to obey; and that they lived so, till from 
the root of Adam's transgression falling 
among themselves to do wrong and violence, 
and foreseeing that such courses must needs 
tend to the destruction of them all, they 
agreed by common league to bind each other 
from mutual injury, and jointly to defend 
themselves against any that give disturbance 
or opposition to such agreement. Hence 
came cities, towns, and commonwealths. 
And because no faith in all was found suf- 
ficiently binding, they saw it needful to 
ordain some authority that might restrain 



by force and punishment what was violated 
against peace and common right. 

This authority and power of self-defense 
and preservation being originally and nat- 
urally in every one of them, and unitedly 
in them all; for ease, for order, and lest 
each man should be his own partial judge, 
they communicated and derived either to 
one, whom for the eminence of his wisdom 
and integrity they chose above the rest, or 
to more than one, whom they thought of 
equal deserving : the first was called a king ; 
the other, magistrates : not to be their lords 
and masters, (though afterward those 
names in some places were given voluntarily 
to such as have been authors of inestimable 
good to the people,) but to be their deputies 
and commissioners, to execute by virtue of 
their intrusted power that justice, which 
else every man by the bond of nature and 
of covenant must have executed for himself 
and for one another. And to him that shall 
consider well, why among free persons one 
man by civil right should bear authority 
and jurisdiction over another, no other end 
or reason can be imaginable. 

These for a while governed well, and with 
much equity decided all things at their own 
arbitrament; till the temptation of such a 
power, left absolute in their hands, per- 
verted them at length to injustice and par- 
tiality. Then did they, who now by trial 
had found the danger and inconveniences 
of committing arbitrary power to any, in- 
vent laws, either framed or consented to by 
all, that should confine and limit the author- 
ity of whom they chose to govern them: 
that so man, of whose failing they had 
proof, might no more rule over them, but 
law and reason, abstracted as much as might 
be from personal errors and frailties. 
"While, as the magistrate was set above 
the people, so the law was set above the 
magistrate." When this would not serve, 
but that the law was either not executed, 
or misapplied, they were constrained from 
that time, the only remedy left them, to put 
conditions and take oaths from all kings 
and magistrates at their first instalment, to 
do impartial justice by law: who, upon 
those terms and no other, received allegi- 
ance from the people, that is to say, bond 
or covenant to obey them in execution of 
those laws which they, the people, had them- 
selves made or assented to. And this oft- 
times with express warning, that if the 
king or magistrate proved unfaithful to 
his trust, the people would be disengaged. 



156 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



They added also counselors and parliaments, 
not to be only at his beck, but, with him or 
without him, at set times, or at all times, 
when any danger threatened, to have care 
of the public safety. 

It bemg thus manifest that the power of 
kings and magistrates is nothing else but 
what is only derivative, transferred, and 
committed to them in trust from the people 
to the common good of them all, in whom 
the power yet remains fundamentally, and 
cannot be taken from them, without a vio- 
lation of their natural birthright; and see- 
ing that from hence Aristotle, and the best 
of political writers, have defined a king, 
"him who governs to the good and profit 
of his people, and not for his own ends"; 
it follows from necessary causes that the 
titles of sovereign lord, natural lord, and the 
like, are either arrogancies or flatteries, not 
admitted by emperors and kings of best 
note, and disliked by the church both of 
Jews (Isa. xxvi, 13) and ancient Christians, 
as appears by TertuUian and others. Al- 
though generally the people of Asia, and 
with them the Jews also, especially since 
the time they chose a king against the ad- 
vice and counsel of God, are noted by wise 
authors much inclinable to slavery. 

Secondly, that to say, as is usual, the 
king hath as good right to his crown and 
dignity as any man to his inheritance, is to 
make the subject no better than the king's 
slave, his chattel, or his possession that may 
be bought and sold : and doubtless, if heredi- 
tary title were sufficiently inquired, the 
best foundation of it would be found but 
either in courtesy or convenience. But 
suppose it to be of right hereditary, what 
can be more just and legal, if a subject for 
certain crimes be to forfeit by law from 
himself and posterity all his inheritance to 
the king, than that a king, for crimes pro- 
portional, should forefeit all his title and 
inheritance to the people? Unless the peo- 
ple must be thought created all for him, he 
not for them, and they all in one body in- 
ferior to him single; which were a kmd of 
treason against the dignity of mankind to 
affirm. 

Thirdly, it follows, that to say kings are 
accountable to none but God, is the over- 
turning of all law and government. For 
if they may refuse to give account, then 
all covenants made with them at coronation, 
all oaths are in vain, and mere mockeries; 
all laws which they swear to keep, made to 
no purpose; for if the king fear not God, 



(as how many of them do not,) we hold 
then our lives and estates by the tenure of 
his mere grace and mercy, as from a god, 
not a mortal magistrate; a position that 
none but court-parasites or men besotted 
would maintam ! Aristotle, therefore, whom 
we commonly allow for one of the best 
interpreters of nature and morality, writes 
in the fourth of his Politics, chap, x, that 
''monarchy unaccountable is the worst sort 
of tyranny; and least of all to be endured 
by free-born men." . . . 

It follows, .lastly, that since the king or 
magistrate holds his authority of the peo- 
ple, both originally and naturally for their 
good, in the first place, and not his own, 
then may the people, as oft as they shall 
judge it for the best, either choose him or 
reject him, retain him or depose him, though 
no tyrant, merely by the liberty and right 
of free-born men to be governed as seems 
to them best. This, though it cannot but 
stand with plain reason, shall be made good 
also by Scripture (Deut. xvii, 14) : "When 
thou art come into the land which the 
Lord thy God giveth thee, and shalt say, 
I will set a king over me, like as all the na- 
tions above me." These words confirm us 
that the right of choosing, yea of changing 
their own government, is by the grant of 
God himself in the people. 

Op Justice 

[From EikonoklasteSy 1649] 

It happened once, as we find in Esdras 
and Josephus, authors not less believed 
than any under sacred, to be a great and 
solemn debate in the court of Darius, what 
thing was to be counted strongest of all 
other. He that could resolve this, in re- 
ward of his excellent wisdom, should be 
clad in purple, drink in gold, sleep on a 
bed of gold, and sit next Darius. None but 
they, doubtless, who were reputed wise, had 
the question propounded to them ; who after 
some respite given them by the king to con- 
sider, in full assembly of all his lords and 
gravest counselors, returned severally what 
they thought. The first held that wine was 
strongest ; another, that the king was strong- 
est; but Zorobabel, prince of the cap- 
tive Jews, and heir to the crown of Judah, 
being one of them, proved women to be 
stronger than the king, for that he himself 
had seen a concubine take his crown from 
off his head to set it upon her own-; and 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



157 



others beside him have likewise seen the 
like feat done, and not in jest. Yet he 
proved on, and it was so yielded by the king 
himself, and all his sages, that neither 
wine, nor women, nor the king, but truth 
of all other things was the strongest. 

For me, though neither asked, nor in a 
nation that gives such rewards to wisdom, 
I shall pronounce my sentence somewhat 
different from Zorobabel; and shall defend 
that either truth and justice are all one, 
(for truth is but justice in our knowledge, 
and justice is but truth in our practice;) 
and he indeed so explains himself, in say- 
ing that with truth is no accepting of per- 
sons, which is the property of justice, or 
else if there be any odds, that justice, 
though not stronger than truth, yet by her 
office, is to put forth and exhibit more 
strength in the affairs of mankind. For 
truth is properly no more than contempla- 
tion ; and her utmost efficiency is but teach- 
ing: but justice in her very essence is all 
strength and activity ; and hath a sword put 
into her hand, to use against all violence 
and ojopression on the earth. She it is most 
truly, who accepts no person, and exempts 
none from the severity of her stroke. She 
never suffers injury to prevail, but when 
falsehood first prevails over truth; and 
that also is a kind of justice done on them 
who are so deluded. Though wicked kings 
and tyrants counterfeit her sword, as some 
did that buckler fabled to fall from heaven 
into the capitol, yet she* communicates her 
power to none but such as, like herself, are 
just, or at least will do justice. For it 
were extreme partiality and justice, the 
fiat denial and overthrow of herself, to put 
her OAvn authentic sword into the hand of 
an unjust and wicked man, or so far to 
accept and exalt one mortal person above 
his equals, that he alone shall have the 
punishing of all other men transgressing, 
and not receive like punishment from men, 
when he himself shall be found the highest 
transgressor. 

We may conclude, therefore, that justice, 
above all other things, is and ought to be 
the strongest; she is the strength, the king- 
dom, the power, and majesty of all ages. 
Truth herself would subscribe to this, 
though Darius and all the monarehs of the 
world should deny. And if by sentence 
thus written it were my happiness to set 
free the minds of Englishmen from longing 
to return poorly under that captivity of 
kings from which the strength and supreme 



sword of justice hath delivered them, I shall 
have done a work not much inferior to that 
of Zorobabel; who, by well-praising and 
extolling the force of truth, in that contem- 
plative strength conquered Darius, and 
freed his country and the people of God 
from the captivity of Babylon. Which I 
shall yet not despair to do, if they in this 
land whose minds are yet captive be but as 
ingenuous to acknowledge the strength and 
supremacy of justice, as that heathen king 
was to confess the strength of truth : or let 
them but, as he did, grant that, and they 
will soon perceive that truth resigns all 
her outward strength to justice : justice 
therefore must needs be strongest, both in 
her own, and in the strength of truth. But 
if a king may do among men whatsoever is 
his will and pleasure, and notwithstanding 
be unaccountable to men, then, contrary to 
the magnified wisdom of Zorobabel, neither 
truth nor justice, but the king, is strongest 
of all other things, which that Persian 
monarch himself, in the midst of all his 
l^ride and glory, durst not assume. 

A Free Commonwealth 

[From A Ready and Easy Way to Estab- 
lish a Free Commonwealth, 1660] 

The whole freedom of man consists either 
in spiritual or civil liberty. As for spirit- 
ual, who can be at rest, who can enjoy any- 
thing in this world with contentment, who 
hath not liberty to serve God, and to save 
his own soul, according to the best light 
v/hieh God hath planted in him to that pur- 
pose, by the reading of his revealed will, 
and the guidance of his Holy Spirit? That 
this is best pleasing to God, and that the 
whole protestant church allows no supreme 
judge or rule in matters of religion, but the 
Scriptures; and these to be interpreted by 
the Scriptures themselves, which necessarily 
infers liberty of conscience, I have hereto- 
fore proved at large in another treatise; 
and might yet further, by the public dec- 
larations, confessions, and admonitions of 
whole churches and states, obvious in all 
histories since the reformation. . . . 

The other part of our freedom consists 
in the civil rights and advancements of 
every person according to his merit : the 
enjoyment of those never more certain, and 
the access to these never more open than in 
a free commonwealth. Both which, in my 
opinion, may be best and soonest obtained 



158 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



if every county in the land were made a 
kind of subordinate commonalty or com- 
monwealth, and one chief town or more, 
according as the shire is in circuit, made 
cities, if they be not so called already; 
where the nobility and chief gentry, from 
a proportionable compass of territory an- 
nexed to each city, may build houses or 
palaces befitting their quality; may bear 
part in the government, make their own 
judicial laws, or use those that are, and ex- 
ecute them by their own elected judicatures 
and judges without appeal, in all things of 
civil government between man and man. So 
they shall have justice in their own hands, 
law executed fully and finally in their own 
counties and precincts, long wished and 
spoken of but never yet obtained. They 
shall have none then to blame but them- 
selves, if it be not well administered; and 
fewer laws to expect or fear from the su- 
preme authority; or to those that shall be 
made, of any great concernment to public 
liberty, they may, without much trouble in 
these commonalties, or in more general as- 
semblies called to their cities from the whole 
territory on such occasion, declare and pub- 
lish their assent or dissent by deputies, with- 
in a time limited, sent to the grand council ; 
yet so as this their judgment declared shall 
submit to the greater number of other coun- 
ties or commonalties, and not avail them 
to any exemption of themselves or refusal 
of agreement with the rest, as it may in 
any of the United Provinces, being sover- 
eign within itself, ofttimes to the great dis- 
advantage of that miion. 

In these emj^loyments they may, much 
better than they do now, exercise and fit 
themselves till their lot fall to be chosen 
into the grand council, according as their 
worth and merit shall be taken notice of by 
the people. As for controversies that shall 
happen between men of several counties, 
they may repair, as they do now, to the 
capital city, or any other more commodious, 
indifferent place, and equal judges. And 
this I find to have been practiced in the old 
Athenian commonwealth, reputed the first 
and ancientest place of civility in all 
Greece; that they had in their several cit- 
ies a peculiar, in Athens a common govern- 
ment, and their right as it befell them to 
the administration of both. 

They should have here also schools and 
academies at their own choice, wherein their 
children may be bred up in their own sight 
to all learning and noble education; not in 



grammar only, but in all liberal arts and 
exercises. This would soon spread much 
more knowledge and civility, yea, religion, 
through all parts of the land, by communi- 
cating the natural heat of government and 
culture more distributively to all extreme 
parts, which now lie numb and neglected; 
would soon make the whole nation more in- 
dustrious, more ingenious at home, more 
potent, more honorable abroad. To this a 
free commonwealth will easily assent; nay, 
the parliament hath had already some such 
thing in design; for of all governments a 
commonwealth aims most to make the peo- 
ple flourishing, virtuous, noble, and high 
spirited. Monarchs will never permit ; 
whose aim is to make the people wealthy in- 
deed iDcrhaps, and well fleeced, for their own 
shearing, and the supply of regal prodigal- 
ity; but otherwise softest, basest, viciousest, 
servilest, easiest to be kept under. And not 
only in fleece, but in mind also sheepishest ; 
and will have all the benches of judicature 
annexed to the throne, as a gift of royal 
grace, that we have justice done us ; whenas 
nothing can be more essential to the freedom 
of a people than to have the administration 
of justice and all public ornaments in their 
own election and within their own bounds, 
without long traveling or depending upon 
remote places to obtain their right or any 
civil accomplishment, so it be not supreme 
but subordinate to the general power and 
union of the whole republic. 

In which happy" firmness as in the par- 
ticular above-mentioned we shall also far ex- 
ceed the United Provinces, by having not as 
they, (to the retarding and distracting oft- 
times of their counsels or urgentest occa- 
sions,) many sovereignties united in one 
commonwealth, but many commonwealths 
under one united and intrusted sovereignty. 
And when we have our forces by sea and 
land either of a faithful army or a settled 
militia in our own hands, to the firm estab- 
lishing of a free commonwealth, public ac- 
counts under our own inspection, general 
laws, and taxes, with their causes in our own 
domestic suffrages, judicial laws, offices, 
and ornaments at home in our own 
ordering and administration, all distinction 
of lords and commoners, that may any way 
divide or sever the public interest, removed ; 
whiat can a perpetual senate have then, 
wherein to grow corrupt, wherein to en- 
croach upon us, or usurp? Or if they do, 
wherein to be formidable? Yet if all this 
avail not to remove the fear or envy of a 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



159 



perpetual sitting, it may be easily provided 
to change a third part of them yearly, or 
every two or three years, as was above men- 
tioned; or that it be at those times in the 



people's choice, whether they will change 
them, or renew their power, as they shalL 
find cause. 



5. FOES OF THE STATE 



On the Detraction Which Followed 
UPON My Writing Certain Treatises 

A book was writ of late called Tetrachor- 

don. 
And woven close, both matter, form, and 

style ; _ 
The subject new : it walked the town a 

while, 
Numbering good intellects; now seldom 

pored on. 
Cries the stall-reader, "Bless us ! what a 

word on 
A title-page is this !" ; and some in file 
Stand spelling false, while one might 

walk to Mile- 
End Green. Why, is it harder, sirs, than 

Gordon, 
Colkitto, or Macdonnel, or Galasp"? 

Those rugged names to our like mouths 

grow sleek 
That would have made Quintilian stare 

and gasp. 
Thy age, like ours, O soul of Sir John 

Cheek, 
Hated not learning worse than toad or 

asp, 
When thou taught'st Cambridge and 

King Edward Greek. 

On the Same 

I did but prompt the age to quit their clogs 
By the known rules of ancient liberty. 
When straight a barbarous noise environs 

me 
Of owls and cuckoos, asses, apes, and 

dogs; 
As when those hinds that were transformed 

to frogs 
Railed at Latona's twin-bom progeny, 
Which after held the sun and moon in 

fee. 
But this is got by easting pearl to hogs, 
That bawl for freedom in their senseless 

mood, 
And still revolt when truth would set 

them free. 
License they mean when they cry lib- 
erty; 
For who loves that must first be wise and 

good: 



But from that mark how far they rove 

we see, 
For all this waste of wealth and loss of 

blood. 

On the Nev^ Forcers op Conscience 

under the long parliament 
Because you have thrown off your Prelate 
Lord, 
And with stiff vows renounced his Lit- 
urgy, 
To seize the widowed whore Plurality 
From them whose sin ye envied, not ab- 
horred, 
Dare ye for this adjure the civil sword 
To force our consciences that Christ set 

free. 
And ride us with a Classic Hierarchy, 
Taught ye by mere A.S. and Ruther- 
ford? 
Men whose life, learning, faith, and pure 
intent. 
Would have been held in high esteem with 

Paul 
Must now be named and printed heretics 
By shallow Edwards and Scotch What-d'ye- 
eall! 
But we do hope to find out all your tricks. 
Your plots and packing, worse than those 
of Trent, 

That so the Parliament 
May with their wholesome and preventive 

shears 
Clip your phylacteries, though baulk your 
ears. 

And succor our just fears, 
When they shall read this clearly in your 

charge : 
New Presbyter is but old Priest, writ large. 

On THE Lord General Fairfax 

Fairfax, whose name in arms through Eu- 
rope rings, 
Filling each mouth with envy or with 

praise. 
And all her jealous monarchs with amaze, 
And rumors loud that daunt remotest 
kings, 
Thy firm unshaken virtue ever brings 
Victory home, though new rebellions 
raise 



160 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



Their Hydra heads, and the false North 

displays 
Her broken league to imp their serpent 

wings. 
yet a nobler task awaits thy hand 

(For what can war but endless war still 

breed?) 
Till truth and right from violence be 

freed, 
And public faith cleared from the shameful 

brand 
Of public fraud. In vain doth Valor 

bleed, 
While Avarice and Rapine share the 

land. 

To THE Lord General Cromwell 

Cromwell, our chief of men, who through 
a cloud 
Not of war only, but detractions rude. 



Guided by faith and matchless fortitude, 
To peace and truth thy glorious way hast 

plowed. 
And on the neck of crowned Fortune proud 
Hast reared God's trophies, and his work 

pursued. 
While Darwen stream, with blood of 

Scots imbrued. 
And Dunbar field, resounds thy praises 

loud. 
And Worcester's laureate wreath : yet much 

remains 
To conquer still ; peace hath her victories 
No less renowned than war : new foes 

arise. 
Threatening to bind our souls with secular 

chains. 
Help us to save free conscience from the 

paw 
Of hireling wolves, whose gospel is their 

maw. 



6. THE INTERNATIONAL MIND 



On the Late Massacre in Piedmont 

Avenge, Lord, thy slaughtered saints, 

whose bones 
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains 

cold; 
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of 

old. 
When all our fathers worshiped stocks 

and stones. 
Forget not : in thy book record their groans 
Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient 

fold 
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese, that 

rolled 
Mother with infant down the rocks. 

Their moans 
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they 
To heaven. Their martyred blood and 

ashes sow 
O'er all the Italian fields, where still doth 

sway 
The triple tyrant; that from these may 

grow 
A hundredfold, who, having learnt thy 

way. 
Early may fly the Babylonian woe. 

The Nation's Protest (Piedmont)' 

To the Most Serene and Potent Prince, 
Louis, King of France. 

' "An emphatic State-Letter ; which Oliver 
Cromwell meant, and John Milton thought and 
wrote into words ; not unworthy to be read." — 
Carlyle. 



Most Serene and Potent King, Most 
Close Friend and Ally, — Your Majesty may 
recollect that during the negotiations be- 
tween us for the renewing of our League 
(which many advantages to both nations, 
and much damage to their common enemies, 
resulting therefrom, now testify to have 
been wisely done), there fell out that mis- 
erable slaughter of the people of the val- 
leys; whose cause, on all sides deserted, and 
trodden down, we, with the utmost earnest- 
ness and pity, recommended to your mercy 
and protection. Nor do we think your 
Majesty, for your own part, has been want- 
ing in an office so pious and indeed so hu- 
man, in so far as either by authority or 
favor you might have influence with the 
Duke of Savoy : we certainly, and many 
other Princes and States, by embassies, by 
letters, by entreaties directed hither, have 
not been wanting. 

After that most sanguinary massacre, 
which spared no age nor either sex, there 
was at last a peace given; or rather, under 
the specious name of peace, a certain more 
disguised hostility. The terms of peace 
were settled in your town of Pignerol: 
hard terms; but such as these poor people, 
indigent and wretched, after suffering all 
manner of cruelties and atrocities, might 
gladly acquiesce in; if only, hard and un- 
just as the bargain is, it were adhered to. 
It is not adhered to : those terms are broken ; 
the purport of every one of them is, by 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



161 



false interpretation and various subter- 
fuges, eluded and violated. Many of these 
people are ejected from their old habita- 
tions; their native religion is prohibited to 
many : new taxes are exacted ; a new for- 
tress has been built over them, out of 
which soldiers frequently sallying plunder 
or kill whomsoever they meet. Moreover, 
new forces have of late been privily got 
ready against them; and such as follov/ the 
Eomish religion are directed to withdraw 
from among them Avithm a limited time : so 
that everything seems now again to point 
toward the extermination of all among these 
unhappy ]3eople, whom the former massacre 
had left. 

Which now, Most Christian King, I 
beseech and obtest thee, by thy right-hand 
which pledged a league and friendship with 
us, by the sacred honor of that title of 
Most Christian, — permit not to be done : 
nor let such license of savagery, I do not 
say to any Prince (for indeed no cruelty 
like this could come into the mind of any 
Prince, much less into the tender years of 
that young Prince, or into the woman's 
heart of his mother), but to those accursed 
assassins, be given. Who while they pro- 
fess themselves the servants and imitators 
of Christ our Savior, who came into this 
world that He might save sinners, abuse 
His most merciful name and commandments 
to the cruelest slaughterings. Snatch, thou 
who art able, and who in such an elevation 
art worthy to be able, these poor suppliants 
of thine from the hands of murderers, who, 
lately drunk Avith blood, are again athirst 
for it, and think convenient to turn the 
discredit of their own cruelty upon their 
Prince's score. Suffer not either thy titles 
and the environs of thy kingdom to be 
soiled with that discredit, or the peaceable 
gospel of Christ by that cruelty, in thy 
reign. Remember that these very people 
became subjects of thy ancestor, Henry, 
most friendly to Protestants; when Lesdi- 
g'uieres victoriously pursued him of Savoy 
across the Alps, through those same valleys, 
where indeed the most commodious pass to 
Italy is. The instrument of their paction 
and surrender is yet extant in the public 
acts of your kingdom : in which this among 
other things is specified and provided 
against, that these people of the valleys 
should not thereafter be delivered over to 
anyone except on the same conditions un- 
der which thy invincible ancestor had re- 
ceived them into fealty. This promised 



protection they now implore; promise of 
thy ancestor they now, from thee the grand- 
son, suppliantly demand. To be thine 
rather than his whose they now are, if by 
any means of exchange it could be done, 
they would wish and prefer: if that may 
not be, thine at least by succor, by com- 
miseration, and deliverance. 

There are likewise reasons of state which 
might give inducement not to reject these 
people of the valleys flying for shelter to 
tliee : but I would not have thee, so great 
a King as thou art, be moved to the defense 
of the unfortunate by other reasons than 
the promise of thy ancestors, and thy own 
piety and royal benignity and greatness of 
mind. So shall the praise and fame of this 
most worthy action be unmixed and clear; 
and thyself shalt find the Father of Mercy, 
and His Son Christ the King, whose name 
and doctrine thou shalt have vindicated, the 
more favorable to thee, and propitious 
through the course of life. 

May the Almighty, for His own glory, 
for the safety of so many most innocent 
Christian men, and for your true honor, 
dispose your Majesty to this determination. 
Your Majesty's most friendly 

Oliver Protector of the Commonwealth of 
England. 

Westminster^ 26th May, 1658. 

(Translated from the Latin of Milton by 
Thomas Carlyle.) 

England and America 

[From Of Reformation in England, 1641] 

But to return whence was digressed : see- 
ing that the throne of a king, as the wise 
king Solomon often remembers us, "is es- 
tablished in justice," which is the universal 
justice that Aristotle so much praises, con- 
taining in it all other virtues, it may assure 
us that the fall of prelacy, whose actions 
are so far distant from justice, cannot shake 
the least fringe that borders the royal can- 
opy ; but that their standing doth continual- 
ly oppose and lay battery to regal safety, 
shall by that which follows easily appear. 
Amongst many secondary and accessory 
causes that support monarchy, these are 
not of least reckoning, though common to 
all other states; the love of the subjects, 
the multitude and valor of the people, and 
store of treasure. In all these things hath 
the kingdom been of late sore Aveakened, and 
chiefly by the prelates. First, let any man 



162 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



consider, that if any prince shall suffer 
under him a commission of authority to be 
exercised, till all the land gi'oan and cry 
out, as against a whip of scorpions, whether 
this be not likely to lessen and keel the af- 
fections of the subject. Next, what num- 
bers of faithful and freeborn Englishmen, 
and good Christians, have been constrained 
to forsake their dearest home, their friends 
and kindred, whom nothing but the wide 
ocean, and the savage deserts of America, 
could hide and shelter from the fury of 
the bishops'? 0, sir, if we could but see 
the shape of our dear mother England, as 
poets are wont to give a personal form to 
what they please, how would she appear, 
think ye, but in a mourning weed, with ashes 
upon her head, and tears abundantly flow- 
ing from her eyes, to behold so many of her 
children exposed at once, and thrust from 
things of dearest necessity, because their 
conscience could not assent to things which 
the bishops thought indifferent? What 
more binding than conscience"? ".Vhat more 
free than indiffereney ? Cruel then must 
that indifferency needs be, that shall violate 
the strict necessity of conscience; merciless 
and inhuman that free choice and liberty 



that shall break asunder the bonds of re- 
ligion! Let the astrologer be dismayed at 
the portentous blaze of comets, and impres- 
sions m the air, as foretelling troubles and 
changes to states : I shall believe there can- 
not be a more ill-boding sign to a nation 
(God turn the omen from us!) than when 
the inhabitants, to avoid insufferable griev- 
ances at home, are enforced by heaps to for- 
sake their native country. 

The Brotherhood of Man 

[From Tenure 0/ S^iw^s/1649] 

Who knows not that there is a mutual 
bond of amity and brotherhood between 
man and man over all the world, neither is 
it the English sea that can sever us from 
that duty and relation : a straiter bond yet 
there is between fellow-subjects, neighbors, 
and friends. . . . Nor is it distance of 
place that makes enmity, but enmity that 
makes distance. He, therefore, that keeps 
peace with me, near or remote, of whatso- 
ever nation, is to me, as far as all civil and 
human offices, an Englishman and a neigh- 
bor. . . . This is gospel, and this was 
ever law among equals. 



III. THE BEGINNINGS OF FREE GOVERNMENT IN AMERICA 



The Pilgrims and Their Compact 

william bradford 

[From the History of Plymouth Plan- 
tation.] 

Of their departure from Leyden, and 
other things there about, with their arrival 
at Southampton, where they all met to- 
gether, and took in their provisions. 

At length, after much travail and these 
debates, all things were got ready and pro- 
vided. A small ship was bought and fitted 
in Holland which was intended as to serve 
to help to transport them, so to stay in the 
country, and attend upon fishing and such 
other affairs as might be for the good and 
benefit of the colony when they came there. 
Another was hired at London, of burden 
about 9. score; and all other things got in 
readiness. So being ready to depart, they 
had a day of solemn humiliation, their pas- 
tor taking his text from Ezra 8.21. And 
there at the river, by Ahava, I proclaimed 
a fast that we might humble ourselves be- 
fore our God, and seek of him a right way 



for us, and for our children, and for all our 
substance. Upon which he spent a good 
part of the day very profitably, and suit- 
able to their present occasion. The rest of 
the time was spent in pouring out prayers 
to the Lord with great fervency mixed with 
abundance of tears. And the time being 
eome that they must depart, they were 
accompanied with most of their brethren 
out of the city, unto a town sundry miles 
off called Delfes Haven, where the ships lay 
ready to receive them. So they left that 
goodly and pleasant city, which had been 
their resting place, near 12 years ; but they 
knew they were pilgrims and looked not 
much on those things, but lift up their eyes 
to the heavens, their dearest country, and 
quieted their spirits. When they came to 
the place they found the ship and all things 
ready. And such of their friends as could 
not come with them followed after them, and 
sundry also came from Amsterdam to see 
them shipped and to take their leave of 
them. That night was spent with little 
sleep by the most, but with friendly enter- 
tainment and Christian discourse, and other 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



163 



real expressions of true Christian love. The 
next day the wind being fair they went 
aboard, and their friends with them, where 
truly doleful was the sight of that sad and 
mournful jDarting; To see what sighs and 
sobs and prayers did sound amongst them, 
what tears did rush from every eye, and 
pithy speeches pierced each heart ; that sun- 
dry of the Dutch strangers that stood on the 
quay as spectators, could not refrain from 
tears. Yet comfortable and sweet it was 
to see such lively and true expressions of 
dear and unf ained love. But the tide (which 
stays for no man) calling them away that 
were thus loath to depart, their reverend 
pastor falling down on his knees (and they 
all with him,) with watery cheeks com- 
mended them with most fervent prayers to 
the Lord and his blessing. And then with 
mutual embraces and many tears, they took 
their leaves one of another; which proved 
to be the last leave to many of them. 

Thus hoisting sail, with a prosperous wind 
they came in short time to Southampton, 
where they found the bigger shij) come from 
London, lying ready with all the rest of 
their company. After a joyful welcome, 
and mutual congratulations, with other 
friendly entertainments, they fell to parley 
about their business, how to dispatch with 
the best expedition; as also with their 
agents, about the alteration of the condi- 
tions. Mr, Carver pleaded he was employed 
here at Hampton and knew not well what 
the other had done at London. Mr. Cush- 
man answered he nad done nothing but 
what he was urged to partly by the grounds 
of equity and more esi^ecially by necessity, 
otherwise all had been dashed and many 
undone. And in the beginning he acquaint- 
ed his fellow agents herewith, who con- 
sented unto him, and left it to him to 
execute, and to receive the money at Lon- 
don, and send it down to them at Hampton, 
where they made the provisions ; the which he 
accordingly did, though it was against his 
mind, and some of the merchants, that they 
were there made. And for giving them 
notice at Leyden of this change, he 
could not well in regard of the short- 
ness of the time; again, he knew it would 
trouble them and hinder the business, which 
was already delayed overlong in regard of 
the season of the year, which he feared they 
would find to their cost. But these things 
gave not content at present. Mr. Weston, 
likewise, came up from London to see them 



dispatched and to have the conditions eon- 
firmed ; but they refused, and answered him, 
that he knew right well that these were not 
according to the first agreement, neither 
could they yield to them without the eon- 
sent of the rest that were behind and in- 
deed they had special charge when they 
came away, from the chief of those that 
were behind, not to do it. At which he 
was much offended, and told them they 
must then look to stand on their own legs. 
So he returned in displeasure, and this was 
the first ground of discontent between them. 
And whereas they wanted well near £100 to 
clear things at their going away, he would 
not take order to disburse a penny, but 
let them shift as they could. So they were 
forced to sell off some of their provisions 
to stop this gap which was some 3. or 4. 
score firkins of butter, which commodity 
they might best spare, having provided too 
large a quantity of that kind. 

The Compact of the Pilgrims 
The rest of this History (if God gives me 
life, and opportunity) I shall, for brevity's 
sake, handle by way of Annals, noting 
only the heads of principal things, and pas- 
sages as they fell in order of time, and may 
seem to be profitable to know, or to make 
use of. And this may be as the second 
Book. 

The Remainder of Anno: 1620 
I shall a little return back and begin with 
a combination made by them before they 
came ashore, being the first foundation of 
their government in this place; occasioned 
partly by the discontented mutinous and 
speeches that some of the strangers amongst 
them had let fall from them in the ship — 
That when they came ashore they would 
use their own liberty; for none had power 
to command them, the jDatent they had be- 
ing for Virginia, and not for New England, 
which belonged to another Government, with 
which the Virginia Company had nothing 
to do. And partly that such an act by 
them done (this their condition considered) 
might be as firm as any patent, and in 
some respects more siire. 
The form was as followeth. 
In y^ name of God, Amen. We whose 
names are vnderwritten, the loyall subjects 
of our dread soueraigne Lord, King James, 
by y® grace of God, of great Britaine, Franc, 
& Ireland king, defender of y® faith, &c. 



164 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Haueing vndertaken, for y® glorie of God, 
and advaucemeute of y^ christian faith and 
honour of our king & countrie, a voyage to 
plant y^ first eolonie in y^ Northerne parts 
of Virginia. Doe by these presents solemnly 
& mutualy in y*^ presence of God, and one 
of another, couenant, & combine our selues 
togeather into a Ciuill body politick, for our 
better ordering, & preseruation & further- 
ance of y"^ ends aforesaid; and by Vertue 
hearof to enaete, constitute, and frame, such 
just & equall lawes, ordinances, Acts, con- 
stitutions, & of&ees, from time to time, as 
shall be thought most meete & eonuenient 
for y*^ generall good of y® Colonie, vnto 
which we promise all due submission and 
obedience. In witnes whereof we haue here- 
vnder subscribed our names at Cap-Codd 
y®. 11. of Nouember, in y"^ year of y^ raigne 
of our soueraigne Lord, King James, of 
England, France, & Ireland y^ eighteenth, 
and of Scotland y^ fiftie fourth. An° : Dom. 
1620. 

The First Promotion of Learning 

edward johnson 

[From A Wonder-Working Providence, 
1654] 

Toward the latter end of this summer 
(1635) came over the learned, reverend, and 
judicious Mr. Henry Dunster, before whose 
coming the Lord was pleased to provide a 
patron for erecting a college, as you have 
formerly heard, his provident hand being 
now no less powerful in pointing out with 
his unerring finger a president abundantly 
fitted, this his servant, and sent him over 
for to manage the work. And as in all the 
other passages of this history the Wonder- 
working Providence of Sion's Saviour hath 
appeared, so more especially in this work, 
the fountains of learning being in a great 
measure stopped in our. native country at 
this time, so that the SAveet waters of Shilo's 
streams must ordinarily pass into the 
churches through the stinking channel of 
prelaticai pride, beside all the filth that the 
fountains themselves were daily encumbered 
withal, insomuch that the Lord turned aside 
often from them, and refused the breath- 
ings of his blessed Spirit among them, which 
caused Satan (in these latter days of his 
transformation into an angel of light) to 
make it a means to persuade people from 
the use of learning altogether, that so in the 



next generation they might be destitute of 
such helps as the Lord hath been pleased 
hitherto to make use of, as chief means for 
the conversion of his people and building 
them up in the holy faith, as also for break- 
ing down the Kingdom of Antichrist. And 
verily had not the Lord been pleased to fur- 
nish New England with means for the at- 
tainment of learning, the work would have 
been carried on very heavily, and the hearts 
of godly parents would have vanished away 
with heaviness for their poor children, whom 
they must have left in a desolate wilderness, 
destitute of the means of grace. 

It being a work (in the apprehension of 
all whose capacity could reach to the great 
sums of money the edifice of a mean col- 
lege would cost) past the reach of a poor 
pilgrim people, who had expended the great- 
est part of their estates on a long voyage, 
traveling into foreign countries being un- 
l^rofitable to any that have undertaken it, 
although it were but with their necessary 
attendance, whereas this people were forced 
to travel with wives, children, and servants ; 
besides they considered the treble charge of 
building in this new po^oulated desert, in re- 
gard of all kind of workmanship, knowing 
likewise, that young students could make up 
a poor progress in learning, by looking on 
the bare walls of their chambers, and that 
Diogenes would have the better of them by 
far, in making use of a tun to lodge in ; 
not being ignorant also, that many people 
in this age are out of conceit with learning, 
and that although they were not among a 
people who counted ignorance the mother 
of devotion, yet were the greater part of 
the people wholly devoted to the plow (but 
to speak uprightly, hunger is sharp, and 
the head will retain little learning, if the 
heart be not refreshed in some competent 
measure with food, although the gross va- 
pors of a glutted stomach are the bane of 
a bright understanding, and brings barren- 
ness to the brain). But how to have both 
go on together, as yet they know not. 
Amidst all these difficulties, it was thought 
meet learning should plead for itself, and 
(as many other men of good rank and qual- 
ity in this barren desert) plot out a way 
to live. Hereupon all those who had tasted 
the sweet wine of Wisdom's drawing, and 
fed on the dainties of knowledge, began to 
set their wits at work, and verily as the 
whole progress of this work had a farther 
dependency than on the present-eyed means, 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



165 



so at this time chiefly the end being firmly 
fixed on a sure foundation, namely, the glory 
of God and good of all his elect peojjle the 
world throughout, in vindicating the truths 
of Christ and promoting his glorious King- 
dom, who is now taking the heathen for his 
inheritance and the utmost ends of the earth 
for his possession, means they know there 
are, many thousand uneyed of mortal man, 
which every day's Providence brings forth. 
Upon these resolutions, to work they go, 
and with thankful acknowledgment readily 
take up all lawful means as they come to 
hand. For place they fix their eye upon 
New-Town, which to tell their posterity 
whence they came, is now named Cam- 
bridge. And withal to make the whole world 
understand that spiritual learning was the 
thing they chiefly desired, to sanctify the 
other and make the whole lump holy, and 
that learning being set upon its right ob- 
ject might not contend for error instead of 
truth, they chose this place, being then un- 
der the orthodox and soul-flourishing minis- 
try of Mr. Thomas Shepard, of whom it may 
be said, without any wrong to others, the 
Lord of his Ministry hath saved many a 
hundred soul. The situation of this Col- 
lege is very pleasant, at the end of a 
spacious plain, more like a bowling-green 
than a wilderness, near a fair navigable 
river, environed with many neighboring 
towns of note, being so near, that their 
houses join with her suburbs. The build- 
ing thought by some to be too gorgeous for 
a wilderness, and yet too mean in others' 
apprehensions for a college, it is at present 
enlarging by purchase of the neighbor 
houses. It hath the conveniences of a fair 
hall, comfortable studies, and a good library, 
given by the liberal hand of some magis- 
trates and ministers, with others. The chief 
gift towards the founding of this college was 
by Mr. John Harvard, a reverend minister ; 
the country, being very weak in their pub- 
lic treasury, expended about £500 towards 
it, and for the maintenance thereof, gave the 
yearly revenue of a ferry passage between 
Boston and Charles-Town, the which 
amounts to about £40 or £50 per annum. 
The commissioners of the four united col- 
onies also taking into consideration of what 
common concernment this work would be, 
not only to the whole plantations in general, 
but also to all our English Nation, they en- 
deavored to stir up all the people in the sev- 
eral colonies to make a yearly contribution 



toward it, which by some is observed, but by 
the most very much neglected. The govern- 
ment hath endeavored to grant them all the 
privileges fit for a college, and accordingly 
the Governor and magistrates, together with 
the President of the College for the time be- 
ing, have a continual care of ordering all 
matters for the good of the whole. 

This college hath brought forth and nurst 
up very hopeful plants, to the supplying 
some churches here, as the gracious and 
godly Mr. Wilson, son to the grave and 
zealous servant of Christ, Mr. John Wilson ; 
this young man is pastor to the Church of 
Christ at Dorchester; as also Mr. Buckly, 
son to the reverend Mr. Buckly, of Con- 
cord; as also a second son of his, whom 
our native country hath now at present help 
in the ministry, and the other is over a 
people of Christ in one of these Colonies, 
and if I mistake not, England hath I hope 
not only this young man of New England 
nurturing up in learning, but many more, 
as Mr. Sam. and Nathaniel Mathers, Mr. 
Wells, Mr. Downing, Mr. Barnard, Mr. Al- 
lin, Mr. Brewster, Mr. William Ames, Mr. 
Jones. Another of the first-fruits of this 
college is employed in these western parts' in 
Mevis, one of the Summer Islands; besides 
these" named, some help hath been had from 
hence in the study of physic, as also the 
godly Mr. Sam. Danforth, who hath not only 
studied divinity, but also astronomy; he 
put forth many almanacs, and is now called 
to the office of a teaching elder in the 
Church of Christ at Roxbury, who was one 
of the fellows of this College. The number 
of students is much increased of late, so 
that the present year, 1651, on the twelfth 
of the sixth month, ten of them took the de- 
gree of Bachelors of Art, among whom the 
Sea-born son of Mr. John Cotton was 
one. . . . 

The May-Pole of Merry Mount ^ 

nathaniel hawthorne 

[From Twice Told Tales, 1837] 

Bright were the days at Merry Mount, 
when the May-Pole was the banner staff of 
that gay colony ! They who reared it, 

1 This story illustrates the conflict between 
Puritan severity and the older spirit of Merry 
England, as it appeared on American soil. The 
colony at Merry Mount was established in 1622 
and was dispersed by Miles Standish in 1628. 
With the point of view of the unfortunate Merry 
Mount revelers, compare the poetry of Herrick.. 



166 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



should their banner be triumphant, were 
to pour sunshine over New England's rugged 
hills, and scatter flower-seeds throughout 
the soil. Jollity and gloom were contend- 
ing for an empire. Midsummer eve had 
come, bringing deep verdure to the forest, 
and roses in her lap, of a more vivid hue 
than the tender buds of Spring. But May, 
or her mirthful spiiit, dwelt all the year 
round at Merry Mount, sporting with the 
summer months, and revelling with Autumn, 
and basking in the glow of Winter's fire- 
side. Through a world of toil and care she 
flitted with a dream-like smile, and came 
hither to find a home among the lightsome 
hearts of Merry Mount. 

Never had the May-Pole been so gayly 
decked as at sunset on midsummer eve. This 
venerated emblem was a pine-tree, which 
had preserved the slender grace of youth, 
while it equaled the loftiest height of the 
old wood monarehs. From its top streamed 
a silken banner, colored like the rainbow. 
Down nearly to the ground, the pole was 
dressed with birchen boughs, and others of 
the liveliest green, and some with silvery 
leaves fastened by ribbons that flut- 
tered in fantastic knots of twenty dif- 
ferent colors, but no sad ones. Garden 
flowers and blossoms of the wilderness 
laughed gladly forth amid the verdure, 
so fresh and dewy that they must have 
grown by magic on that happy pine-tree. 
Where this green and flowery splendor ter- 
minated, the shaft of the May-Pole was 
stained with the seven brilliant hues of the 
banner at its top. On the lowest green 
bough hung an abundant wreath of roses, 
some that had been gathered in the sunniest 
spots of the forest, and others, of still richer 
blush, which the colonists had reared from 
English seed. people of the Golden Age, 
the chief of your husbandry was to raise 
flowers ! 

But what was the wild throng that stood 
hand in hand about the May -Pole ? It could 
not be that the fauns and nymphs, when 
driven from their classic groves and homes 
of ancient fable, had sought refuge, as all 
the persecuted did, in the fresh woods of 
the West. These were Gothic monsters, 
though perhaps of Grecian ancestry. On 
the shoulders of a comely youth uprose the 
head and branching antlers of a stag; a 
second, human in all other points, had the 
grim visage of a wolf; a third, still with 
the trunk and limbs of a mortal man, showed 



the beard and horns of a venerable he-goat. 
There was the likeness of a bear erect, brute 
in all but his hind legs, which were adorned 
with pink silk stockings. And here again, 
almost as wondrous, stood a real bear of the 
dark forest, lending each of his fore-paws 
to the grasp of a human hand, and as ready 
for the dance as any in that circle. His 
inferior nature rose half-way, to meet his 
companions as they stooped. Other faces 
wore the similitude of man or woman, but 
distorted or extravagant, with red noses 
pendulous before their mouths, which 
seemed of awful depth, and stretched from 
ear to ear in an eternal fit of laughter. 
Here might be seen the Salvage Man, well 
known in heraldry, hairy as a baboon, and 
girdled with green leaves. By his side, a 
nobler figure, but still a counterfeit, ap- 
peared an Indian hunter, with feathery crest 
and wampum belt. Many of this strange 
company wore foolscaps, and had little bells 
appended to their garments, tinkling with a 
silvery sound, responsive to the inaudible 
music of their gleesome spirits. Some 
youths and maidens were of soberer garb, 
yet well maintained their places in the ir- 
regular throng, by the expression of wild 
revelry upon their features. Such were the 
colonists of Merry Mount, as they stood 
in the broad smile of sunset, round their 
venerated May-Pole. 

Had a wanderer, bewildered in the mel- 
ancholy forest, heard their mirth, and stolen 
a half-atfrighted glance, he might have fan- 
cied them the crew of Comus, some al- 
ready transformed to brutes, some midway 
between man and beast, and the others 
rioting in the flow of tipsy jollity that 
foreran the change. But a band of Puri- 
tans, who watched the scene, invisible them- 
selves, compared the masques to those dev- 
ils and ruined souls with whom their su- 
perstition peopled the black wilderness. 

Within the ring of monsters appeared the 
two airiest forms that had ever trodden on 
any more solid footing than a purple and 
golden cloud. One was a youth in glisten- 
ing apparel, with a scarf of the rainbow 
pattern crosswise on his breast. His right 
hand held a gilded stai¥, the ensign of high 
dignity among the revelers, and his left 
grasped the slender flngers of a fair maiden, 
not less gaily decorated than himself. Bright 
roses glowed in contrast with the dark and 
glossy curls of each, and were scattered 
round their feet, or had sprung up spon- 



PURITANS AND KINGS 



167 



taneously there. Behind this lightsome 
couple, so close to the May-Pole that its 
boughs shaded his jovial face, stood the 
figure of an English priest, canonically 
dressed, yet decked with flowers, in heathen 
fashion, and wearing a ehaplet of the na- 
tive vine-leaves. By the riot of his rolling 
eye, and the pagan decorations of his holy 
garb, he seemed the wildest monster there, 
and the very Comus of the crew. 

"Votaries of the May-Pole," cried the 
flower-decked priest, "merrily, all day long, 
have the- woods echoed to your mirth. But 
be this your merriest hour, my hearts ! Lo, 
here stand the Lord and Lady of the May, 
whom I, a clerk of Oxford, and high priest 
of Merry Mount, am presently to join in 
holy matrimony. Up with your nimble 
spirits, ye morrice-dancers, green men, and 
_ glee-maidens, bears and wolves, and horned 
gentlemen ! Come ; a chorus now, rich with 
the old mirth of Merry England, and the 
wilder glee of this fresh forest; and then 
a dance, to show the youthful pair what 
life is made of, and how airily they should 
go through it! All ye that love the May- 
Pole, lend your voices to the nuptial song 
of the Lord and Lady of the May!" 

This wedlock was more serious than most 
affairs of Merry Mount, where jest and 
delusion, trick and fantasy, kept up a con- 
tinual carnival. The Lord and Lady of the 
May, though their titles must be laid down 
at sunset, were really and truly to be part- 
ners for the dance of life, beginning the 
measure that same bright eve. The wreath 
of roses, that hung from the lowest green 
bough of the May-Pole, had been twined 
for them, and would be thrown over both 
their heads, in symbol of their flowery 
union. When the priest had spoken, there- 
fore, a riotous uproar burst from the rout 
of monstrous figures. 

"Begin you the stave, reverend Sir," 
cried they all; "and never did the woods 
ring to such a merry peal, as we of the 
May-Pole shall send up !" 

Immediately a prelude of pipe, cithern, 
and viol, touched with practiced minstrelsy, 
began to play from a neighboring thicket, 
in such a mirthful cadence that the boughs 
of the May-Pole quivered to the sound. 
But the May Lord, he of the gilded staff, 
chancing to look into his Lady's eyes, was 
wonder-struck at the almost pensive glance 
that met his own. 

"Edith, sweet Lady of the May," whis- 



pered he, reproachfully, "is yon wreath of 
roses a garland to hang above our graves, 
that you look so sad? Edith, this is our 
golden time ! Tarnish it not by any pensive 
shadow of the mind; for it may be that 
nothing of futurity will be brighter than 
the mere remembrance of what is now pass- 
ing." 

"That was the very thought that sad- 
dened me; How came it in your mind 
too?" said Edith, in a still lower tone than 
he; for it was high treason to be sad at 
Merry Mount. "Therefore do I sigh amid 
this festive music. And besides, dear Ed- 
gar, I struggle as with a dream, and fancy 
that these shapes of our jovial friends are 
visionary, and their mirth unreal, and that 
we are no true Lord and Lady of the May. 
What is the mystery in my heart?" 

Just then, as if a spell had loosened them, 
down came a little shower of withering rose- 
leaves from the May-Pole. Alas, for the 
young lovers ! No sooner had their hearts 
glowed with real passion, than they were 
sensible of something vague and unsubstan- 
tial in their former pleasures, and felt a 
dreary presentiment of inevitable change. 
From the moment that they truly loved, 
they had subjected themselves to earth's 
doom of care and sorrow, and troubled joy, 
and had no more a home at Merry Mount. 
That was Edith's mystery. Now leave we 
the priest to marry them, and the masquers 
to sport round the May-Pole, till the last 
sunbeam be withdrawn from its summit, 
and the shadows of the forest mingle gloom- 
ily in the dance. Meanwhile, we may dis- 
cover who these gay people were. 

Two hundred years ago, and more, the 
Old World and its inhabitants became mu- 
tually weary of each other. Men voyaged 
by thousands to the West; some to barter 
glass beads, and such like jewels, for the 
furs of the Indian hunter; some to conquer 
virgin empii es ; and one stern band to pray. 
But none of these motives had much weight 
with the colonists of Merry Mount. Their 
leaders were men who had sported so long 
with life, that when Thought and Wisdom 
came, even these unwelcome guests were 
led astray by the crowd of vanities which 
they should have put to flight. Erring 
Thought and perverted Wisdom were made 
to put on masques, and play the fool. The 
men of whom we speak, after losing the 
heart's fresh gaiety, imagined a wild phil- 
osophy of pleasure, and came hither to act 



168 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



out their latest day-dream. They gathered 
followers from all that giddy tribe, whose 
whole life is like the festal days of soberer 
men. In their train were minstrels, not un- 
known in London streets; wandering play- 
ers, whose theaters had been the halls of 
noblemen; mummers, rope dancers, and 
mountebanks, who would long be missed at 
wakes, church ales, and fairs; in a word, 
mirth-makers of every sort, such as 
abounded in that age, but now began to 
be discountenanced by the rapid growth of 
Puritanism. Light had their footsteps been 
on land, and as lightly they came across the 
sea. Many had been maddened by their 
previous troubles into a gay despair ; others 
were as madly gay in the flush of youth, like 
the May Lord and his Lady; but whatever 
might be the quality of their mirth, old and 
young were gay at Merry Mount. The 
young deemed themselves happy. The elder 
spirits, if they knew that mirth was but 
the counterfeit of happiness, yet followed 
the false shadow wilfully, because at least 
her garments glittered brightest. Sworn 
triflers of a lifetime, they would not venture 
among the sober truths of life, not even to 
be truly blest. 

All the hereditary pastimes of old Eng- 
land were transplanted hither. The King 
of Christmas was duly crowned, and the 
Lord of Misrule bore potent sway. On the 
eve of Saint John, they felled whole acres 
of the forest to make bonfires, and danced 
by the blaze all night, crowned with gar- 
lands, and throwing flowers into the flame. 
At harvest-time, though their crop was of 
the smallest, they made an image with the 
sheaves of Lidian corn, and wreathed it 
with autumnal garlands, and bore it home 
triumphantly. But what chiefly character- 
ized the colonists of Merry Mount was their 
veneration for the May-Pole. It has made 
their true history a poet's tale. Spring 
decked the hallowed emblem with young 
blossoms and fresh green boughs; Summer 
brought roses of the deepest blush, and the 
perfected foliage of the forest. Autumn en- 
riched it with that red and yellow gorgeous- 
ness, which converts each wildwood leaf 
into a painted flower; and Winter silvered 
it with sleet, and hung it round with icicles, 
till it flashed in the cold sunshine, itself a 
frozen sunbeam. Thus each alternate sea- 
son did homage to the May-Pole, and paid 
it a tribute of its own richest splendor. Its 
votaries danced round it once, at least, in 



every month; sometimes they called it their 
religion, or their altar; but always, it was 
the banner staff of Merry Mount. 

Unfortunately, there were men in the 
New World of a sterner faith than these 
May-Pole worshipers. Not far from Merry 
Mount was a settlement of Puritans, most 
dismal wretches, who said their prayers 
before daylight, and then wrought in the 
forest or the cornfield till evening made it 
prayer-time again. Their weapons were al- 
ways at hand, to shoot down the straggling 
savage. When they met in conclave, it was 
never to keep up the old English mirth, 
but to hear sermons three hours long, or 
to proclaim bounties on the heads of wolves 
and the scalps of Indians. Their festivals 
were fast-days, and their chief pastime the 
singing of psalms. Woe to the youth or 
maiden who did but dream of a dance! The 
selectman nodded to the constable ; and there 
sat the light-heeled reprobate in the stocks; 
or if he danced, it was round the whipping- 
post, which might be termed the Puritan 
May-Pole. 

A party of these grim Puritans, toiling 
through the difficult woods, each with a 
horse-load of iron armor to burthen his 
footsteps, would sometimes draw near the 
sunny precincts of Merry Mount. There 
were the silken colonists, sporting round 
their May-Pole; perhaps teaching a bear 
to dance, or striving to communicate their 
mirth to the grave Indian ; or masquerading 
in the skins of deer and wolves, which they 
had hunted for that especial purpose. 
Often, the whole colony were playing at 
blindman's buff, magistrates and all with 
their eyes bandaged, except a single scape- 
goat, whom the blinded sinners pursued by 
the tinkling of the bells at his garments. 
Once, it is said, they were seen following 
a flower-decked corpse, with merriment and 
festive music, to his grave. But did the 
dead man laugh? In their quietest times, 
they sang ballads and told tales, for the 
edification of their pious visitors; or per- 
plexed them with juggling tricks; or 
grinned at them through horse-collars; and 
when sport itself grew wearisome, they made 
game of their own stupidity, and began a 
yawning match. At the very least of these 
enormities, the men of iron shook their heads 
and frowned so darkly, that the revelers 
looked up, imagining that a momentary cloud 
had overcast the sunshine, which was to be 
perpetual there. On the other hand, the 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



169 



Puritans affirmed, that, when a psalm was 
pealing from their place of worship, the 
echo which the forest sent them back seemed 
often like the chorus of a jolly catch, closing 
with a roar of laughter. Who but the fiend, 
and his bond-slaves, the crew of Merry 
Mount, had thus disturbed them? In due 
time, a feud arose, stern and bitter on one 
side, and as serious on the other as anything 
could be among such light si3irits as had 
sworn allegiance to the May-Pole. The 
future complexion of New England was in- 
volved in this important quarrel. Should the 
grizzly saints establish their jurisdiction over 
the gay sinners, then would their spirits 
darken all the clime, and make it a land of 
clouded visages, of hard toil, of sermon and 
psalm forever. But should the banner-staff ^ 
of Merry Mount be fortunate, sunshine 
would break upon the hills, and flowers 
would beautify the forest, and late posterity 
do homage to the May-Pole. 

After these authentic passages from his- 
tory, we return to the nuptials of the Lord 
and Lady of the May. Alas! we have de- 
layed too long, and must darken our tale too 
suddenly. As we glance again at the May- 
Pole, a solitary sunbeam is fading from the 
summit, and leaves only a faint, golden 
tinge, blended with the hues of the rainbow 
banner. Even that dim light is now with- 
drawn, relinquishing the whole domain of 
Merry Mount to the evening gloom, which 
has rushed so instantaneously from the black 
surrounding woods. But some of these 
black shadows have rushed forth in human 
shape. 

Yes; with the setting sun, the last day of 
mirth had passed from Merry Mount. The 
--ring of gay masquers was disordered and 
broken; the stag lowered his antlers in dis- 
may; the wolf grew weaker than a lamb; 
the bells of the morrice-dancers tinkled with 
tremulous affright. The Puritans had played 
a characteristic part in the May-Pole mum- 
meries. Their darksome figures were inter- 
mixed with the wild shapes of their foes, 
and made the scene a picture of the moment, 
when waking thoughts start up amid the 
scattered fantasies of a dream. The leader 
of the hostile party stood in the center of the 
circle, while the rout of monsters cowered 
around him, like evil spirits in the presence 
of a dread magician. No fantastic foolery 
could look him in the face. So stern was 
the energy of his aspect, that the whole man, 
visage, frame, and soul, seemed wrought of 



iron, gifted with life and thought, yet all 
of one substance with his head-i3iece and 
breast-plate. It Avas the Puritan of Puri- 
tans ; it was Endicott himself ! 

"Stand off, priest of Baal!" said he, with 
a grim frown, and laying no reverent hand 
upon the surplice. "I know thee. Black- 
stone ! ^ Thou art the man, who couldst not 
abide the rule even of thine own corrupted 
church, and hast come hither to preach 
iniquity, and to give example of it in thy 
life. But now shall it be seen that the 
Lord hath sanctified this wilderness for 
his peculiar people. Woe unto them that 
would defile it! And first, for this flower- 
decked abomination, the altar of thy wor- 
ship !" 

And with his keen sword Endicott as- 
saulted the hallow^ed May-Pole. Nor long 
did it resist his arm. It groaned with a dis- 
mal sound ; it showered leaves and rosebuds 
upon the remorseless enthusiast ; and finally, 
with all its green boughs, and ribbons, and 
flowers, symbolic of departed pleasures, 
down fell the banner-staff of Merry Mount. 
As it sank, tradition says, the evening sky 
grew darker, and the woods threw forth a 
more somber shadow. 

''There," . cried Endicott, looking tri- 
umjDhantly on his work,— -''there lies the only 
May-Pole in New England ! The thought is 
strong within me, that, by its fall, is shad- 
OAved forth the fate of light and idle mirth- 
makers, amongst us and our posterity. 
Amen ! saith John Endicott." 

"Amen!" echoed his followers. 

But the votaries of the May-Pole gave one 
groan for their idol. At the sound, the 
Puritan leader glanced at the crew of 
Comus, each a figure of broad mirth, yet, at 
this moment, strangely exjDressive of sorrow 
and dismay. 

"Valiant captain," quoth Peter Palfrey, 
the Ancient of the band, "what order shall 
be taken Avith the prisoners?" 

"I thought not to repent me of cutting 
down a May-Pole," replied Endicott, "yet 
now I could find in my heart to plant it 
again, and giA^e each of these bestial pa- 
gans one other dance round their idol. It 
Avould have served rarely for a whipping- 
post !" 

1 Did Governor Endicott speak less positively^ 
Ave should suspect a mistake here. The Rev. Mr. 
Blackstone, though an eccentric, is not known to 
have been an immoral man. We rather doubt his 
identit.v with the priest of Merry Mount. — [Au- 
thor's Note.] 



170 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



"But there are pine trees enow," suggested 
the lieutenant. 

"True, good Ancient," said the leader. 
"Wherefore, bind the heathen crew, and 
bestow on them a small matter of stripes 
apiece, as earnest of our future justice. Set 
some of the rogues in the stocks to rest 
themselves, so soon as Providence shall bring 
us to one of our own well-ordered settle- 
ments, where such accommodations may be 
found. Further penalties, such as branding 
and cropping of ears, shall be thought of 
hereafter." 

"How many stripes for the priest?" in- 
quired Ancient Palfrey. 

"None as yet," answered Endicott, bend- 
ing his iron frown ujDon the culprit. "It 
must be for the Great and General Court to 
determine whether stripes and long impris- 
onment, and other grievous penalty, may 
atone for his transgressions. Let him look 
to himself! For such as violate our civil 
order, it may be permitted us to show mercy. 
But woe to the wretch that troubleth our 
religion !" 

"And this dancing bear," resumed the 
officer. "Must he share the stripes of his 
fellows?" 

"Shoot him through the head!" said the 
energetic Puritan. "I suspect witchcraft in 
the beast." 

"Here be a couple of shining ones," con- 
tinued Peter Palfrey, pointing his weapon 
at the Lord and Lady of the May. "They 
seem to be of high station among these 
misdoers. Methinks their dignity will not 
be fitted with less than a double share of 
stripes." 

Endicott rested on his sword, and closely 
surveyed the dress and aspect of the hapless 
pair. There they stood, pale, downcast, and 
apprehensive. Yet there was an air of 
mutual sujjport, and of pure affection, seek- 
ing aid and giving it, that showed them to 
be man and wife, with the sanction of a 
priest upon their love. The youth, in the 
peril of the moment, had dropped his gilded 
staff, and thrown his arm about the Lady of 
the May, who leaned against his breast, too 
lightly to burden him, but with weight 
enough to express that their destinies were 
linked together, for good or evil. They 
looked first at each other, and then into the 
grim captain's face. There they stood, in 
the first hour of wedlock, while the idle 
pleasures of which their companions were 
the emblems, had given place to the sternest 



cares of life, personified by the dark Puri- 
tans. But never had their youthful beauty 
seemed so pure and high, as when its 
glow was chastened by adversity. 

"Youth," said Endicott, "ye stand in an 
evil case, thou and thy maiden wife. Make 
ready presently; for I am minded that ye 
shall both have a token to remember your 
wedding-day !" 

"Stern man," cried the May Lord, "how 
can I move thee ? Were the means at hand, 
I would resist to the death. Being power- 
less, I entreat ! Do with me as thou wilt, 
but let Edith go untouched !" 

"Not so," rejalied the immitigable zealot. 
"We are not wont to show an idle courtesy 
to that sex, which requireth the stricter dis- 
cipline. What sayest thou, maid? Shall thy 
silken bridegroom suffer thy share of the 
penalty, besides his own?" 

"Be it death," said Edith, "and lay it all 
on me !" 

Truly, as Endicott had said, the poor 
lovers stood in a woeful case. Their foes 
were triumphant, their friends captive and 
abased, their home desolate, the benighted 
wilderness around them, and a rigorous 
destiny, in the shape of the Puritan leader, 
their only guide. Yet the deepening twi- 
light could not altogether conceal that the 
iron man was softened; he smiled at the 
fair spectacle of early love; he almost 
sighed for the inevitable blight of early 
hopes. 

"The troubles of life have come hastily 
on this young couple," observed Endicott. 
"We will see how they comport themselves 
under their present trials, ere we burthen 
them with gi'eater. If, among the spoil, 
there be any garments of a more decent 
fashion, let them be put upon this May Lord 
and his Lady, instead of their glistening 
vanities. Look to it, some of you." 

"And shall not the youth's hair be cut?" 
asked Peter Palfrey, looking with abhorrence 
at the love-lock and long glossy curls of the 
young man. 

"Crop it forthwith, and that in the true 
pumpkin-shell fashion," answered the cap- 
tain. "Then bring them along with us, but 
more gently than their fellows. There be 
qualities in the youth, which may make him 
valiant to fight, and sober to toil, and pious 
to pray ; and in the maiden, that may fit her 
to become a mother in our Israel, bringing 
up babes in better nurture than her own 
hath been. Nor think ye, young ones, that 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



171 



they* are i'ae happiest, even in our lifetime of 
a moment, who misspend it in dancing round 
a May-Pole !" 

And Endicott, the severest Puritan of all 
who laid the rock-foundation of New Eng- 
land, lifted the wreath of roses from the 
ruin of the May-Pole, and threw it, with his 
own gauntleted hand, over the heads of the 
Lord and Lady of the May. It was a deed 
of prophecy. As the moral gloom of the 
world overjDowers all systematic gaiety, even 



so was their home of wild mirth made 
desolate amid the sad forest. They returned 
to it no more. But, as their fiowery garland 
was wreathed of the brightest roses that had 
grown there, so, in the tie that united them, 
were intertwined all the purest and best of 
their early joys. They went heavenward, 
supporting each other along the difficult 
path which it was their lot to tread, and 
never wasted one regretful thought on the 
vanities of Merry Mount. 



IV. COMMONWEALTH AND EESTOEATION 



The Triumphs of the Commonv^ealth 

oliver cromwell 

[From a Speech at the Opening of the Lit- 
tle Parliament, July 4, 1653] 

We have not thought it amiss a little to 
remind you of that series of providences 
wherein the Lord hath appeared, dispensing 
wonderful things to these nations from the 
beginning of our troubles to this very day. 

If I should look much backward, we 
might remind you of the state of affairs as 
they were before the Short, that is the last. 
Parliament, in what posture the things of 
this nation then stood : but they do so well, 
I presume, occur to all your memories and 
knowledge, that I shall not need to look so 
far backward. Nor yet to those hostile oc- 
casions which arose between the King that 
was and the Parliament that then followed. 
And indeed, should I begin much later, the 
things that would fall very necessarily be- 
fore you, would rather be for a history than 
for a verbal discourse at this present. 

But thus far we may look back. You 
very well know it pleased God much about 
the midst of this War, to win now the 
forces of this nation; and to put them into 
the hands of other men of other principles 
than those that did engage at the tirst. By 
what ways and means that was brought 
about, would ask more time than is allotted 
me to mind you of it. Indeed, there are 
stories that do recite those transactions and 
give you narratives of matters of fact; but 
those things wherein the life and power of 
them lay; those strange windings and turn- 
ings of Providence; those very great ap- 
pearances of God, in crossing and thwart- 
ing the purposes of men, that He might 
raise up a poor and contemptible company 
of men, neither versed in military affairs, 



nor having much natural propensity to them, 
into wonderful success — ! Simply by their 
owning a principle of godliness and religion ; 
which so soon as it came to be owned, and 
the state of affairs put upon the foot of 
that account, how God blessed them, fur- 
thering all undertakings, yet using the most 
improbable and the most contemptible and 
despicable means, is very well known to 
you. 

Why the several successes and issues have 
been, is not fit to mention at this time 
neither: — though I confess I thought to 
have enlarged myself upon that subject; 
forasmuch as considering the works of God, 
and the operations of His hands, is a prin- 
cipal part of our duty ; and a great encour- 
agement to the strengthening of our hands 
and of our faith, for that which is behmd. 
And among other ends which those marvel- 
ous dispenfedtions have been given us for, 
that's a principal end which ought to be 
minded by us. 

Certainly in this revolution of affairs, 
as the issue of those successes which God 
was pleased to give to the army, and to the 
authority that then stood, there were very 
great things brought about; — besides those 
dints that came upon the nations and places 
where the war itself was, very great things 
in civil matters, too. As first, the bringing 
of offenders to justice, — and the greatest 
of them. Bringing of the state of this gov- 
ernment to the name of a Commonwealth. 
Searching and sifting of all persons and 
places. The King removed, and brought 
to justice; and many great ones with him. 
The House of Peers laid aside. The House 
of Commons itself, the representative of the 
People of England, winnowed, sifted, and 
brought to a handful; as you very well re- 
member. 

And truly God would not rest there : — 



172 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



for, by the way, although it's fit for us to 
ascribe our failings and miscarriages to 
ourselves, yet the gioriousness of the work 
may well be attributed to God Himself, and 
may be called His sixange work. You re- 
member well that at the change of the gov- 
ernment there was not an end of our trou- 
bles, although in that year were such high 
things transacted as indeed made it to be 
the most memorable year that this nation 
ever saw. So many insurrections, invasions, 
secret designs, open and public attempts, 
all quashed in so short a time, and this by 
the very signal appearance of God Himself ; 
which I hope, we shall never forget ! — You 
know also, as I said before, that, as the 
first eifect of that memorable year of 1648 
was to lay a foundation, by bringing of- 
fenders to punishment, so it brought us 
likewise to the change of government : — 
although it were worth the time, perhaps, 
if one had time, to speak of the carriage 
of some m places of trust, in most eminent 
places of trust, which was such as would 
have frustrated us of the hopes of all our 
undertakings. I mean by the closure of the 
treaty that was endeavored with the King ; 
whereby they would have put into his hands 
all that we had engaged for, and all our se- 
curity should have been a little piece of 
paper! That thing going off, you very 
well know how it kept this nation still in 
broils by sea and land. And yet what God 
wrought in Ireland and Scotland you like- 
wise know; until He had finished those 
troubles, upon the matter, by His marvel- 
ous salvation wrought at Worcester. 

I confess to you that I am very much 
troubled in my own spirit that the neces- 
sity of affairs requires I should be so short 
in those things : because, as I told you, this 
is the leanest part of the transactions, this 
mere historical narrative of them ; there 
being in eveiy particular; in the King's 
first going from the Parliament, in the pull- 
ing down of the Bishops, the House of 
Peers, in every step towards that change of 
the government, — I say there is not any one 
of these things, thus removed and reformed, 
but hath an evident print of Providence 
set upon it, so that he who runs may read 
it. I am sorry I have not an opportunity 
to be more particular on these points, which 
I principally designed, this day; thereby 
to stir up your hearts and mine to gratitude 
and confidence. . . 

Indeed I have but one more word to say 
to you; though in that perhaps I shall show 



my weakness : it's by way of encourage- 
ment to go in this work. And give me 
leave to begin thus. I confess I never 
looked to see such a day as this, it may be 
nor you neither, when Jesus Christ should be 
so owned as He is, this day, in this work. 
Jesus Christ is owned this day by the call 
of you; and you own Him by your willing- 
ness to appear for Him. And you mani- 
fest this, as far as poor creatures may do, 
to be a day of the power of Christ. 1 
know you well remember that Scripture, 
"He makes His people willing in the day 
of His power." God manifests this to be 
the day of the power of Christ; having, 
through so much blood, and so much trial 
as hath been upon these nations, made this 
to be one of the great issues thereof : To 
have His people called to the supreme Au- 
thority. He makes this to be the greatest 
mercy, next to His own Son. God hath 
owned His Son; and He hath owned you, 
and made you own Him. I confess I never 
looked to have seen such a day ; I did not. — 
Perhaps you are not known by face to one 
another; indeed I am confident you are 
strangers, coming from all parts of the na- 
tion as you do : but we shall tell you that 
indeed we have not allowed ourselves the 
choice of one person in whom we had not 
this good hope. That there was in him 
faith in Jesus Christ, and love to all His 
people and saints. 

Thus God hath owned you in the eyes of 
the world; and thus, by coming hither, you 
own Him : and, as it is in Isaiah, xliii. 21, 
— it's an high expression ; and look to your 
own hearts whether, now or hereafter, God 
shall apply it to you: "This People, saith 
God, I have formed for myself, that they 
may show forth my praise." I say, it's 
a memorable j)assage; and, I hope, not un- 
fitly applied: the Lord apply it to each of 
your hearts ! I shall not descant upon the 
words ; they are plain : indeed you are as 
like the forming of God as ever people 
were. If a man should tender a book to you 
to swear you upon, I dare appeal to all 
your consciences, neither directly nor indi- 
rectly did you seek for your coming hither. 
You have been passive in coming hither; 
being called, — and indeed that's an active 
work, — though not on your part ! "This 
people have I formed" : consider the cir- 
cumstances by which you are called hither; 
through what strivings, through what blood 
you are come hither, — where neither you 
nor I, nor no man living, three months ago, 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



173 



had any thought to have seen such a com- 
pany taking upon them, or rather being 
called to take, the supreme authority of 
this nation ! Therefore, own your call ! 
Indeed, I think it may be truly said that 
there never was a supreme authority con- 
sisting of such a body, above one-hundred- 
and-forty, I believe; never such a body, 
that came into the supreme authority be- 
fore, under such a notion as this, in such 
a way of owning God, and being owned by 
Him. And therefore I may also say, never 
such a people so formed, for such a pur- 
pose, were thus called before. 

Peace Hath Its Victories 
oliver cromvpell 



[From a Speech Delivered at the Opening 
of Parliament, January 20, 1657-8] 

If this be the condition of your affairs 
abroad, I pray a little consider what is the 
estate of your affairs at home. And if 
both these considerations, of home affairs 
and foreign, have but this effect, "to get a 
consideration among you, a due and just 
consideration, — let God move your hearts 
for the answering of anything that shall be 
due unto the nation, as He shall please ! 
And I hope I shall not be* solicitous; I 
shall look up to Him who hath been my 
God and my guide hitherto. 

I say, I beseech you looking to your own 
affairs at home, how they stand ! I am per- 
suaded you are all, I apprehend you are 
all, honest and worthy good men; and that 
there is not a man of you but would desire 
to be found a good patriot. I know you 
would ! We are apt to boast sometimes that 
we are Englishmen : and truly it is no 
shame for us that we are Englishmen; — 
but it is a motive to us to do like English- 
men, and seek the real good of this nation, 
and the interest of it. But, I beseech you, 
what is our case at home? I profess 1 do 
not well know where to begin on this head, 
or where to end, I do not. But I must 
needs, say, let a man begin where he will, 
he shall hardly be out of that drift I am 
speaking to you upon. We are as full of 
calamities, and of divisions among us in 
respect of the spirits of men, as we could 
well be, — though, through a wonderful, ad- 
mirable, and never to be sufficiently ad- 
mired providence of God, still in peace! 
And the fighting we have had, and the suc- 



cess we have had — yea, we that are here, 
we are an astonishment to the Avorld! And 
take us in that temper we are in, or rather 
in that distemper, it is the greatest miracle 
that ever befell the sons of men, that we are 
got again to peace. And whoever shall seek 
to break it,' God Almighty root that man 
out of this nation! And he will do it, let 
the pretences be what they may! 

Peace-breakers, do they consider what 
it is they are driving towards ? They should 
do it! He that eonsidereth not the woman 
with child, — the sucking children of this na- 
tion that know not the right hand from the 
left, of whom, for ought I know, it may 
be said this city is as full as Nineveh was 
said to be: — he that eonsidereth not these, 
and the fruit that is like to come of the 
bodies of those now living added to these; 
he that eonsidereth not these, must have the 
heart of a Cain; who was marked, and 
made to be an enemy of all men, and all 
men enemies to him! For the wrath and 
justice of God will prosecute such a man 
to his grave, if not to Hell ! I say, look on 
this nation ; look on it ! Consider what are 
the varieties of interest in this nation, — 
if they be worthy the name of interests. If 
God did not hinder, it would all but make 
up one confusion. We should find there 
would be but one Cain in England, if God 
did not restrain ! We should have another 
more bloody Civil War than ever we had in 
England. For, I beseech you, what is the 
general spirit of this nation? Is it not 
that each sect of people, — if I may call 
them sects, whether sects upon a religious 
account or ujDon a civil account — is not this 
nation miserable in that respect? What 
is that which possesseth every sect? What 
is it? That every sect may be uppermost! 
That every sort of men may get the power 
into their hands, and they would use it well ; 
— that every sect may get the power into 
their hands ! 

It were a happy thing if the nation would 
be content with rule. Content with rule, 
if it were but in civil things, and with those 
that would rule worst; — because misrule is 
better than no rule; and an ill government, 
a bad government, is better than none ! — 
Neither is this all : but we have an appetite 
to variety; to be not only making wounds, 
but widening those already made. As if 
you should see one making wounds in a 
man's side, and eager only to be groping 
and groveling with his fingers in those 
wounds! This is what such men would be 



174 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



at; this is the spirit of those who would 
trample on men's liberties in spiritual re- 
spects. They will be making wounds, and 
rending and tearing, and making them 
wider than they were. Is not this the ease"? 
Doth there want anything — I speak not of 
sects in an ill. sense; but the nation is 
hugely made up of them, — and what is the 
want that prevents these things from being 
done to the uttermost, but that men have 
more anger than strength? They have not 
power to attain their ends. There wants 
nothing else. And, I beseech you, judge 
what such a company of men, of these 
sects, are doing, while they are contesting 
one with another! They are contesting in 
the midst of a generation of men ; contest- 
ing in the midst of these all united. What 
must be the issue of such a thing as this? 
So stands it; it is so. And do but judge 
what proofs have been made of the spirits 
of these men. Summoning men to take up 
arms ; and exhorting men, each sort of them, 
to fight for their notions ; each sort thinking 
they are to try it out by the sword ; and 
every sort thinking that they are truly 
under the banner of Christ, if they but 
come in, and bind themselves in such a 
project. 

Now do but judge what a hard condition 
this poor nation is in. This is the state and 
condition we are in. Judge, I say, what a 
hard condition this poor nation is in, and 
the cause of God is in, — amidst such a 
party of men as the cavaliers are, and their 
participants! Not only with respect to 
what these are like to do of themselves: 
but some of these, yea some of these, they 
care not who carry the goal : some of these 
have invited the Spaniard himself to carry 
on the cavalier cause. 

And this is true. This and many other 
things that are not fit to be suggested unto 
you; because so we should betray the inter- 
est of our intelligence. I say, this is your 
condition! What is your defense? What 
hindereth the irruption of all this upon 
you, to your utter destruction? Truly, that 
you have an army in these parts,- — in Scot- 
land, in England, and Ireland. Take them 
away tomorrow, would not all these inter- 
ests run into one another? — I know you 
are rational, prudent men. Have you any 
fame or model of things that would satisfy 
the minds of men, if this be not the fame, 
this whicli you are now called together upon 
and engaged in, — I mean, the two Houses of 
Parliament and myself? What hinders this 



nation from being an Aceldama, a field of 
blood, if this doth not? It is, without 
doubt, this: give the glory to God; for 
without this, it would prove as great a 
plague as all that hath been spoken of. It 
is this, without doubt, that keeps this na- 
tion in peace and quietness. — And what is 
the case of your army withal? A poor un- 
paid army; the soldiers going barefoot at 
this time, in this city, this weather! And 
yet a peaceable people, these soldiers; seek- 
ing to serve you with their lives; judging 
their pains and hazards and all well be- 
stowed. In obeying their officers and serv- 
ing you, to keep the peace of these nations ! 
Yea, he must be a man with a heart as hard 
as the weather who hath not a due sense 
of this! 

An Appeal for Unity 

oliver cromwell 

[From a Speech Before Parliament, Janu- 
ary 25, 1658] 

And now having said this, I have dis- 
charged my duty to God and to you, in 
making this demonstration, — and I profess, 
not as a rhetorician ! My business was to 
prove the verity of the designs from 
abroad; and the still unsatisfied spirits of 
the Cavaliers at home, — who from the be- 
ginning of our peace to this day have not 
been wanting to do what they could to 
kindle a fire at home in the midst of us. 
And I say, if be so, the truth, — I pray God 
affect your hearts with a due sense of it ! 
And give you heart and one mind to carry 
on this work for which we are met together ! 
If these things be so, — should you meet to- 
morrow, and accord in all things tending 
to your preservation and your rights and 
liberties, really it will be feared there is 
too much time elapsed already for your de- 
livering yourselves from those dangers that 
hang upon you. 

We have had now six years of peace, and 
have had an interruption of ten years war. 
We have seen and heard and felt the evils 
of war; and now God hath given us a new 
taste of the benefits of peace. Have you 
not had such a peace in England, Ireland, 
and Scotland, and there is not a man to lift 
up his finger to put you into distemper? 
Is not this a mighty blessing from the Lord 
of Heaven? Shall we now be prodigal of 
time? Should any man, shall we, listen to 
delusions, to break and interrupt this peace? 



PURITANS AND KINGS 



175 



There is not any man that has been true to 
this cause, as I believe you have been all, 
who can look for anything but the greatest 
rending and persecution that ever was in 
this world ! I wonder how it can enter into 
the heart of man to undervalue these things ; 
to slight peace and the gospel, the greatest 
mercy of God. We have peace and the 
gospel ! Let us have one heart and soul ; 
one mind to maintain the honest and just 
rights of this nation ; — not to pretend to 
them, to the destruction of our peace, to the 
destruction of the nation ! Really, pretend 
that we will, if you run into another flood 
of blood and war, the sinews of the nation 
being wasted by the last, it must sink and 
perish utterly, I beseech you, and charge 
you in the name and presence of God, and 
as before Him, be sensible of these things 
and lay them to heart! You have a day 
of fasting coming on. I beseech God touch 
your hearts and open your ears to this 
truth; and that you may be as deaf as 
adders to stop your ears to all dissension ! 
and may look upon them who would sow 
dissension, whoever they may be, as Paul 
saith to the Church of Corinth, as I re- 
member: "Mark such as cause divisions 
and offenses, and would disturb you from 
that foundation of Peace you are upon, un- 
der any pretense whatsoever!" 

I shall conclude with this. I was free, 
the last time of our meeting to tell you I 
would discourse with a psalm; and I did 
it. I am not ashamed of it at any time, 
especially when I meet with men of such 
consideration as you. There you have one 
verse which I forgot. "I will hear what 
God the Lord will speak : for He will speak 
Peace unto his people and to His saints; 
but let them not turn again to folly." Dis- 
sension, division, destruction, in a poor na- 
tion under a civil war, — having all the ef- 
fects of a civil war upon it ! Indeed if 
we return again to folly, let ' every man 
consider. If it be not like turning to de- 
struction f If God shall unite your hearts 
and bless you, and give you the blessing of 
union and love one to another; and tread- 
down everything that riseth up in your 
hearts and tendeth to deceive your own 
souls with pretenses of this thing or that, 
as we have been saying, and not prefer the 
keeping of peace, that we may see the fruit 
of righteousness in them that love peace and 
embrace peace, — it will be said of this poor 
nation, Actum est de Anglia, It is all over 
with England ! 



But I trust God will never leave it to 
such a spirit. And while I live, and am 
able, I shall be ready to stand and fall with 
you, in this seemingly promising union 
which God hath wrought among you, which 
I Ijope neither the pride nor envy of them 
shall be able to make void. I have taken 
my oath to govern according to the laws 
that are now made; and trust I shall fully 
answer it. And know I sought not this 
place. I speak it before God, Angels, and 
Men : I DID NOT. You sought me for it, 
you brought me to it, and I took my oath 
to be faithful to the interest of these na- 
tions, to be faithful to the government. All 
those things were implied, in my eye, in 
the oath to be faithful to this government 
upon which we have now met. And I trust, 
by the grace of God, as I have taken my 
oath to serve this Commonwealth on such 
an account, I shall, — I must ! — see it done 
according to articles of Government. That 
every just interest may be preserved; that 
a godly ministry may be upheld, and not 
affronted by seducing and seduced spirits; 
that all men may be preserved in their just 
rights, whether civil or spiritual. Upon 
this account did I take oath, and swear to 
this government! And so having declared 
my heart and mind to you in this, I have 
nothing more to say, but to pray, God Al- 
mighty bless you. 

The Restoration 

samuel pepys 

[From the Diary'] 

March 16, 1660. To Westminster Hall, 
where I heard how the Parliament had this 
day dissolved themselves, and did pass very 
cheerfully through the Hall, and the Speak- 
er without his Mace. The whole Hall was 
joyful thereat, as well as themselves, and 
now they begin to talk loud of the king. 
Tonight I am told, that yesterday, about 
five o'clock in the afternoon, one came with 
a ladder to the Great Exchange, and wiped 
with a brush the inscription that was on 
King Charles, and that there was a great 
bonfire made in the Exchange, and people 
called out, "God bless King Charles the 
Second." 

May 2. Mr. Donne from London, with 
letter that tells us the welcome news of the 
Parliament's votes yesterday, which shall be 
remembered for the happiest May-day that 



176 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



hath been many a year to England. The 
King's letter was read in the House, where- 
in he submits himself and all things to 
them, as to an Act of Oblivion to all, unless 
they shall please to except any, as to the 
confirming of the sales of the King's and 
Church lands, if they see good. The House, 
upon reading the letter, ordered 50,000 lbs. 
to be forthwith provided to send to His 
Majesty for his present supply; and a 
committee chosen to return an answer of 
thanks to his Majesty for his gracious let- 
ter; and that the letter be kept among the 
records of the Parliament; and in all this 
not so much as one No. So that Luke Rob- 
inson himself stood up, and made a re- 
cantation for what he had done, and prom- 
ises to be a loyal subject to his Prince for 
the time to come. The City of London have 
put out a Declaration, wherein they do dis- 
claim their owning any other Government 
but that of a King, Lords, and Commons. 
Thanks were given by the House to Sir 
John Greenville, one of the bedchamber to 
the King, who brought the letter, and they 
continued bare all the time it was reading. 
Upon notice from the Lords to the Com- 
mons, of their desire that the Commons 
would join with them in their vote for 
King, Lords, and Commons; the Commons 
did concur, and voted that all books what- 
ever that are out against the Government 
of Kings, Lords, and Commons, should be 
brought into the House and burned. Great 
joy all yesterday at London, and at night 
more bonfires than ever, and ringing' of 
bells, and drinkmg of the King-'s health 
upon their knees in the streets, which me- 
thinks is a little too much. 

May 15. In the afternoon my Lord called 
me on purpose to show me his fine clothes 
which are now come hither, and indeed are 
very rich as gold and silver can make them, 
only his sword he and I do not like. In 
the afternoon my Lord and I walked to- 
gether in the coach two hours, talking to- 
gether upon all sorts of discourse : as re- 
ligion, wherein he is, I perceive, wholly 
skeptical, saying, that indeed the Protest- 
ants as to the Church of Rome are wholly 
fanatiques; he likes uniformity and form 
of prayer : about State-business, among 
other things he told me that his conversion 
to the King's cause (for I was saying that 
I wondered from what time the King could 
lock upon him to become his friend) com- 
menced from his being in the Sound, when 



he found what usage- he was likely to have 
from a Commonwealth. 

May 23. In the morning come infinity 
of people on board from the King to go 
along with him. My Lord, Mr. Crewe, and 
others, go on shore to meet the King as he 
comes off from shore, where Sir R. Stayner, 
bringing his Majesty into the boat, I hear 
that his Majesty did with a great deal of 
affection kiss my Lord upon his first meet- 
ing. The King, with the two Dukes and 
Queen of Bohemia, Princess Royal, and 
Prince of Orange, come on board, where I, 
in their coming in, kissed the King's, 
Queen's, and Princess's hand, having done 
the other before. Infinite shooting off of 
the guns, and that in a disorder on pur- 
pose, which was better than if it had been 
othei'wise. All day, nothing but Lords and 
persons of honor on board, that we were 
exceeding full. Dined in a great deal of 
state, the Royal company by themselves 
in the coach, which was a blessed sight to 
see. After dinner, the King and Duke al- 
tered the name of some of the ships, viz., 
the Nazeby into Charles; the Richard, 
James; the Speaker, Mary; the Dunbar 
(which was not in company with us), the 
Henry; Winsly, Happy Return; Wake- 
field, Richmond ; Lambert, the Henrietta ; 
Cheriton, the Speedwell ; Bradford, the Suc- 
cess. That done, the Queen, Princess 
Royal, and Prince of Orange, took leave 
of the King, and the Duke of York went 
on board the London, and the Duke of 
Gloucester, the Swiftsure, which done, we 
weighed anchor, and with a fresn gale and 
most happy weather we set sail for Eng- 
land. All the afternoon the King walked 
here and there, up, and down, (quite con- 
trary to what I thought him to have been) 
very active and stirring. Upon the quar- 
ter-deck he fell into discourse of his escape 
from Worcester, where it made me ready 
to weep to hear the stories that he told of 
his difftcuities that he had passed through, 
as his traveling four days and three nights 
on foot, every step up to his knee in dirt, 
with nothing but a green coat and a pair of 
country breeches on, and a pair of country 
shoes that made him so sore all over his feet, 
that he could scarce stir. Yet he was forced 
to run away from a miller and other com- 
pany, that took them for rogues. His sit- 
ting at a table at one place, where the master 
of the house, that had not seen him in eight 
years, did know him, but kept it private; 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



177 



when at the same tahle there was one, that 
had been of his own regiment at Worcester, 
could not know him, but made him drink the 
King's health, and said that the King was 
at least four fingers higher than he. At 
another place, at his inn, the master of the 
house, as the King was standing with his 
hands upon the back of a chair by the fire- 
side, kneeled down and kissed his hand, 
privately, saying, that he would not ask him 
who he was, but bid God bless him whither 
he was going. 

May 25. I went, and Mr. Mansell, and 
one of the King's footmen, and a dog that 
the King loved, in a boat by ourselves, and 
so got on shore when the King did, who was 
received by General Monk with all imagina- 
ble love and respect at his entrance upon the 
land at Dover. Infinite the crowd of people 
and the gallantry of the horsemen, citizens, 
and noblemen of all sorts. The Mayor of 
the town come and give him his white staff, 
the badge of his place, which the King did 
give him again. The Mayor also jDresented 
him from the town a very rich Bible, which 
he took, and said it was the thing that he 
loved above all things in the world. A 
canopy was provided for him to stand 
under, which he did, and talked awhile with 
General Monk and others, and so in a state- 
ly coach there set for him, and so away 
through the town towards Canterbury, 
without making any stay at Dover. The 
shouting and joy expressed by all is past 
imagination. 

July 10.- This day I put on my new silk 
suit, the first that ever I wore in my life. 

August 25. This night W. Hewer brought 
me home from Mr. Pim's my velvet coat 
and cap, the first that ever I had. 

October 13. I went out to Charing Cross, 
to see Major-General Harrison hanged, 
drawn, and quartered ; which was done there, 
he looking as cheerful as any man could do 
in that condition. He was presently cut 
down, and his head and heart shown to the 
people, at which there was gTeat shouts of 
joy. It is said, that he said that he was 
sure to come shortly at the right hand of 
Christ to judge them that now had judged 
him ; and that his wife do expect his coming 
again. Thus it was my chance to see the 
king beheaded at White Hall, and to see 



the first blood shed in revenge for the King* 
at Unaring Cross. Setting up shelves in my 
study. 

October 14 (Lord's day). To White Hall 
chapel, where one Dr. Crofts made an indif- 
ferent sermon, and after it an anthem, ill- 
sung, which made the King laugh. Here I 
first did see the Princess Royal since she 
came into England. Here I also observed, 
how the Duke of York and Mrs. Palmer did 
talk to one another very wantonly through 
the hangings that jDarts the King's closet 
where the ladies sit. 

November 4 (Lord's Day). In the morn 
to our own church, where Mr. Mills did 
begin to nibble at the Common Prayer, by 
saying Glory be to the Father, &c., after he 
had read the two psalms : but the people 
had been so little used to it, that they could 
not tell what to answer. 

January 3, 1661. To the Theater, where 
Avas acted "Beggar's Bush," it being very 
Avell done ; and here the first time that ever 
I saw women come upon the stage. 

January 31, To my Lady Batten's; 
where my wife and she are lately come back 
from being abroad, and seeing of Cromwell. 
Ireton, and Bradshaw, hanged and buried 
at Tyburne, 

The Puritan 

samuel butler 

[From Hudibras, 1667-8] 

When civil dudgeon first grew high. 

And men fell out they knew not why; 

When hard words, jealousies, and fears. 

Set folks together by the ears, 

And made them fight, like mad or drunk, 

For Dame Religion as for punk ; 

Whose honesty they all durst swear for, 

Though not a man of them knew wherefore ; 

When Gospel-trumiDeter, surrounded 

With long-ear'd rout, to battle sounded; 

And pulpit, drum ecclesiastic. 

Was beat with fist instead of a stick; 

Then did Sir Knight abandon dwelling. 

And out he rode a-colonelling. 

A wight he was, whose very sight would 

Entitle him Mirror of Knighthood, 

That never bow'd his stubborn knee 

To anything but chivalry. 

Nor put up blow, but that which laid 



178 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



Right Worshipful on shoulder blade ; 
Chief of domestic knights and errant, 
Either for chartel or for warrant; 
Great on the bench, great in the saddle. 
That could as well bind o'er as swaddle; 
Mighty he was at both of these 
And styl'd of War, as well as Peace : 
( So some rats, of Amphibious nature, 
Are either for the land or water). 
But here our Authors make a doubt 
Whether he were more wise or stout : 
Some hold the one, and some the other. 
But, howsoe'er they make a pother. 
The diff'rence was so small, his brain 
Outweigh'd his rage but half a grain ; 
Which made some take him for a tool 
That knaves do work with, call'd a Fool, 

He was in logic a great critic, 
Profoundly skill'd in analytic; 
He could distinguish, and divide 
A hair 'twixt south and southwest side; 
On either which he would dispute. 
Confute, change hands, and still confute : 
He'd undertake to prove, by force 
Of argument, a man's no horse ; 
He'd prove a buzzard is no fowl. 
And that a lord may be an owl ; 
A calf an alderman, a goose a justice. 
And rooks Committee-men and Trustees. 
He'd run in debt by disputation, 
And pay with ratiocination: 
All this by syllogism, true 
In mood and figure he would do. 

For his religion, it was fit 
To match his learning and his wit : 
'Twas Presbyterian true blue ; 
For he was of that stubborn crew 
Of errant saints, whom all men grant 
To be the true Church Militant ; 
Such as do build their faith upon 
The holy text of pike and gun; 
Decide all controversies by 
Infallible artillery; 
And prove their doctrine orthodox, 
By Apostolic blows and knocks ; 
Call fire and sword, and desolation, 
A godly, thorough Reformation, 
Which always must be carry'd on, 
And still be doing, never done ; 
As if Religion were intended 
For nothing else but to be mended : 
A sect whose chief devotion lies 
In odd perverse antipathies; 
In falling out with that or this, 
And finding somewhat still amiss ; 



More peevish, cross, and splenetic, 
Than dog distract, or monkey sick : 
That with more care keep holyday 
The wrong, than others the right way ; 
Compound for sins they are inclin'd to. 
By damning those they have no mind to : 
Still so perverse and opposite, 
As if they worship'd God for spite: 
The self -same thing they will abhor 
One way, and long another for : 
Freewill they one way disavow. 
Another, nothing else allow: 
All piety consists therein 
In them, in other men all sin : 
Rather than fail, they will defy 
That which they love most tenderly; 
Quarrel with minc'd-pies, and disparage 
Their best and dearest friend, plum-por- 
ridge ; 
Fat pig and goose itself oppose. 
And blaspheme custard through the nose. 

Of Commonwealth 

thomas hobbes 

[Fron Leviathan, 1651, chapters xvii, xviii, 
xix, xxi] 

The Nature of a C ommonwealth 

The final, cause, end, or design, of men, 
who naturally love liberty and dominion over 
others, in the introduction of that restraint 
upon themselves in which we see them live 
in commonwealths, is the foresight of their 
own preservation and of a moi'e contented 
life thereby ; that is to say, of getting them- 
selves out from that miserable condition of 
war which is necessarily consequent, as hath 
been shown in chapter xiii,^ to the natural 

1 The following passage sets forth Hobbes' fa- 
mous idea of the state of nature with its perpetual 
warfare : 

"Hereby it is manifest that, during the time 
men live without a common power to keep them 
all in awe, they are in that condition which is 
called war, and such a war as is of every man 
against every man. For 'war' consisteth not in 
battle only or the act of fighting, but in a tract 
of time wherein the will to contend by battle is 
sufficiently known, and therefore the notion of 
'time' is to be considered in the nature of war, as 
it is in the nature of weather. For as the nature 
of foul weather lieth not in a shower or two of 
rain but in an inclination thereto of many days 
together, so the nature of war consisteth not in 
actual fighting but in the known disposition 
thereto during all the time, there is no assurance 
to the contrary. All other time is 'peace.' 

"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time 
of war, where every man is enemy to every man, 
the same is consequent to the time wherein men 
live without other security than what their own 
strength and their own invention shall furnish 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



179 



passions of men, when there is no visible 
power to keep them in awe, and tie them by 
fear of punishment to the performance of 
their covenants and observation of those 
laws of Nature set down in the fourteenth 
and fifteenth chapters. 

For the laws of Nature, as ''justice," 
"equity," "modesty," "mercy" and, in sum, 
"doing to others as we would be done to," 
of themselves, without the terror of some 
power to cause them to be observed, are con- 
trary to our natural passions, that carry us 
to partiality, pride, revenge, and the like. 
And covenants, without the sword, are but 
words, and of no strength to secure a man 
at all. Therefore, notwithstanding the laws 
of Nature, which every one hath then kept 
when he has the will to keep them, when he 
can do it safely, if there be no power erected 
or not great enough for our security, every 
man will, and may lawfully, rely on his own 
strength and art for caution against all other 
men. And in all places where men have 
lived by small families, to rob and spoil one 
another has been a trade, and so far from 
being reputed against the law of Nature, 
that the greater spoils they gained, the 
greater was their honor; and men observed 
no other laws therein but the laws of honor, 
that is, to abstain from cruelty, leaving to 
men their lives and instruments of hus- 
bandry. And as small families did then, so 
now do cities and kingdoms, which are but 
greater families, for their own security en- 
large their dominions, upon all pretences of 
danger and fear of invasion or assistance 
that may be given to invaders, and endeavor 
as much as they can to subdue or weaken 
their neighbors by open force and secret 
arts, for want of other caution, justly; and 
are remembered for it in after ages with 
honor. 

Nor is it the joining together of a small 
number of men that gives them this security, 
because, in small numbers, small additions 
on the one side or the other make the ad- 
vantage of strength so great as is sufficient 
to carry the victory, and therefore gives en- 

them withal. In such condition there is no place 
for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncer- 
tain, and consequently no culture of tbe earth, 
no navigation nor use of the commodities that 
may be imported by sea, no commodious building, 
no instruments of moving and removing such 
things as require much force, no knowledge of 
the face of the earth ; no account of time, no arts, 
no letters, no society, and, which is worst of all, 
continual fear and danger of violent death, and 
the life of man solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and 
short." ' 



eouragement to an invasion. The multitude 
sufficient to confide in for our security is 
not determined by any certain number, but 
by comparison with the enemy we fear ; and 
is then sufficient when the odds of the enemy 
is not of so visible and conspicuous moment 
to determine the event of war as to move 
him to attempt. 

And be there never so great a multitude, 
yet, if their actions be directed according 
to their particular judgments and particular 
appetites, they can expect thereby no de- 
fence nor protection, neither against a com- 
mon enemy nor against the injuries of one 
another. For, being distracted in opinions 
concerning the best use and application of 
their strength, they do not help, but hinder, 
one another, and reduce their strength by 
mutual opposition to nothing ; whereby they 
are easily not only subdued by a very few 
that agree together, but also, when there is 
no common enemy, they make war upon each 
other for their particular interests. For, if 
we could suppose a great multitude of men 
to consent in the observation of justice and 
other laws of Nature, without a common 
power to keep them all in awe we might as 
well suppose all mankind to do the same; 
and then there neither would be nor need 
to be any civil government or commonwealth 
at all, because there would be peace without 
subjection. 

Nor is it enough for the security which 
men desire should last all the time of their 
life that they be governed and directed by 
one judgment for a limited time, as in one 
battle or one war. For, though they obtain 
a victory by their unanimous endeavor 
against a foreign enemy, yet afterwards, 
when either they have no common enemy or 
he that by one part is held for an enemy 
is by another part held for a friend, they 
must needs by the difference of their inter- 
ests dissolve and fall again into a war 
amongst themselves. . . . 

The only way to erect such a common 
power as may be able to defend them from 
the invasion of foreigners and the injuries 
of one another, and thereby to secure them 
in such sort as that by their own industry 
and by the fruits of the earth they may 
nourish themselves and live contentedly, is 
to confer all their power and strength upon 
one man, or upon one assembly of men, that 
may reduce all their wills by plurality of 
voices unto one will ; which is as much as to 
say, to appoint one man or assembly of men 



180 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



to bear their person; and every one to own 
and acknowledge himself to be author of 
whatsoever he that so beareth their person 
shall act, or cause to be acted, in those things 
which concern the common peace and safety ; 
and therein to submit their wills, every one 
to his will, and their judgments to his judg- 
ment. This is more than consent or con- 
cord: it is a real unity of them all, in one 
and the same person, made by covenant of 
every man with every man, in such manner as 
if every man should say to every man, "1 
authorize and give up my right of governing 
myself to this man, or to this assembly of 
men, on this condition, that thou give up thy 
right to him and authorize all his actions in 
like manner." This done, the multitude so 
united in one person is called a "common- 
wealth," in Latin civitas. This is the gen- 
eration of that great "leviathan," or, rather, 
to speak more reverently, of that "mortal 
god," to which we owe under the "immortal 
God," our peace and defense. For by this 
authority, given him by every particular 
man in the commonwealth, he hath the use 
of so much power and strength conferred on 
him that by terror thereof he is enabled to 
perform the wills of them all, to peace at 
home and mutual aid against their enemies 
abroad. And in him consisteth the essence 
of the commonwealth; which, to define it, is 
"one person, of whose acts a great multitude 
by mutual covenants one with another have 
made themselves every one the author, to 
the end he may use the strength and 
means of them all as he shall think 
expedient for their peace and common de- 
fense." 

And he that carrieth this person is called 
"sovereign," and said to have "sovereign 
power"; and every one besides his "sub- 
ject." 

The attaining to this sovereign power is 
by two ways. One by natural force, as when 
a man maketh his children to submit them- 
selves and their children to his government, 
as being able to destroy them if they refuse ; 
or by war subdueth his enemies to his will, 
giving them their lives on that condition. 
The other is when men agree amongst them- 
selves to submit to some man, or assembly 
of men, voluntarily, on confidence to be pro- 
tected by him against all others. This lat- 
ter may be called a political commonwealth, 
or commonwealth by "institution"; and 
the former, a commonwealth by "acquisi- 
tion." 



Of the Several Kinds of Commonwealth 

The difference of commonwealths con- 
sisteth in the difference of the sovereign or 
the person representative of all and every 
one of the multitude. And because the sov- 
ereignty is either in one man or in an as- 
sembly of more than one, and into that 
assembly either every man hath right to 
enter or not every one, but certain men dis- 
tinguished from the rest, it is manifest there 
can be but three kinds of commonwealth. 
For the representative must needs be one 
man or more; and, if more, then it is the 
assembly of all or but of a part. When the 
representative is one man, then is the com- 
monwealth a "monarchy" ; when an assembly 
'of all that will come together, then it is a 
"democracy," or popular commonwealth; 
when an assembly of a part only, then it is 
called an "aristocracy." Other kind of com- 
monwealth there can be none; for either one, 
or more, or all, must have the sovereign 
power, which I have shown to be indivisible, 
entire. 

Of the Liberty of Subjects 

Liberty, or "freedom," signifieth, properly, 
the absence of opposition — by opposition, 1 
mean external impediments of motion; and 
may be applied no less to irrational and 
inanimate creatures than to rational. For 
whatsoever is so tied or environed as it can- 
not move but within a certain space, which 
space is determined by the opposition of 
some external body, we say it hath not lib- 
erty to go further. And so of all living 
creatures whilst they are imprisoned or re- 
strained with walls or chains; and of the 
water whilst it is kept in by banks or vessels, 
that otherwise should sjjread itself into a 
larger space, we use to say they are not at 
liberty to move in such manner as without 
those external impediments they would. But, 
when the impediment of motion is in the 
constitution of the thing itself, we use not 
to say it wants the liberty, but the power, to 
move, as when a stone lieth still, or a man is 
fastened to his bed by sickness. 

And, according to this proper and gen- 
erally received meaning of the word, a 
"freeman is he that in those things which 
by his strength and wit he is able to do is 
not hindered to do what he has a will to." 
But, when the words "free" and "liberty" 
are applied to anything but "bodies," they 
are abused; for that which is not subject to 



PUEITANS AND KINGS 



181 



motion is not subject to impediment; and, 
therefore, when it is said, for example, the 
way is iree, no liberty of the way is sig- 
nified, but of those that walk in it without 
stop. And when we say a gift is free, there 
is not meant any liberty of the gift, but of 
the giver, that was not bound by any law 
of covenant to give it. So, when we "speak 
freely," it is not the liberty of voice or pro- 
nunciation, but of the man, whom no law 
hath obliged to speak otherwise than he did. 
Lastly, from the use of the word "free-will" 
no liberty can be inferred of the will, desire, 
■or inclination, but the liberty of the man, 
which consisteth in this, that he finds no stop 
in doing what he has the Avill, desire, or in- 
clination, to do. 

Fear and liberty are consistent; so when 
a man throweth his goods into the sea for 
"fear" the ship should sink, he doth it never- 
theless very willingly, and may refuse to 
do it if he will: it is therefore the action 
of one that was "free"; so a man some- 
times pays his debt, only for "fear" of im- 
prisonment, which, because nobody hindered 
him from detaining, was the action of a man 
at "liberty." And, generally, all actions 
which men do in commonwealths for "fear" 
of the law are actions which the doers had 
"liberty" to omit. 

"Liberty" and "necessity" are consistent, 
as in the Avater that hath not only "liberty" 
but a "necessity" of dfeseending by the chan- 
nel; so likewise in the actions which men 
voluntarily do, which, because they proceed 
from their will, proceed from "liberty," and 
yet — because every act of man's will, and 
every desire and inclination, proceedeth 
from some cause, and that from another 
cause, in a continual chain whose first link 
is in the hand of God, the first of all causes 
— proceedJrom "necessity." So that, to him 
that could see the connection of those causes, 
the "necessity" of all men's voluntary ac- 
tions would appear manifest. And there- 
fore God, that seeth and disposeth all things, 
seeth also that the "liberty" of man in doing 
what he will is accompanied with the "neces- 
sity" of doing that which God will, and no 
more nor less. For, though men may do 
many things which God does not command, 
nor is therefore author of them, yet they 
can have no passion nor appetite to any- 
thing of which appetite God's will is not 
the cause. And did not His will assure the 
"necessity" of man's will, and consequently 
of all that on man's will dependeth, the 



"liberty" of men would be a contradiction 
and impediment to the omnipotence and 
"liberty" of God. And this shall suffice, as 
to the matter in hand, of that natural "lib- 
erty" which only is properly called "lib- 
erty." 

But as men, for the attaining of peace 
and conservation of themselves thereby, 
have made an artificial man which we call a 
commonwealth, so also have they made arti- 
ficial chains, called "civil laws," which they 
themselves by mutual covenants have fast- 
ened at one end to the lips of that man, or 
assembly, to whom they have given the sov- 
ereign power, and at the other end to their 
own ears. These bonds, in their own nature 
but weak, may nevertheless be made to hold 
by the danger, though not by the difficulty, 
of breaking them. 

In relation to these bonds only it is that 
I am to speak now of the "liberty" of "sub- 
jects." For, seeing there is no common- 
Avealth in the world wherein there be rules 
enough set down for the regulating of all 
the actions and words of men, as being a 
thing impossible, it foUoweth necessarily 
that, in all kinds of actions by the laws 
pretermitted, men have the liberty of doing 
what their own reasons shall suggest for the 
most profitable to thenaselves. For, if we 
take liberty in the proper sense for corporal 
liberty — that is to say, freedom from chains 
and prison — it were very absurd for men to 
clamor as they do for the liberty they so 
manifestly enjoy. Again, if we take liberty 
for an exemption from laws, it is no less 
absurd for men to demand as they do that 
liberty by which all other men may be mas- 
ters of their lives. And yet, as absurd as it 
is, this is it they demand, not knowing that 
the laws are of no power to protect them, 
without a sword in the hands of a man or 
men to cause those laws to be put in execu- 
tion. The liberty of a subject lieth therefore 
only in those things which in regulating their 
actions the sovereign hath pretermitted, such 
as is the liberty to buy and sell and other- 
wise coiitract with one another, to choose 
their own abode, their own diet, their own 
trade of life, and institute their children as 
they themselves think fit, and the like. 

Nevertheless we are not to understand that 
by such liberty the sovereign power of life 
and death is either abolished or limited. For 
it has been already shown that nothing the 
sovereign representative can do to a subject, 
on what pretence soever, can properly be 



182 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



called injustice or injury, because every sub- 
ject is author of every act the sovereign 
doth ; so that he never wanteth right to any- 
thing, otherwise than as he himself is the 
subject of God, and bound thereby to ob- 
serve the laws of Nature. And therefore it 
may, and doth, often happen in common- 
wealths that a subject may be put to death 
by the command of the sovereign power; 
and yet neither do the other wrong ; as when 
Jephtha caused his daughter to be sacrificed ; 
in which, and the like cases, he that so dieth 
had liberty to do the action for which he is 
nevertheless without injury put to death. 
And the same holdeth also in a sovereign 
prince that putteth to death an innocent sub- 
ject. For, though the action be against the 
law of Nature as being contrary to equity, 
as was the killing of Uriah by David, yet it 
was not an injury to Uriah, but to God. Not 
to Uriah, because the right to do what he 
pleased was given him by Uriah himself; 
and yet to God, because David was God's 
subject, and prohibited all iniquity by the 
law of Nature; which distinction David him- 
self, when he repented the fact, evidently 
confirmed, saying: ''To Thee only have 1 
sinned." In the sarne manner the people of 
Athens, when they banished the most potent 
of their commonwealth for ten years, 
thought they committed no injustice; and 
3'et they never questioned what crime he 
had done, but what hurt he would do : nay, 
they commanded the banishment of they 
knew not Avhom; and every citizen bringing 
his oyster shell into the market-place written 
with the name of him he desired should be 
banished, without actually accusing him, 
sometimes banished an Aristides, for his 
reputation of justice, and sometimes a scur- 
rilous jester, as Hyperbolus, to make a jest 
of it. And yet a man cannot say the sov- 
ereign people of Athens wanted right to 
banish them, or an Athenian the liberty 
to jest or to be just. 

The liberty whereof there is so frequent 
and honorable mention in the histories and 
philosophy of the ancient Greeks and 
Romans, and in the writings and discourse 
of those that from them have received all 
their learning in the politics, is not the lib- 
erty of particular men, but the liberty of 
the commonAvealth ; which is the same with 
that Vhich every man then should have, if 
there were no civil laws nor commonwealth 
at all. And the effects of it also be the same. 
For as amongst masterless men there is per- 



petual war of every man against his neigh- 
bor; no inheritance, to transmit to the son, 
nor to expect from the father ; no propriety 
of goods, or lands; no security; but a full 
and absolute liberty in every particular 
man: so in states and commonwealths not 
dependent on one another every common- 
wealth, not every man, has an absolute lib- 
erty to do what it shall judge, that is to say, 
what that man, or assembly that repre- 
senteth it, shall judge most conducing to 
their benefit. But withal they live in the 
condition of a perpetual war, and upon the 
confines of battle, with their frontiers armed 
and cannons planted against their neighbors 
round about. The Athenians and Romans 
were free, that is, free commonwealths ; not 
that any particular men had the liberty to 
resist their own representative, but that 
their representative had the liberty to resist 
or invade other people. There is written on 
the turrets of the city of Lucca, in great 
characters, at this day, the word "Libertas" ; 
yet no man can thence infer that a particular 
man has more liberty or immunity from the 
service of the commonwealth there than in 
Constantinople. Whether a commonwealth 
be monarchial or popular the freedom is 
still the same. 

But it is an easy thing for men to be 
deceived by the specious name of liberty; 
and, for want of judgment to distinguish, 
mistake that for their private inheritance 
and birthright which is the right of the pub- 
lic only. And, when the same error is con- 
firmed by the authority of men in reputa- 
tion for their writings on this subject, it is 
no wonder if it produce sedition, and 
change of government. In these western 
parts of the world we are made to receive 
our opinions concerning the institution and 
rights of commonwealths, from Aristotle, 
Cicero, and other men, Greeks and Romans, 
that, living under popular states, derived 
those rights not from the principles of 
Nature but transcribed them into their 
books, out of the practice of their own com- 
monwealths, which were popular; as the 
grammarians describe the rules of language 
out of the practice of the time, or the rules 
of poetry out of the poems of Homer and 
Virgil. And, because the Athenians were 
taught to keep them from desire of changing 
their government, that they were free men, 
and all that lived under monarchy were 
slaves, therefore Aristotle put it down in his 
Politics (lib. 6, cap. ii) : "In democracy 



PURITANS AND KINGS 



183 



'liberty' is to be supposed; for it is com- 
monly held that no man is 'free' in any other 
government." And as Aristotle, so Cicero 
and other writers have grounded their civil 
doctrine on the opinions of the Romans, who 
wei'e taught to hate monarchy, at first, by 
them that having dejDosed their sovereign 
shared amongst them the sovereignty of 
Rome, and afterwards by their successors. 
And by reading of these Greek and Latin 
authors men from their childhood have got- 
ten a habit, under a false show of liberty, 
of favoring tumults, and of licentious con- 
trolling the actions of their sovereigns, and 
again of controlling those controllers; with 
the effusion of so much blood as I think I 
may truly say there was never anything so 
dearly bought as these western parts have 
bought the learning of the Greek and Latin 
tongues. 

The Political Verse of John Dryden 

[From AstrcBQ Redux, 1660] 

And welcome now, great monarch, to your 

own! 
Behold the approaching cliffs of Albion, 
It is no longer motion cheats your view; 
As you meet it, the land approacheth you. 
The land returns, and in the white it wears 
The marks of penitence and sorrow bears. 
But you, whose goodness your descent doth 

show. 
Your heavenly parentage and earthly too. 
By that same mildness which your father's 

crown 
Before did ravish shall secure your own. 
Not tied to rules of policy, you find 
Revenge less sweet than a forgiving mind. 
Thus, when the Almighty would to Moses 

give 
A sight of all he could behold and live, 
A voice before his entry did proclaim 
Long-suffering, goodness, mercy, in his 

name. 
Your power to justice doth submit your 

cause. 
Your goodness only is above the laws. 
Whose rigid letter, while pronounced by 

you. 

Is softer made. So winds that tempests 

brew, 
When through Arabian groves they take 

their flight. 
Made wanton with rich odors, lose their 

spite. 



And as those lees that trouble it refine 
The agitated soul of generous wine. 
So tears of joy, for your returning spilt, 
Work out and expiate our former guilt. 
Methinks I see those crowds on Dover's 

strand, 
Who in their haste to welcome you to land 
Choked up the beach with their still grow- 
ing store 
And made a Avilder torrent on the shore : 
While, spurred with eager thoughts of past 

delight, 
Those who had seen you, court a second 

sight, 
Preventing still your steps and making haste 
To meet you often whereso'er you past. 
How shall I speak of that triumphant day. 
When you renewed the expiring pomp of 

May! 
A month that owns an interest in your name ; 
You and the flowers are its peculiar claim. 
That star, that at your birth shone out so 

bright 
It stained the duller sun's meridian light, 
Did once again its potent fires renew. 
Guiding our eyes to find and worship you. 
And now Time's whiter series is begun, 
Which in soft centuries shall smoothly run ; 
Those clouds that overcast your morn shall 

fly, 

Dispelled to farthest corners of the sky. 
Our nation, with united interest blest. 
Not now content to poise, shall sway the rest. 
Abroad your empire shall no limits know. 
But, like the sea, in boundless circles flow ; 
Your much-loved fleet shall with a wide com- 
mand 
Besiege the petty monarchs of the land; 
And as old Time his offspring swallowed 

down. 
Our ocean in its depths all seas shall drown. 
Their wealthy trade from pirates' rapine 

free. 
Our merchants shall no more adventurers be ; 
Nor in the farthest East those dangers fear 
Which humble Holland must dissemble here. 
Spain to your gift alone her Indies owes. 
For what the powerful takes not he bestows ; 
And France that did an exile's presence fear 
May justly apprehend you still too near. 
At home the hateful names of parties cease, 
And factious souls are wearied into peace. 
The discontented now are only they 
Whose crimes before did your just cause 

betray ; 
Of those your edicts some reclaim from sins. 
But most your life and blest example wins. 



184 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



Oh, happy prince, whom Heaven hath taught 

the way 
By paying vows to have more vows to pay ! 
Oh, happy age ! oh, times like those alone 
By fate reserved for great Augustus' throne, 
When the joint growth of arms and arts 

foreshew 
The world a monarch, and that monarch 

you! 

[From Absalom and Achitophel, 1681] 

The inhabitants of old Jerusalem 
Were Jebusites; the town so called from 

them. 
And theirs the native right. 
But when the chosen people grew more 

strong, 
The rightful cause at length became the 
wrong ; 5 

And every loss the men of Jebus bore, 
They still were thought God's enemies the 

more. 
Thus worn and weakened, well or ill content. 
Submit they must to David's government : 
Impoverished and deprived of all com- 
mand, 10 
Their taxes doubled as they lost their land ; 
And, what was harder yet to flesh and blood, 
Their gods disgraced, and burnt like com- 
mon wood. 
This set the heathen priesthood in a flame, 
For priests of all religions are the same. ^^ 
Of whatsoe'er descent their godhead be. 
Stock, stone, or other homely pedigree. 
In his defense his servants are as bold. 
As if he had been born of beaten gold. 
The Jewish rabbins, though their enemies, 20 
In this conclude them honest men and 

wise. 
For 'twas their duty, all the learned think. 
To espouse his cause by whom they eat and 

drink. 
From hence began that Plot, the nation's 

curse. 
Bad in itself, but represented worse, ^5 

Raised in extremes, and in extremes decried, 
With oaths affirmed, with dying vows denied. 
Not weighed or winnowed by the multitude, 
But swallowed in the mass, unchewed and 

crude. 
Some truth there was, but dashed and brewed 
with lies ^^ 

To please the fools and puzzle all the wise : 
Succeeding times did equal folly call, 
Believing nothing or believing all. 
The Egyptian rites the Jebusites embraced. 



Where gods were recommended by their 
taste ; 35 

Such savory deities must needs be good 
As served at once for worship and for food. 
By force they could not introduce these gods. 
For ten to one in former days was odds : 
So fraud was used, the sacrificer's trade ; ^ 
Fools are more hard to conquer than per- 
suade. 
Their busy teachers mingled with the Jews 
And raked for converts even the court and 

stews : 
Which Hebrew priests the more unkindly 

took. 
Because the fleece accompanies the flock. 45 
Some thought they God's anointed meant to 

slay _ 
By guns, invented since full many a day : 
Our author swears it not ; but who can know 
How far the devil and Jebusites may go? 
This plot, which failed for want of common 
sense, 50 

Had yet a deep and dangerous consequence ; 
For as, when raging fevers boil the blood, 
The standing lake soon floats into a flood. 
And every hostile humor which before 
Slept quiet in its channels bubbles o'er ; 55 
So several factions from this first ferment 
Work up to foam and threat the govern- 
ment. 
Some by their friends, more by themselves 

thought wise. 
Opposed the power to which they could not 

rise. 
Some had in courts been great, and thrown 
from thence, ^ 

Like fiends were hardened in impenitence. 
Some by their monarch's fatal mercy grown 
From pardoned rebels kinsmen to the throne 
Were raised in power and public office high ; 
Strong bands, if bands ungrateful men 
could tie. 65 

Of these the false Achitophel was first, 
A name to all succeeding ages curst: 
For close designs and crooked counsels fit, 
Sagacious, bold, and turbulent of wit, 
Eestless, unfixed in principles and place, '^^ 
In power unpleased, impatient of disgrace: 
A fiery soul, which, working out its way, 
Fretted the pigmy body to decay 
And o'er-inf ormed the tenement of clay. 
A daring pilot in extremity, "^^ 

Pleased with the danger, when the waves 

went high. 
He sought the storms ; but, for a calm unfit. 
Would steer too nigh the sands to boast his 
wit. 



PURITANS AND KINGS 



185 



Great wits are sure to madness near allied 
And thin partitions do their bounds 

divide ; ^° 

Else, why should he, with wealth and honor 

blest, 
Refuse his age the needful hours of rest? 
Punish a body which he could not please, 
Bankrupt of life, yet prodigal of ease ? 
And all to leave what with his toil he won §5 
To that unfeathered two-legg'd thing, a son, 
Got, while his soul did huddled notions try, 
And born a shapeless lump, like anarchy. 
In friendshi^D false, implacable in hate. 
Resolved to ruin or to rule the state ; ^^ 

To compass this the triple bond he broke. 
The pillars of the public safety shook, 
And fitted Israel for a foreign yoke ; 
Then, seized with fear, yet still affecting 

fame, 
Usurped a patriot's all-atoning name. ^^ 
So easy still it proves in factious times 
With public zeal to cancel private crimes. 
How safe is treason and how sacred ill. 
Where none can sin against the people's will, 
Where crowds can wink and no offence be 

known, ^^^ 

Since in another's guilt they find their own ! 
Yet fame deserved no enemy can grudge ; 
The statesman we abhor, but praise the 

judge. 
In Israel's courts ne'er sat an Abbethdin 
With more discerning eyes or hands more 

clean, 105 

Unbribed, unsought, the wretched to redress, 
Swift of despatch and easy of access. 
Oh ! had he been content to serve the crown 
With virtues only proper to the gown. 
Or had the rankness of the soil been freed ^0 
From cockle that oppressed the noble seed, 
David for him his tuneful harp had strung 
And Heaven had wanted one immortal song. 
But wild ambition loves to slide, not stand, 
And fortune's ice prefers to virtue's land. ^^^ 
Achitophel, grown weary to possess 
A lawful fame and lazy happiness. 
Disdained the golden fruit to gather free 
And lent the crowd his arm to shake the tree. 
Now, manifest of crimes contrived long 

since, 120 

He stood at "bold defiance with his prince 
Held up the buckler of the people's cause 
Against the crown, and skulked behind the 

laws. 
The wished occasion of the plot he takes ; 
Some circumstances finds, but more he 
- makes; 125 

By buzzing emissaries fills the ears 



Of listening crowds with jealousies and 

fears 
Of arbitrary counsels brought to light, 
And proves the king himself a Jebusite. 
Weak argumenis ! which yet he knew full 

well 130 

Were strong with people easy to rebeL 
For governed by the moon, the giddy Jews 
Tread the same track when she the prime 

renews ; 
And once in twenty years their scribes 

record. 
By natural instinct they change their lord. 1^5 
Achitophel still wants a chief, and none 
Was found so fit as warlike Absalom. 
Not that he wished his greatness to create, 
For politicians neither love nor hate; 
But, for he knew his title not allowed 140 

Would keep him still depending on the 

crowd. 
That kingly power, thus ebbing out, might be 
Drawn to the dregs of a democracy. . . . 

A numerous host of dreaming saints succeed 
Of the true old enthusiastic breed : 145 

'Gainst form and order they their power 

employ. 
Nothing to build and all things to destroy. 
But far more numerous was the herd of such 
Who think too little and who talk too much. 
These out of mere instinct, they knew not 

why, 150 

Adored their fathers' God and property, 
And by the same blind benefit of Fate 
The Devil and the Jebusite did hate : 
Born to be saved even in their own despite, 
Because they could not help believing 

right. 155 

Such were the tools; but a whole Hydra 

more 
Remains of sprouting heads too long to score. 
Some of their chiefs were princes of the 

land ; 
In the first rank of these did Zimri stand, 
A man so various that he seemed to be 1^0 
Not one, but all mankind's epitome : 
Stiff in opinions, always in the wrong. 
Was everything by starts and nothing long; 
But in the course of one revolving moon 
Was ehymist, fiddler, statesman, and buf- 
foon ; 165 
Then all for women, painting, rhyming, 

drinking. 
Besides ten thousand freaks that died in 

thinking. 
Blest madman, who could every hour employ 
With something new to wish or to enjoy ! 



186 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



Railing and praising were his usual 
themes, i'^^ 

And both, to show his judgment, in ex- 
tremes : 

So over violent or over civil 

That every man with him was God or Devil. 

In squandering wealth was his peculiar art ; 

Nothing went unrewarded but desert. ^'^5 

Beggared by fools whom still he found too 
late, 

He had his jest, and they had his estate. 

He laughed himself from Court ; then sought 
relief 

By forming parties, but could ne'er be chief : 

For spite of him, the weight of business 
fell 180 

On Absalom and wise Achitophel; 

Thus wicked but in will, of means bereft. 

He left not faction, but of that was left. 

[From The Hind and the Panther, 1687] 

A milk-white Hind, immortal and un- 
changed. 
Fed on the lawns and in the forest ranged; 
Without unspotted, innocent within. 
She feared no danger, for she knew no sin. 
Yet had she oft been chased with horns and 
hounds ^ 

And Scythian shafts, and many winged 

wounds 
Aimed at her heart ; was often forced to fly, 
And doomed to death, though fated not to 
die. 
Not so her young ; for their unequal line 
Was hero's make, half human, half divine. ^-^ 
Their earthly mould obnoxious was to fate. 
The immortal part assumed immortal state. 
Of these a slaughtered army lay in blood, 
Extended o'er the Caledonian wood, 
Their native walk ; whose vocal blood arose ^^ 
And cried for pardon on their perjured foes. 
Their fate was fruitful, and the sanguine 

seed. 
Endued with souls, increased the sacred 

breed. 
So captive Israel multiplied in chains, 
A numerous exile, and enjoyed her pains. 20 
With grief and gladness mixed, their 

mother viewed 
Her martyred offspring and their race re- 
newed ; 
Their corps to perish, but their kind to last. 
So much the deathless plant the dying fruit 
surpassed. 
Panting and pensive now she ranged 
alone, 25 



And wandered in the kingdoms once her 

own. 
The common hunt, though from their rage 

restrained 
By sovereign power, her company dis- 
dained. 
Grinned as they passed, and with a glar- 
ing eye 
Gave gloomy signs of secret enmity. ^o 

'Tis true she bounded by and tripped so 

light, 
They had not time to take a steady sight; 
For truth has such a face and such a mien 
As to be loved needs only to be seen. 

The bloody Bear, an Independent beast ^^ 
Unlicked to form, in groans her hate ex- 
pressed. 
Among the timorous kind the quaking Hare 
Professed neutrality, but would not swear. 
Next her the buffoon Ape, as atheists use, 
Mimicked all sects and had his own to 
choose ; ^ 

Still when the Lion looked, his knees he 

b'ent, 
And paid at church a courtier's compliment. 
The bristled Baptist Boar, impure as he. 
But whitened with the foam of sanctity. 
With fat pollutions filled the sacred place, 45 
And mountains leveled in his furious race; 
So first rebellion founded was in grace. 
But, since the mighty ravage which he made 
In German forests had his guilt betrayed. 
With broken tusks and with a borrowed 
name, ^o 

He shunned the vengeance and concealed 

the shame, 
So lurked in sects unseen. With greater 

guile 
False Reynard fed on consecrated spoil ; 
The graceless beast by Athanasius first 
Was chased from Nice, then by Socinus 
nursed, 55 

His impious race their blasphemy renewed, 
And Nature's King through Nature's optics 

viewed; 
Reversed they viewed him lessened to their 

eye, 
Nor in an infant could a God descry. 
New swarming sects to this obliquely tend, ^o 
Hence they began, and here they all will 
end. . . . 

Too boastful Britain, please thyself np more 
That beasts of prey are banished from thy 

shore ; 
The Bear, the Boar, and every savage name, 
Wild in effect, though in appearance tame, ^^ 



PURITANS AND KINGS 



187 



Lay waste thy woods, destroy thy blissful 

bower, 
And, muzzled though thy seem, the mutes 

devour. 
More haughty than the rest, the wolfish 

race 
Appear with belly gaunt and famished face ; 
Never Avas so deformed a beast of grace, "^o 
His ragged tail betwixt his legs he wears, 
Close clapped for shame; but his rough crest 

he rears. 
And pricks up his predestinating ears. 
His wild disordered walk, his haggard eyes, 
Did all the bestial citizens surprise ; ''° 

Though feared and hated, yet he ruled a 

while. 
As captain or companion of the spoil. . . . 



These are the chief; to number o'er the 
rest 
And stand, like Adam, naming every beast. 
Were weary work; nor will the Muse de- 
scribe ^^ 
A slimy-born and sun-begotten tribe. 
Who, far from steeples and their sacred 

sound. 
In fields their sullen conventicles found. 
These gToss, half-animated lumps I leave, 
Nor can I think what thoughts they can con 

ceive. 

But if they think at all, 't is sure no higher 
Than matter put in motion may as]3ire; 
Souls that can scarce ferment their mass of 

clay, 
So drossy, so divisible are they 
As would but serve pure bodies for allay, ^'^ 
Such souls as shards produce, such beetle 
things 



85 



As only buzz to heaven with evening wings, 
Strike in the dark, offending but by chance, 
Such are the blindfold blows of ignorance. 
They know not beings, and but hate a 

name ; ^^ 

To them the Hind and Panther are the same. 

The Panther, sure the noblest next the 

Hind 
And fairest creature of the spotted kind; 
Oh, could her inborn stains be washed away 
She were too good to be a beast of prey ! i^o 
How can I praise or blame, and not offend. 
Or how divide the frailty from the friend? 
Her faults and virtues lie so mixed, that she 
Nor wholly stands condemned nor wholly 

free. 
Then, like her injured Lion, let me speak ; 1^5 
He cannot bend her and he would not 

break. 
Unkind already, and estranged in part. 
The Wolf begins to share her wandering 

heart. 
Though unpolluted yet with actual ill. 
She half commits who sins but in her 

will. 110 

If, as our dreaming Platonists report. 
There could be spirits of a middle sort, 
Too black for heaven and yet too white for 

hell, 
Who just dropped half-way down, nor lower 

fell; 
So iDoised, so gently she descends from 

high, 115 

It seems a soft dismission from the sky. 
Her house not ancient, whatsoe'er pretense 
Pier clergy heralds make in her defense 
A second century not half-way run. 
Since the new honors of her blood begun. 120 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IDEALS OF 
SANITY AND ORDER 

I. CRITICISMS OF SOCIAL LIFE AND MANNERS 



The Rape of the Lock 

an heroi-comical poem 

alexander pope 

Canto I 

"What dire offence from amorous causes 

springs, 
What mighty contests rise from trivial 

things, 
I sing. — This verse to Caryl, Muse ! is due ; 
This, e'en Belinda may vouchsafe to view. 
Slight is the subject, but not so the praise, ^ 
If she inspire, and he approve my lays. 
Say what strange motive. Goddess! could 

compel 
A well-bred lord t' assault a gentle belle *? 
Oh, say what stranger cause, yet unexplored, 
Could make a gentle belle reject a lord? ^^ 
In tasks so bold, can little men engage. 
And in soft bosoms dwells such mighty rage ? 
Sol through white curtains shot a timor- 
ous ray, 
And oped those eyes that must eclipse the 

day. 

Now lap-dogs give themselves the rousing 

shake, ^^ 

And sleepless lovers, just at twelve, awake. 

Thrice rung the bell, the slipper knocked the 

ground. 
And the pressed watch returned a silver 

sound. 
Belinda still her downy pillow pressed. 
Her guardian sylph prolonged the balmy 

rest ; 20 

'Twas he had summoned to her silent bed 
The morning dream that hovered o'er her 

head; 
A youth more glittering than a birth-night 

beau, 
(That e'en in slumber caused her cheek to 

glow) 
Seemed to her ear his winning lips to lay, ^5 



And thus in whispers said, or seemed to say : 
"Fairest of mortals, thou distinguished 
care 
Of thousand bright inhabitants of air ! 
If e'er one vision touched thy infant 

thought, 
Of all the nurse and all the priest have 
taught, 30 

Of airy elves by moonlight shadows seen, 
The silver token, and the circled green. 
Or virgins visited by angel powers. 
With golden crowns and wreaths of heav- 
enly flowers; 
Hear and believe ! thy OAvn importance 
know, 25 

Nor bound thy narrow views to things below, 
Some secret truths, some learned pride con- 
cealed, 
To maids alone and children are revealed. 
What though no credit doubting wits may 

give? '" 
The fair and innocent shall still believe, ■^o 
Know, then, unnumbered spirits round thee 

The light militia of the lower sky. 

These, though unseen, are ever on the wing, 

Hang o'er the box, and hover round the 

. ^^^§'- 
Think what an equipage thou hast in air, '^^ 

And view with scorn two pages and a chair. 

As now your own, our beings were of old, 

And once enclosed in woman's beauteous 

mould ; 
Thence, by a soft transition, we repair 
Prom earthly vehicles to these of air. ^ 

Think not, when woman's transient breath 

is fled. 
That all her vanities at once are dead ; 
Succeeding vanities she still regards, 
And though she plays no more, o'erlooks 

the cards. 
Her joy in gilded chariots, when alive, ^5 
And love of omLer, after death survive. 
For when the fair in all their pride expire. 



188 



i 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OF SANITY AND OEDEE 



189 



To their first elements their souls retire : 
The sprites of fiery termagants in flame 
Mount up, and take a salamander's name. ^^ 
Soft yielding minds to water glide away, 
And sip, with nymphs, their elemental tea. 
The graver prude sinks downward to a 

gnome. 
In search of mischief still on earth to roam. 
The light coquettes in sylphs aloft repair, 65 
And sport and flutter in the fields of air. 
"Know further yet : whoever fair and 
chaste 
Rejects mankind, is by some sylph em- 
braced ; 
For spirits, freed from mortal laws, with 

ease 
Assume what sexes and what shapes they 
please. "^^ 

What guards the purity of melting maids, 
In courtly balls, and midnight masquerades. 
Safe from the treacherous friend, the daring 

spark. 

The glance by day, the whisper in the dark, 

When kind occasion prompts their warm 

desires, '^5 

When music softens, and when dancing 

fires'? 
'Tis but their sylph, the wise celestials know. 
Though honor is the word with men below. 
Some nymphs there are, too conscious of 

their face. 
For life jDredestined to the gnomes' embrace. 
These swell their prospects and exalt their 
pride, ^1 

When offers are disdained, and love denied : 
Then gay ideas crowd the vacant brain. 
While peers, and dukes, and all their sweep- 
ing train. 
And garters, stars, and coronets appear, ^5 
And in soft sounds 'Your Grace' salutes 

their ear. 
'Tis these that early taint the female soul. 
Instruct the eyes of young coquettes to 

roll, 

Teach infant cheeks a bidden blush to know. 

And little hearts to flutter at a beau. ^^ 

"Oft when the world imagine women 

stray, 

The sylphs through mystic mazes gaxide their 

way, 
Through all the giddy circle they pursue, 
And old impertinence expel by new. 
What tender maid but must a victim fall ^^ 
To one man's treat, but for another's ball? 
When Florio speaks, what virgin could with- 
stand. 
If gentle Damon did not squeeze her hand ? 
With varying vanities, from every part. 



They shift the moving toyshop of their 

heart; lOO 

Where wigs with wigs, with sword-knots 

sword-knots strive, 
Beaux banish beaux, and coaches coaches 

drive. 
This erring mortals levity may call; 
Oh, blind to truth ! the sylphs contrive it all. 
"Of these am I, who thy protection claim, 
A watchful sprite, and Ariel is my name. ^'^^ 
Late, as I ranged the crystal wilds of air, 
In the clear mirror of thy ruling star 
I saw, alas ! some dread event impend, 
Ere to the main this morning sun descendjH^ 
But Heaven reveals not what, or how, or 

where. 
Warned by the sylph, pious maid, beware ! 
This to disclose is all thy guardian can : 
Beware of all, but most beware of man !" 
He said; when Shock, who thought she 

slept too long, US 

Leaped up, and waked his mistress ith his 

tongue. 
'Twas then, Belinda, if report say true, 
Thy eyes first opened on a billet-doux ; 
Wounds, charms, and ardors were no sooner 

read, 
But all the vision vanished from thy head. 120 
And now, unveiled, the toilet stands dis- 
played, 
Each silver vase in mystic order laid. 
First, robed in white, the nymph intent 

adores, 
With head uncovered, the cosmetic powers. 
A heavenly image in the glass appears, 125 
To that she bends, to that her eyes she rears; 
Th' inferior priestess, at her altar's side. 
Trembling begins the sacred rites of pride. 
Unnumbered treasures ope at once, and here 
The various offerings of the world appear; 
From each she nicely culls with curious toil. 
And decks the goddess with the glittering 

spoil. 132 

This casket India's glowing gems unlocks. 
And all Arabia breathes from yonder box. 
The tortoise here and elephant unite, l^^ 

Transformed to combs, the speckled, and the 

white. 
Here files of pins extend their shining rows. 
Puffs, powders, patches, bibles, billets-doux. 
Now awful beauty puts on all its arms ; 
The fair each moment rises in her charms, 1^0 
Repairs her smiles, 'awakens every grace. 
And calls forth all the wonders of her face; 
Sees by degrees a purer blush arise, 
And keener lightnings quicken in her eyes. 
The busy sylphs surround their darling care. 
These set the head, and those divide the hair, 



190 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Some fold the sleeve, whilst others plait the 

147 

gown ; 
And Betty's praised for labors not her own. 



Canto II 

Not with more glories, in th' ethereal plain, 
The smi first rises o'er the purpled main, 
Than, issuing forth, the rival of his beams 
Launched on the bosom of the silver Thames. 
Fair nymphs, and well-dressed youths 
around her shone, ^ 

But every eye was fixed on her alone. 
On her white breast a sparkling cross she 

wore, 
But every eye was fixed on her alone. 
Her lively looks a sprightly mind disclose, 
Quick as her eyes, and as unfixed as those ; ^^ 
Favors to none, to all she smiles extends; 
'Oft she rejects, but never once offends. 
Bright as the sun, her eyes the gazers strike, 
And, like the sun, they shine on all alike. 
Yet graceful ease, and sweetness void of 
pride, ^^ 

Might hide her faults, if belles had faults to 

hide; 
If to her share some female errors fall, 
Look on her face, and you'll forget 'em all. 
This nymph, to the destruction of man- 
kind, 
Nourished two locks, which graceful hung 
behind ^^ 

In equal curls, and well conspired to deck 
With shining ringlets the smooth ivory neck. 
Love in these labyrinths his slaves detains. 
And mighty hearts are held in slender 

chains. 
With hairy springes, we the birds betray, ^5 
Slight lines of hair surprise the finny prey. 
Fair tresses man's imperial race ensnare, 
And beauty draws us with a single hair. 
Th' adventurous baron the bright locks ad- 
mired ; 
He saw, he wished, and to the prize aspired. 
Resolved to win, he meditates the way, ^^ 
By force to ravish, or by fraud betray ; 
For when success a lover's toil attends. 
Few ask, if fraud or force attained his ends. 
For this, ere Phoebus rose, he had im 
plored 

Propitious Heaven, and every power adored. 
But chiefly Love ; to Love an altar built, 
Of twelve vast French romances, neatly gilt. 
There lay three garters, half a pair of 

gloves. 
And all the trophies of his former loves ; ^^ 
With tender billets-doux he lights the pyre, 



35 



And breathes three amorous sighs to raise 

the fire. 
Then prostrate falls, and begs with ardent 

eyes 
Soon to obtain, and long possess the prize. 
The powers gave ear, and granted half his 
prayer; ' ^^ 

The rest the winds dispersed in empty air. 

But now secure the painted vessel glides. 
The sunbeams trembling on the floating 

tides ; 
While melting music steals upon the sky. 
And softened sounds along the waters die; ^ 
Smooth flow the waves, the zephyrs gently 

.play, 
Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay. 
All but the sylph — with careful thoughts op- 
pressed, 
Th' impending woe sat heavy on his breast. 
He summons straight his denizens of air ; ^^ 
The lucid squadrons round the sails repair; 
Soft o'er the shrouds aerial Avhispers 

breathe. 
That seemed but zephyrs to the train be- 
neath. 
Some to the sun their insect wings unfold. 
Waft on the breeze, or sink in clouds of 
gold; _ 60 

Transparent forms, too fine for mortal sight, 
Their fluid bodies half dissolved in light. 
Loose to the wind their airy garments flew, 
Thin glittering textures of the filmy dew, 
Dipt in the richest tincture of the skies, ^5 
Where light disports in ever-mingling dyes, 
While every beam new transient colors 

flings. 
Colors that change whene'er they wave their 

wings. 
Amid the circle, on the gilded mast, 
Superior by the head, was Ariel placed ; '^*^ 
His purple pinions opening to the sun. 
He raised his azure wand, and thus begun : 
"Ye sylphs and sylphids, to your chief give 
ear! 
Fays, fairies, genii, elves, and demons, hear ! 
Ye know the spheres, and various tasks as- 
signed '^^ 
By laws eternal to th' aerial kind. 
Some in the fields of purest ether play. 
And bask and whiten in the blaze of day. 
Some guide the course of wandering orbs on 

high. 
Or roll the planets through the boundless 
sky. 80 

Some less refined, beneath the moon's pale 

light 
Pursue the stars that shoot athwart the 
night. 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OE SANITY AND OEDEK 



191 



Or suck the mists in grosser air below, 
Or clip their pinions in the painted bow, 
Or brew fierce tempests on the wintry main, 
Or o'er the glebe distil the kindly rain ; 86 
Others on earth o'er human race preside, 
Watch all their ways, and all their actions 

guide : 
Of these the chief the care of nations own. 

And guard with arms divine the British 

throne. SO 

"Our humbler province is to tend the fair, 

Not a less pleasing, though less glorious 
care ; 

To save the powder from too rude a gale, 

Nor let th' imprisoned essences exhale ; 

To draw fresh colors from the vernal flow- 
ers ; ^5 

To steal from rainbows, ere they drop in 
showers, 

A brighter wash ; to curl their waving hairs, 

Assist their blushes, and inspire their airs; 

Nay, oft in dreams, invention we bestow, 

To change a flounce, or add a furbelow, ^^o 
"This day, black omens threat the bright- 
est fair 

That e'er deserved a watchful spirit's care; 

Some dire disaster, or by force, or sleight; 

But what, or where, the fates have wrapped 
in night. 

Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law. 

Or some frail china jar receive a flaw; 1^6 

Or stain her honor, or her new brocade; 

Forget her prayers, or miss a masquerade; 

Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball ; 

Or whether Heaven has doomed that Shock 
must fall. 110 

Haste, then, ye spirits ! to your charge re- 
pair; 

The fluttering fan be Zephyretta's care; 

The drops to thee, Brillante, we consign ; 

And, Momentilla, let the watch be thine ; 

Do thou, Crispissa, tend her favorite lock; 

Ariel himself shall be the guard of Shock, n^ 

To fifty chosen sylphs, of special note, 

We trust th' important charge, the petticoat : 

Oft have we known that seven-fold fence to 
fail. 

Though stiff with hoops, and armed with ribs 
of whale; 120 

Form a strong line about the silver bound. 

And guard the wide circumference around. 
"Whatever spirit, careless of his charge, 

His post neglects, or leaves the fair at large, 

Shall feel sharp vengeance soon o'ertake his 
sins, 125 

Be stopped in vials, or transfixed with pins ; 

Or plunged in lakes of bitter washes lie, 

Or wedged whole ages in a bodkin's eye ; 



Gums and pomatums shall his flight restrain. 
While clogged he beats his silken wings in 
vain ; 130 

Or alum styptics with contracting power 
Shrink his thin essence like a riveled flower ; 
Or, as Ixion fixed, the wretch shall feel 
The giddy motion of the whirling mill, 
In fumes of burning chocolate shall glow, 1^5 
And tremble at the sea that froths beloAv !" 
He spoke; the spirits from the sails de- 
scend ; 
Some, orb in orb, around the nymph extend; 
Some thrid the mazy ringlets of her hair ; 
Some hang upon the pendants of her ear; 1*0 
With beating hearts the dire event they wait, 
Anxious, and trembling for the birth of fate. 

Canto III 

Close by those meads, forever crowned with 

flowers, 
Where Thames with pride surveys his rising- 
towers. 
There stands a structure of majestic frame, 
Which from the neighboring Hampton takes 

its name. 
Here Britain's statesmen oft the fall fore- 
doom 5 
Of foreign tyrants and of nymphs at home ; 
Here thou, great Anna ! whom three realms 

obey, _ 

Dost sometimes counsel take — and sometimes 

tea. 

Hither the heroes and the nymphs resort, 

To taste awhile the pleasures of a court ; 10 

In various talk th' instructive hours they 

passed, 
Who gave the ball, or paid the visit last ; 
One speaks the glory of the British Queen, 
And one describes a charming Indian 

screen ; 
A third interprets motions, looks, and eyes; 
At every word a reputation dies. i^ 

Snuff, or the fan, supply each pause of chat. 
With singing, laughing, ogling, and all that. 
Meanwhile, declining from the noon of 
day, 
The sun obliquely shoots his burning ray ; 20 
The hungry judges soon the sentence sign, 
And wretches hang that jurymen may dine; 
The merchant from th' Exchange returns in 

■ peace. 
And the long labors of the toilet cease. 
Belinda now, whom thirst of fame invites, 25 
Burns to encounter two adventurous knights. 
At omber singly to decide their doom; 
And swells her breast with conquests yet to 
come. 



192 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



Straight the three bands prepare iii arms to 

jom, 
Each band the number of the sacred nine, ^o 
Soon as she spreads her hand, th' aerial 

guard 
Descend, and sit on each important card : 
First, Ariel perched upon a Matadore, 
Then each, according to the rank they boje ; 
For sylphs, yet mindful of their ancient 

race, ^^ 

Are, as when women, wondrous fond of 

place. 
Behold, four kings in majesty revered, 
With hoary whiskers and a forky beard; 
And four fair queens whose hands sustain 

a flower. 
The expressive emblem of their softer 

power ; ^^ 

Four knaves in garbs succinct, a trusty 

band, 
Caps on their beads, and halberts in their 

hand; 
And parti-colored troops, a shining train. 
Draw forth to combat on the velvet plain. 
The skilful nymph reviews her force with 

care : ^^ 

Let spades be trumps ! she said, and trumps 

they were. 
Now moved to war her sable Matadores, 
In show like leaders of the swarthy Moors. 
Spadillio first, unconquerable lord ! 
Led off two captive trumps, and swept the 

board. ^^ 

As many more Manillio forced to yield 
Ajid marched a victor from the verdant field. 
Him Basto followed, but his fate more hard 
Gained but one trump and one plebeian card. 
With his broad saber next, a chief in years. 
The hoary majesty of spades appears, ^^ 
Puts forth one manly leg, to sight revealed. 
The rest, his many-colored robe concealed. 
The rebel knave, who dares his prince en- 

Proves the just victim of his royal rage. "O 
E'en mighty Pam, that kings and queens 

o'erthrew, 
And mowed down armies in the fights of 

Loo, 
Sad chance of war ! now destitute of aid, 
Falls undistinguished by the victor spade ! 
Thus far both armies to Belinda yield ; ^^ 
Now to the baron fate inclines the field. 
His warlike Amazon her host invades. 
The imiDerial consort of the crown of spades ; 
The club's black tyrant first her victim died, 
Spite of his haughty mien, and barbarous 

pride. '0 

What boots the regal circle on his head, 



85 



His giant limbs, in state unwieldy spread ; 
That long behind he trails his pompous robe> 
And, of all monarchs, only grasps the globe f 
The baron now his diamonds pours apace ; 
Th' embroidered king who shows but half 

his face, '^^ 

And his refulgent queen, with powers com- 
bined, 
Of broken troops an easy conquest find. 
Clubs, diamonds, hearts, in wild disorder 

seen, 
With throngs promiscuous strew the level 

green. ^'^ 

Thus when dispersed a routed army runs. 
Of Asia's troops, and Afric's sable sons. 
With like confusion different nations fiy. 
Of various habit, and of various dye ; 
The pierced battalions disunited fall, 
In heaps on heaps; one fate o'erwhelms 

them all. 
The knave of diamonds tries his wily 

arts, 
And wms (oh shameful chance!) the queen 

of hearts. 
At this the blood the virgin's cheek forsook, 
A livid paleness spreads o'er all her look ; ^o 
She sees, and trembles at th' approaching ill, 
Just in the jaws of ruin, and eodille. 
And now (as oft in some distempered state) 
On one nice trick depends the general fate. 
An ace of hearts steps forth; the king un 

seen 
Lurked in her hand, and mourned his captive 

queen : 
He springs to vengeance with an eager pace. 
And falls like thunder on the prostrate ace. 
The nymph exulting fills with shouts the 

sky; 
The walls, the woods, and long canals reply. 
Oh thoughtless mortals ! ever blind to fate, 
Too soon dejected, or too soon elate, 1^2 

Sudden, these honors shall be snatched away. 
And cursed forever this victorious day. 
For lo ! the board with cups and spoons is 

crowned, ^^^ 

The berries crackle, and the mill turns 

round; 
On shining altars of Japan they raise 
The silver lamp ; the fiery spirits blaze ; 
From silver spouts the grateful liquors 

_ glide, _ 
While China's earth receives the smoking 

tide : i" 

At once they gratify their scent and taste. 
And frequent cups prolong the rich repast. 
Straight hover round the fair her airy band ; 
Some, as she sipped, the fuming liquoi 

fanned. 



95 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OF SANITY AND OEDER 



193 



Some o'er her lap their careful plumes dis- 
played, 115 
Trembling, and conscious of the rich bro- 
cade. 
Coffee (which makes the politician wise, 
And see through all things with his half- 
shut eyes) 
Sent up in vapors to the baron's brain 
New stratagems the radiant lock to gain. 120 
Ah, cease, rash youth ! desist ere 'tis too 

late, 
Fear the just gods, and think of' Seylla's 

fate ! 
Changed to a bird, and sent to flit in air, 
She dearly pays for Nisus' injured hair! 
But when to mischief mortals bend their 
will, 
How soon they find fit instruments of ill ! 126 
Just then Clarissa drew with tempting grace 
A two-edged weapon from her shining case : 
So ladies in romance assist their knight, 
Present the spear, and arm him for the fight. 
He takes the gift with reverence, and ex- 
tends 131 
The little engine on his fingers' ends; 
This just behind Belinda's neck he spread, 
As o'er the fragrant steams she bends her 

head. 

Swift to the lock a thousand sprites repair, 

A thousand wings, by turns, blow back the 

hair; 136 

And thrice they twitched the diamond in her 

ear ; 
Thrice she looked back, and thrice the foe 

drew near. 
Just in that instant, anxious Ariel sought 
The close recesses of the virgin's thought ; i^O 
As on the nosegay in her breast reclined. 
He watched tli' ideas rising in her mind, 
Sudden he viewed, in spite of all her art, 
An earthly lover lurking at her heart. 
Amazed, confused, he found his power ex- 
pired, 145 
Resigned to fate, and with a sigh retired. 
The peer now spreads the glittering f orf ex 
wide, 
T' inclose the lock; now joins it, to divide. 
E'en then, before the fatal engine closed, 
A wretched sylph too fondly interposed ; i^o 
Fate urged the shears, and cut the sylph in 

twain, 
(But airy substance soon unites again). 
The meeting points the sacred hair dissever 
From the fair head, forever, and forever ! 
Then flashed the livmg lightning from her 



eyes. 



155 



And screams of horror rend th' affrighted 
skies. 



Not louder shrieks to pitying Heaven are 

cast, 
When husbands, or when lap-dogs breathe 

their last; 
Or when rich China vessels, fallen from 

high, 
In glittering dust and painted fragments lie ! 
"Let wreaths of triumph noAV my temples 

twine," 161 

The victor cried ; "the glorious prize is mine ! 
While fish in streams, or birds delight in air, 
Or in a coach and six the British fair. 
As long as Atalantis shall be read, 165 

Or the small pillow grace a lady's bed. 
While visits shall be paid on solemn days. 
When numerous wax-lights in bright order 

blaze. 
While nymphs take treats, or assignations 

give, 
So long my honor, name, and praise shall 

live ! 170 

What Time would spare, from steel receives 

its date. 
And monuments, like men, submit to fate! 
Steel could the labor of the gods destroy, 
And strike to dust th' imperial towers of 

Troy; 
Steel could the works of mortal pride eon- 
found, 175 
And hew triumphal arches to the ground. 
What wonder then, fair nymph! thy hairs 

should feel 
The conquering force of unresisted steel?" 

Canto IV 

But anxious cares the pensive nymph op- 
pressed, 
And secret passions labored in her breast. 
Not youthful kings in battle seized alive, 
Not scornful virgins who their charms sur- 
vive, 
Not ardent lovers robbed of all their bliss, ° 
Not ancient ladies when refused a kiss, 
Not tyrants fierce that unrepentmg die, 
Not Cynthia when her manteau's pinned 

awry, 
E'er felt such rage, resentment, and des- 
pair, 
As thou, sad virgin, for thy ravished hair, i*^ 
For, that sad moment, when the sylphs with- 
drew 
And Ariel weeping from Belinda flew, 
Umbriel, a dusky, melancholy sprite, 
As ever sullied the fair face of light, 
Down to the central earth, his projDer scene, 
Repaired to search the gloomy cave of 
Spleen. 16 



194 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



31 



Swift on his sooty irinions flits the gnome, 
And in a vapor reached the dismal dome. 
No cheerful breeze this sullen region knows, 
The dreaded east is all the wind that blows. 
Here in a grotto, sheltered close from air, 21 
And screened in shades from day's detested 

glare. 
She sighs forever on her pensive bed, 
Pain at her side, and Megrim at her head. 
Two handmaids wait the throne, alike in 
place, 2^ 

But differing far in figure and in face. 
Here stood Ill-nature like an ancient maid, 
Her wrinkled form in black and white ar- 
rayed ; 
With store of prayers, for mornings, nights, 

and noons 
Her hand is filled ; her bosom with lampoons 
There Affectation, with a sickly mien, 
Shows in her cheek the roses of eighteen. 
Practiced to lisp, and hang the head aside, 
Faints into airs, and languishes with pride, 
On the rich quilt sinks with becoming woe, ^^ 
Wrapped in a gown, for sickness, and for 

show. 
The fair ones feel such maladies as these, 
When each new night-dress gives a new dis- 
ease. 
A constant vapor o'er the palace flies. 
Strange phantoms rising as the mists arise; 
Dreadful, as hermit's dreams in haunted 
shades, ^^ 

Or bright, as visions of expiring maids. 
Now glaring fiends, and snakes on rolling 

spires, 
Pale specters, gaping tombs, and purple 

fires ; 

Now lakes of liquid gold, Elysian scenes, ^^ 

And crystal domes, and angels in machines. 

Unnumbered throngs on every side are 

seen. 

Of bodies changed to various forms by 

Spleen. 
Here living teapots stand, one arm held out. 
One bent; the handle this, and that the 
spout. ^'^ 

A pipkin there, like Homer's tripod, walks ; 
Here sighs a jar, and there a goose-pie 

talks ; 
Men prove with child, as powerful fancy 

works. 
And maids, turned bottles, call aloud for 
corks. 
Safe past the gnome through this fan- 
tastic band, ^^ 
A branch of healing spleenwort in his hand. 
Then thus addressed the power : "Hail, way- 
ward queen ! 



75 



Who rule the sex, to fifty from fifteen : 
Parent of vapors and of female wit ; 
Who give th' hysteric, or poetic fit ; 60 

On various tempers act by various ways. 
Make some take physic, others scribble 

plays; 
Who cause the proud their visits to delay, 
And send the godly in a pet to pray. 
A nymph there is, that all thy power dis- 
dains, 6^ 
And thousands more in equal mirth main- 

tams. 
But oh ! if e'er thy gnome could spoil a 

grace. 
Or raise a pimple on a beauteous face, 
Like citron-waters matrons' cheeks infiame. 
Or change complexions at a losing game ; '^^ 
If e'er with airy horns I planted heads, 
Or rumpled petticoats, or tumbled beds, 
Or caused suspicion when no soul was rude. 
Or discomposed the head-dress of a prude 
Or e'er to costive lap-dog gave disease, 
Which not the tears of brightest eyes could 

ease: 
Hear me, and touch Belinda with chagrin, 
That single act gives half the world the 

spleen." 
The goddess with a discontented air 
Seems to reject him, though she grants his 

prayer. ^^ 

A wondrous bag with both her hands she 

binds. 
Like that where once Ulysses held the winds ; 
There she collects the force of female 

lungs. 
Sighs, sobs, and passions, and the war of 

tongues. 
A vial next she fills with fainting fears, ^^ 
Soft sorrows, melting gTiefs, and flowing 

tears. 
The gnome rejoicing bears her gift away, 
Spreads his black wings, and slowly. mounts 

to day. 
Sunk in Thalestris' arms the nymph he 

found. 
Her eyes dejected and her hair unbound. ^^ 
Pull o'er their heads the swelling bag he 

rent. 
And all the furies issued at the vent. 
Belinda burns with more than mortal ire, 
And fierce Thalestris fans the rising fire. 
"0 wretched maid !" she spread her hands, 

and cried, ^^ 

(While Hampton's echoes, "Wretched 

maid !" replied) 
"Was it for this you took such constant care 
The bodkin, comb, and essence to prepare? 
For this your locks in paper durance bound. 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OE SANITY AND OBDEE 



195 



For this with torturing irons wreathed 

around? 10° 

For this with fillets strained your tender 

head, 
And bravely bore the double loads of lead? 
Gods ! shall the ravisher display your hair, 
While the fops envy, and the ladies stare ! 
Honor forbid ! at whose unrivalled shrine ^^^ 
Ease, pleasure, virtue, all our sex resign. 
Methinks already I your tears survey, 
Already hear the horrid things they say. 
Already see you a degraded toast, 
And all your honor in a whisper lost ! ^^'^ 
How shall I, then, your helpless fame de- 
fend? 
'Twill then be infamy to seem your friend ! 
And shall this prize, th' inestimable prize. 
Exposed through crystal to the gazing eyes, 
And heightened by the diamond's circling 



rays. 



115 



On that rapacious hand forever blaze? 
Sooner shall grass in Hyde Park Circus 

grow. 
And wits take lodgings in the sound of Bow ; 
Sooner let earth, air, sea, to chaos fall, 
Men, monkeys, lap-dogs, parrots, perish 

all!" 120 

She said; then raging to Sir Plume re- 
pairs. 
And bids her beau demand the precious 

hairs 
(Sir Plume, of amber snuff-box justly vain. 
And the nice conduct of a clouded cane). 
With earnest eyes, and round unthinking 

face, 125 

He first the snuff-box opened, then the case, 
And thus broke out — "My lord, why, what 

the devil? 
Zounds ! damn the lock ! 'fore Gad, you must 

be civil ! 
Plague on't ! 'tis past a jest — nay prithee, 



pox 



Give her the hair," he spoke, and rapped his 
box. 130 

"It grieves me much," replied the peer 
again, 

"Who speaks so well should ever speak in 
vain. 

But by this lock, this sacred lock, I swear, 

(Which never more shall join its parted 
hair ; 

Which never more its honors shall re- 
new, 135 

Clipped from the lovely head where late it 
grew) 

That while my nostrils draw the vital air, 

This hand, which won it, shall forever 
wear." 



He spoke, and speaking, in proud triumph 
spread 

The long-contended honors of her head. i^O 
But Umbriel, hateful gnome ! forbears 
not so; 

He breaks the vial whence the sorrows flow. 

Then see ! the nymph in beauteous grief ap- 
pears, 

Her eyes half languishing, half drowned in 
tears ; 

On her heaved bosom hung her drooping 
head, 145 

Which, with a sigh, she raised ; and thus she 
• said : 
"Forever eurs'd be this detested day, 

Which snatched my best, my favorite curl 
away ! 

HajDpy ! ah, ten times happy had I been, 

If Hampton Court these eyes had never 
seen ! 150 

Yet am not I the first mistaken maid, 

By love of courts to numerous ills betrayed. 

Oh, had I rather unadmired remained 

In some lone isle or distant northern land ; 

Where the gilt chariot never marks the 
way, 155 

Where none learn omber, none e'er taste 
bohea ! 

There kept my charms concealed from mor- 
tal eye. 

Like roses, that in deserts bloom and die. 

What moved my mind with youthful lords 
to roam? 

Oh, had I stayed, and said my prayers at 
home ! 160 

'Twas this, the morning omens seemed to 
tell: 

Thrice from my trembling hand the patch- 
box fell; 

The tottering china shook without a wind ; 

Nay, Poll sat mute, and Shock was most 
unkind ! 

A sylph, too, warned me of the threats of 
fate, 165 

In mystic visions, now believed too late ! 

See the poor remnants of these slighted 
hairs ! 

My hands shall rend what e'en thy rapine 
spares ; 

These in two sable ringlets taught to break. 

Once gave new beauties to the snowy 
neck; i™ 

The sister lock now sits uncouth, alone. 

And in its fellow's fate foresees its own ; 

Uncurled it hangs, the fatal shears de- 
mands. 

And tempts once more, thy sacrilegious 
hands. , 



196 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Oh, hadst thou, cruel! been content to 

seize ^'^^ 

Hairs less in sight, or any hairs but these !" 



Canto V 

She said : the pitying audience melt in tears. 

But Fate and Jove had stopped the baron's 
ears. 

In vain Thalestris with reproach assails. 

For who can move when fair Belinda fails? 

Not- half so fixed the Trojan could remain, ^ 

While Anna begged and Dido raged in vain. 

Then grave Clarissa graceful waved her 
fan; 

Silence ensued, and thus the nymph began : 
"Say, why are beauties praised and hon- 
ored most. 

The wise man's passion, and the vain man's 
toast? 10 

Why decked with all that land and sea af- 
ford, 

Why angels called, and angel-like adored? 

Why round our coaches crowd the white- 
gloved beaux. 

Why bows the side-box from its inmost 
rows ? 

How vain are all these glories, all our 
pains, 15 

Unless good sense preserve what beauty 
gains ; 

That men may say, when we the front-box 
grace, 

'Behold the first in virtue as in face!' 

Oh ! if to dance all night, and dress all day, 

Charmed the small-pox, or chased old age 
away, 20 

Who would not scorn what housewife's 
cares produce. 

Or Avho would learn one earthly thing of 
use? 

To patch, nay ogle, might become a saint. 

Nor could it sure be such a sin to paint. 

But since, alas ! frail beauty must decay ; ^5 

Curled or uncurled, since locks will turn to 
gray; 

Since painted, or not painted, all shall fade, 

And she who scorns a man must die a maid ; 

What then remains but well our power to 
use. 

And keep good humor still whate'er we 
lose? 30 

And trust me, dear ! good humor can pre- 
vail, 

When airs, and flights, and screams, and 
scolding fail. 

Beauties in vain their pretty eyes may roll; 



Charms strike the sight, but merit wins the 
soul." 
So spoke the dame, but no applause en- 
sued ; 35 

Belinda frowned, Thalestris called her 
prude. 

"To arms, to arms !" the fierce virago eries^ 

And swift as lightning to the combat flies. 

All side in parties, and begin th' attack; 

Fans clap, silks rustle, and tough whale- 
bones crack; 40 

Heroes' and heroines' shouts eonfus'dly rise. 

And bass and treble voices strike the skies. 

No common weapons in their hands are 
found. 

Like gods they flght, nor dread a mortal 
wound. 
So when bold Homer makes the gods en- 
gage, 45 

And heavenly breasts with human passions 
rage ; 

'Gainst Pallas, Mars; Latona, Hermes 
arms ; 

And all Olympus rings with loud alarms : 

Jove's thunder roars, Heaven trembles all 
around. 

Blue Neptune storms, the bellowing deeps 
resound : ^0 

Earth shakes her nodding towers, the 
gTound gives way. 

And the pale ghosts start at the flash of 
day ! 
Triumphant Umbriel on a sconce's height 

Clapped his glad wings, and sat to view the 
fight; 

Propped on their bodkin spears, the sprites 
survey • ^^ 

The growing combat, or assist the fray. 
While through the press enraged Thales- 
tris flies. 

And scatters death around from both her 
eyes, 

A beau and witling perished in the throng, 

One died in metaphor, and one in song. ^^ 

"0 cruel nymph! a living death I bear," 

Cried Dapperwit, and sunk beside his chair. 

A mournful glance Sir Fopling upwards 
cast, 

"Those eyes are made so killing": — was his 
last. 

Thus on Maeander's flowery margin lies 65 

Th' expiring swan, and as he sings he dies. 
When bold Sir Plume had draAvn Clarissa 
down, 

Chloe stepped in and killed him Avith a 
frown ; 

She smiled to see the doughty hero slain. 

But, at her smile, the beau revived again. '^^ 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OF SANITY AND OEDEE 



197 



Now Jove suspends his golden scales in 
air, 

Weighs the men's wits against the lady's 
hair ; 

The doubtful beam long nods from side to 
side ; 

At length the Avits mount up, the hairs sub- 
side. 
See, fierce Belinda on the Baron flies, '^^ 

With more than usual lightning in her eyes ; 

Nor feared the chief th' unequal fight to try. 

Who sought no more than on his foe to die. 

But this bold lord with manly strength en- 
dued, 

She with one finger and a thumb sub- 
dued: • 80 

Just where the breath of life his nostrils 
drew, 

A charge of snuif the wily virgin threw ; 

The gnomes direct, to every atom just. 

The pungent grains of titillating dust. 

Sudden, with starting tears each eye o'er- 
flows, 85 

And the high dome re-echoes to his nose. 
"Now meet thy fate," incensed Belinda 
cried. 

And drew a deadly bodkin from her side. 

(The same, his ancient personage to deck. 

Her great great grandsire wore about his 
neck, ^^ 

In three seal-rings; which after, melted- 
down. 

Formed a vast buckle for his widow's gown ; 

Her infant grandame's whistle next it grew, 

The bells she jingled, and the Avhistle blew; 

Then in a bodkin graced her mother's 
hairs, ^^ 

Which long she wore, and now Belinda 
wears. ) 
"Boast not my fall," he cried, "insulting 
foe! 

Thou by some other shalt be laid as low; 

Nor think to die dejects my lofty mind : 

All that I dread is leaving you behind ! ^^o 

Rather than so, ah, let me still survive, 

And burn in Cupid's flames — but burn 
alive." 
"Restore the lock!" she cries; and all 
around 

"Restore the lock!" the vaulted roofs re- 
bound. 

Not fierce Othello in so loud a strain 105 

Roared for the handkerchief that caused his 
pain. 

But see how oft ambitious aims are crossed. 

And chiefs contend till all the prize is lost ! 

The lock, obtained with guilt, and kept with 
pain, 



In every place is sought, but sought in 

vain : no 

With such a prize no mortal must be 

blessed. 
So Heaven decrees! with Heaven who can 

contest ? 
Some thought it mounted to the lunar 

sphere. 
Since all things lost on earth are treasured 

there. 
There heroes' wits are kept in ponderous 

vases, 115 

And beaux' in snuff-boxes and tweezer 

eases ; 
There broken vows and death-bed alms are 

found, 
And lovers' hearts with ends of riband 

bound, 
The courtier's promises, and sick man's 

prayers. 
The smiles of harlots, and the tears of 

heirs, 120 

Cages for gnats, and chains to yoke a 

flea. 
Dried butterflies, and tomes of casuistry. 
But trust the Muse — she saw it upward 

rise. 
Though marked by none but quick, poetic 

eyes: 
(So Rome's great founder to the heavens 

withdrew, 125 

To Proeulus alone confessed in view) 
A sudden star, it shot through liquid air. 
And drew behind a radiant trail of hair. 
Not Berenice's locks first rose so bright, 
The heavens bespangling with dishevelled 

light. 130 

The sylphs behold it kindling as it flies. 
And pleased pursue its progress through 

the skies. 
This the beau mpnde shall from the Mall 

survey, 
And hail with music its jDropitious ray. 
This the blest lover shall for Venus take, 135 
And send up vows from Rosamonda's lake. 
This Partridge soon shall view in cloudless 

skies. 
When next he looks through Galileo's eyes; 
And hence th' egregious wizard shall fore- 
doom 
The fate of Louis and the fall of Rome. "O 
Then cease, bright nymph! to mourn thy 

ravished hair, 
Which adds new glory to the shining 

sphere ! 
Not all the tresses that fair head can boast, 
Shall draw such envy as the lock you lost. 
For, after all the murders of your eye, 145 



198 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



When, after millions slain, yourself shall 

die; 
When those fair suns shall set, as set they 

must, 
And all those tresses shall be laid in dust : 
This lock, the Muse shall consecrate to fame, 
And 'midst the stars inscribe Belinda's 

name. ^^^ 

The Spectator as an Instrument ^ 
OE Reform ^ 

JOSEPH ADDISON 

[The Spectator, No. 10. March, 1710-11.] 

Non aliter quam qui adverse vix flumine lembum 
Remigiis subigit, si bracchia forte remisit, 
Atque ilium praeceps prono rapit alveus amni.= 

— Virgil. 

It is with much satisfaction that I hear 
this great city inquiring day by day after 
these my papers, and receiving my morning 
lectures with a becoming seriousness and at- 
tention. My publisher tells me that there 
are already three thousand of them distrib- 
uted every day : so that if I allow twenty 
readers to every paper, which I look upon 
as a modest computation, I may reckon 
about threescore thousand disciples in Lon- 
don and Westminster, who, I hope, will take 
care to distinguish themselves from the 
thoughtless herd of their ignorant and un- 
attentive brethren. Since I have raised to 
myself so great an audience, I shall spare 
no pains to make their instruction agree- 
able, and their diversion useful. For which 
reasons I shall endeavor to enliven morality 

' Of the service which his essays rendered to 
morality it is difficult to speak too highly. It is 
true that, when the "Tatler" appeared, that age 
of outrageous profaneness and licentiousness 
which followed the Restoration had passed away. 
Jeremy Collier had shamed the theaters into 
something which, compared with the excesses of 
Btherege and Wycherley, might be called decency ; 
yet there still lingered in the public mind a 
pernicious notion that there was some connection 
between genius and profligacy, between the do- 
mestic virtues and the sullen formality of the 
Puritans. That error it is the glory of Addison 
to have dispelled. He taught the nation that the 
faith and the morality of Hale and Tillotson 
might be found in company with wit more 
sparkling than the wit of Congreve, and with 
humor richer than the humor of Vanbrugh. So 
effectually, indeed, did he retort on vice the 
mockery which had recently been directed against 
virtue, that since his time the open violation of 
decency has always been considered among us as 
the mark of a fool. And this revolution, the 
greatest and most salutary ever effected by any 
satirist, he accomplished, be it remembered, with- 
out writing one personal lampoon. — Macaulay: 
Essay on Addison. 

2 " . . . Like a boatman who just manages 
to make head against the stream, if the tension of 
his arms happens to relax, and the current whirls 
away the boat headlong down the river's bed." 
— John Conington. 



with wit, and to temper wit with morality, 
that my readers may, if possible, both ways 
find their account in the speculation of the 
day. And to the end that their virtue and 
discretion may not be short, transient, inter- 
mittent starts of thought, I have resolved to 
refresh their memories from day to day, till 
1 have recovered them out of that desperate 
state of vice and folly into which the age is 
fallen. The mind that lies fallow but a sin- 
gle day sprouts up in follies that are only 
to be killed by a constant and assiduous cul- 
ture. It was said of Socrates that he 
brought philosophy down from heaven to 
inhabit among men; and I shall be ambi- 
tious to have it said of me that I have 
brought philosophy out of closets and li- 
braries, schools and colleges, to dwell in 
clubs and assemblies, at tea tables and in 
coffee houses. 

I would, therefore, in a very particular 
manner recommend these my speculations to 
all well-regulated families that set apart an 
hour in every morning for tea and bread 
and butter, and would earnestly advise them 
for their good to order this paper to be 
punctually served up, and to be looked upon 
as a part of the tea equipage. 

Sir Francis Bacon observes that a well- 
written book, compared with its rivals and 
antagonists, is like Moses's serpent, that im- 
mediately SAvallowed up and devoured those 
of the Egyptians. I shall not be so vain as 
to think that where the Spectator appears 
the other public i^rints will vanish, but shall 
leave it to my reader's consideration whether. 
Is it not much better to be let into the 
knowledge of one's self than to hear what 
passes in Muscovy or Poland, and to amuse 
ourselves with such writings as tend to the 
wearing out of ignorance, passion, and 
prejudice than such as naturally conduce to 
inflame hatreds and make enmities irrecon- 
cilable f 

In the next place, I would recommend this 
paper to the daily perusal of those gentle- 
men whom I cannot but consider as my good 
brothers and allies; I mean the fraternity 
of spectators who live in the world without 
having anything to do in it, and either by 
the affluence of their fortunes or laziness of 
their dispositions have no other business 
with the rest of mankind but to look ujDon 
them. Under this class of men are compre- 
hended all contemplative tradesmen, titular 
physicians, fellows of the Royal Society, 
Templars that are not given to be con- 
tentious, and statesmen that are out of busi- 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IDEALS OF SANITY AND ORDER 



199 



ness; in short, everyone that considers the 
world as a theater and desires to form a 
right judgment of those who are the actors 
on it. 

There is another set of men that I must 
likewise lay a claim to, whom I have lately 
called the blanks of society, as being alto- 
gether unfurnished with ideas till the busi- 
ness and conversation of the day has sup- 
plied them. I have often considered these 
poor souls with an eye of great commisera- 
tion when I have heard them asking the first 
man they have met with whether there was 
any news stirring ; and by that means gath- 
ering together materials for thinking. These 
needy persons do not know what to talk of 
till about twelve o'clock in the morning ; for 
by that time they are pretty good judges of 
the weather, know which way the wind sits, 
and whether the Dutch mail be come in. As 
they lie at the mercy of the first man they 
meet, and are grave or impertinent all the 
day long, according to the notions which 
they have imbibed in the morning, I would 
earnestly entreat them not to stir out of 
their chambers till they have read this paper, 
and do promise them that I will daily in- 
still into them such sound and wholesome 
sentiments as shall have a good effect on 
their conversation for the ensuing twelve 
hours. 

But there are none to whom this paper 
will be more useful than to the female 
world. I have often thought there has not 
been sufficient pains taken in finding out 
proper employments and diversions for the 
fair ones. Their amusements seem con- 
trived for them rather as they are women 
than as they are reasonable creatures; and 
are more adapted to the sex than to the 
siDeeies, The toilet is their great scene of 
business, and the right adjusting of their 
hair the principal employment of their 
lives. The sorting of a suit of ribbons is 
reckoned a very good morning's work ; and 
if they make an excursion to a mercer's or 
a toy shop, so great a fatigue makes them 
unfit for anything else all the day after. 
Their more serious occupations are sewing 
and embroidery, and their greatest drudgery 
the preparation of jellies and sweetmeats. 
This, I say, is the state of ordinary women ; 
though I know there are multitudes of those 
of a more elevated like and conversation that 
move in an exalted sphere of knowledge and 
virtue, that join all the beauties of the mind 
to the ornaments of dress, and inspire a kind 



of awe and respect, as well as love, into their 
male beholders. I hope to increase the num- 
ber of these by publishing this daily paper, 
which I shall always endeavor to make an 
innocent, if not an improving, entertain- 
ment, and by that means at least divert the 
minds of my female readers from greater 
trifles. At the same time, as I would fain 
give some finishing touches to those which 
are already the most beautiful pieces in 
human nature, I shall endeavor to point out 
all those imperfections that are the blemishes, 
as well as those virtues which are the em- 
bellishments, of the sex. In the meanwhile I 
hope these my gentle readers, who have so 
much time on their hands, will not grudge 
throwing away a quarter of an hour in a 
day on this paper, since they may do it 
without any hindrance to business. 

I know several of my friends and well- 
wishers are in great pain for me, lest I 
should not be able to keep up the spirit of 
a paper which I oblige myself to furnish 
every day; but to make them easy in this 
particular, I will promise them faithfully to 
give it over as soon as I grow dull. This I 
know will be matter of great raillery to the 
small wits; who will frequently put me in 
mind of my promise, desire me to keep my 
word, assure me that it is high time to give 
over, with many other little pleasantries of 
the like nature, which men of a little smart 
genius cannot forbear throwing out against 
their best friends, when they have such a 
handle given them of being witty. But let 
them remember that I do hereby enter my 
caveat against this piece of raillery. C. 

The Trumpet Club 

richard steele 

[The Tatler, No. 132. Feb. 11, 1709-10.] 

Habeo senectuti magnam gratiam, quae mihi 
sermonis aviditatem auxit, potionis et cibi sus- 
tulit.^ 

After having applied my mind with more 
than ordinary attention to my studies, it is 
my usual custom to relax and unbend it in 
the conversation of such as are rather easy 
than shining companions. This I find par- 
ticularly necessary for me before I retire to 
rest, in order to draw my slumbers upon me 
by degrees and fall asleep insensibly. This 
is the particular use I make of a set of heavy, 

^ "I am much beholden to old age, which has in- 
creased my eagerness for conversation in propor- 
tion as it has lessened my appetites of hunger 
and thirst." 



200 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



honest men, with whom I have passed many 
hours with much indolence, though not with 
great j)leasure. Their conversation is a kind 
of preparative for sleep : it takes the mind 
down from its abstractions, leads it into the 
familiar traces of thought, and lulls it into 
that state of tranquillity which is the condi- 
tion of a thinking man when he is but half 
awake. After this, my reader will not be 
surprised to hear the account which I am 
about to give of a club of my own con- 
temporaries among whom I pass two or 
three hours every evening. This I look upon 
as taking my first nap before I go to bed. 
The truth of it is, I should think myself un- 
just to posterity, as well as to the society 
at the Trumpet, of which I am a member, 
did not I in some part of my writings give an 
account of the persons among whom I have 
passed almost a sixth part of my time for 
these last forty years. Our club consisted 
originally of fifteen; but, partly by the 
severity of the law in arbitrary times, and 
partly by the natural effects of old age, we 
are at present reduced to a third part of 
that number; in which, however, we have 
this consolation, that the best company is 
said to consist of five persons. I must con- 
fess, besides the aforementioned benefit 
which I meet with in the conversation of 
this select society, I am not the less pleased 
with the company, in that I find myself the 
greatest wit among them and am heard as 
their oracle in all points of learning and 
difficulty. 

Sir Jeoffery Notch, who is the oldest of 
the club, has been in possession of the right- 
hand chair time out of mind and is the only 
man among us that has the liberty of stir- 
ring the fire. This, our foreman, is a gen- 
tleman of an ancient family, that came to a 
great estate some years before he had dis- 
cretion and run it out in hounds, horses, and 
cock-fighting; for which reason he looks 
upon himself as an honest, worthy gentle- 
man who has had misfortunes in the world, 
and calls every thriving man a pitiful up- 
start. 

Major Matchlock is the next senior, who 
served in the last civil wars and has all the 
battles by heart. He does not think any 
action in Europe worth talking of since the 
fight of Marston Moor ; and every night tells 
us of his having been knocked off his horse 
at the rising of the London apprentices ; for 
which he is in great esteem among us. 

Honest old Dick Reptile is the third of 



our society. He is a good-natured, indolent 
man who speaks little himself but laughs at 
our jokes; and brings his young nephew 
along with him, a youth of eighteen years 
old, to show him good company and give him 
a taste of the world. This young fellow sits 
generally silent; but whenever he opens his 
mouth or laughs at any thing that passes he 
is constantly told by his uncle, after a jocu- 
lar manner, "Ay, ay, Jack, you young men 
think us fools; but we old men know you 
are." 

The greatest wit of our company, next to 
myself, is a bencher of the neighboring inn, 
who in his youth frequented the ordinaries 
about Charing Cross, and pretends to have 
been intimate with Jack Ogle. He has about 
ten distiches of Hudibras without book and 
never leaves the club till he has applied them 
all. If any modern wit be mentioned, or 
any town frolic spoken of, he shakes his 
head at the dullness of the present age and 
tells us a story of Jack Ogle. 

For my own part, I am esteemed among 
them because they see I am something re- 
spected by others ; though at the same time I 
understand by their behavior that I am con- 
sidered by them as a man of a great deal of 
learning but no knowledge of the world; 
insomuch, that the Major sometimes, in the 
height of his military pride, calls me the 
philosopher; and Sir Jeoffery, no longer 
ago than last night, upon a dispute what day 
of the month it was then in Holland, pulled 
his pipe out of his mouth and cried, "What 
does the scholar say to it?" 

Our club meets precisely at six o'clock in 
the evening; but I did not come last night 
until half an hour after seven, by which 
means I escaped the battle of Naseby, which 
the Major usually begins at about three- 
quarters after six: I found also that my 
good friend the bencher had already spent 
three of his distiches; and only waited an 
opportunity to hear a sermon spoken of that 
he might introduce the couplet where "a 
stick" rhymes to "ecclesiastic." At my en- 
trance into the room, they were naming a red 
petticoat and a cloak, by which I found that 
the bencher had been diverting them with 
a story of Jack Ogle. 

I had no sooner taken my seat but Sir 
Jeoffery, to show his good will toward me, 
gave me a pipe of his own tobacco and 
stirred up the fire. I look upon it as a point 
of morality to be obliged by those who en- 
deavor to oblige me; and therefore, in re- 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OF SANITY AND OEDEE 



201 



quital for his kindness and to set the con- 
versation a-going, I took the best occasion 
I could to put him upon telling us the story 
of old Gantlett, which he always does with 
very particular concern. He traced up his 
descent on both sides for several generations, 
describing his diet and manner of life, with 
his several battles, and particularly that in 
which he fell. This Gantlett was a. game 
cock upon whose head the knight, in his 
youth, had won five hundred pounds and lost 
two thousand. This naturally set the Major 
upon the account of Edgehill fight, and 
ended in a duel of Jack Ogle's. 

Old Reptile was extremely attentive to 
all that was said, though it was the same 
he had heard every night for these twenty 
years, and, upon all occasions, winked upon 
his nephew to mind what passed. 

This may suffice to give the world a taste 
of our innocent conversation, which we spun 
out until about ten of the clock, when my 
maid came with a lantern to light me home. 
I could not but reflect with myself, as I was 
going out, upon the talkative humor of old 
men and the little figure which that part of 
life makes in one who cannot employ his 
natural propensity in discourses which 
would make him venerable. I must own, it 
makes me very melancholy in company, when 
I hear a young man begin a story ; and have 
often observed that one of a quarter of an 
hour long in a man of five-and-twenty gath- 
ers circumstances every time he tells it, 
until it grows into a long Canterbury tale 
of two hours by the time he is threescore. 

The only way of avoiding such a trifling 
and frivolous old age is to lay up in our 
way to it such stores of knowledge and ob- 
servation as may make us useful and agree- 
able in our declining years. The mind of 
man in a long life will become a magazine 
of wisdom or folly, and will consequently 
discharge itself in something impertinent or 
improving. For which reason, as there is 
nothing more ridiculous than an old trifling 
story-teller, so there is nothing more ven- 
erable than one who has turned his ex- 
perience to the entertainment and advantage 
of mankind. 

In short, we who are in the last stage of 
life and are apt to indulge ourselves in talk 
ought to consider if what we speak be worth 
being heard and endeavor to make our dis- 
course like that of Nestor, which Homer 
compares to the flowing of honey for its 
sweetness. 



I am afraid I shall be thought guilty of 
this excess I am speaking of, when I can- 
not conclude without observing that Milton 
certainly thought of this passage in Homer 
when, in his description of an eloquent 
spirit, he says, 

"His tongue dropped manna." 

The Spectator Club 

joseph addison 

[The Spectator, No. 2. March 2, 1710-11.] 

The first of our society is a gentleman 
of Worcestershire, of ancient descent, a 
baronet, his name is Sir Roger de Coverley. 
His great grandfather was inventor of that 
famous country-dance which is called after 
him. All who know that shire are very well 
acquainted with the parts and merits of Sir 
Roger. He is a gentleman that is very 
singular in his behavior, but his singularities 
proceed from his good sense, and are con- 
tradictions to the manners of the world, 
only as he thinks the world is in the wrong. 
However, this humor creates him no enemies, 
for he does nothing with sourness or ob- 
stinacy; and his being unconfined to modes 
and forms makes him but the readier and 
more capable to please and oblige all who 
know him. When he is in town, he lives in 
Soho Square. It is said, he keeps himself 
a bachelor, by reason he was crossed in love 
by a perverse beautiful widow of the next 
county to him. Before this disappointment, 
Sir Roger was what you call a fine gentle- 
man, had often supped with my Lord 
Rochester and Sir George Ether ege, fought 
a duel upon his first coming to town, and 
kicked Bully Dawson in a public coffee house 
for calling him youngster. But, being ill 
used by the above mentioned widow, he was 
very serious for a year and a half; and 
though, his temper being naturally jovial, he 
at last got over it, he grew careless of him- 
self, and never dressed afterwards. He con- 
tinues to wear a coat and doublet of the 
same cut that were in fashion at the time of 
his repulse, which, in his merry humors, he 
tells us, has been in and out twelve times 
since he first wore it. He is now in his fifty- 
sixth year, cheerful, gay, and hearty ; keeps 
a good house both in town and country; a 
great lover of mankind : but there is such a 
mirthful cast in his behavior that he is rather 
beloved than esteemed. His tenants grow 
rich, his servants look satisfied, all the young 



202 



THE GREAT TEADITION 



women profess love to him, and the young 
men are glad of his company ; when he comes 
into a house, he calls the servants by their 
names, and talks all the way upstairs to a 
visit. I must not omit, that Sir Roger is a 
justice of the Quorum; that he fills the chair 
at a quarter-session with great abilities, 
and three months ago, gained universal ap- 
plause, by explaining a passage in the game- 
act. 

The gentleman next in esteem and author- 
ity among us is another bachelor, Avho is a 
member of the Inner Temple; a man of 
great probity, wit, and understanding; but 
he has chosen his place of residence rather 
to obey the direction of an old humorsome 
father, than in pursuit of his own inclina- 
tions. He was placed there to study the laws 
of the land, and is the most learned of any 
of the house in those of the stage. Aristotle 
and Longinus are much better understood 
by him than Littleton or Coke. The father 
sends up every post questions relating to 
marriage articles, leases, and tenures, in the 
neighborhood ; all which questions he agrees 
with an attorney to answer and take care of 
in the lump. He is studying the passions 
themselves, when he should be inquiring into 
the debates among men which arise from 
them. He knows the argument of each of 
the orations of Demosthenes and Tully ; but 
not one case in the reports of our own courts. 
No one ever took him for a fool, but none, 
except his intimate friends, know he has 
a great deal of wit. This turn makes him 
at once both disinterested and agreeable; as 
few of his thoughts are drawn from business, 
they are most of them fit for conversation. 
His taste of books is a little too just for the 
age he lives in ; he has read all, but approves 
of very few. His familiarity with the cus- 
toms, manners, actions, and writings of the 
ancients, makes him a very delicate observer 
of what occurs to him in the present world. 
He is an excellent critic, and the time of the 
play is his hour of business; exactly at five 
he passes through New Inn, crosses through 
Russell court, and takes a turn at Will's, 
till the play begins ; he has his shoes rubbed, 
and his periwig powdered at the barber's 
as you go into the Rose. It is for the good 
of the audience when he is at a play ; for the 
actors have an ambition to please him. 

The person of next consideration is Sir 
Andrew Freeport, a merchant of great 
eminence in the city of London. A person 
of indefatigable industry, strong reason, and 



great experience. His notions of trade are 
noble and generous, and (as every rich man 
has usually some sly way of jesting, which 
would make no great figure were he not a 
rich man) he calls the sea the British Com- 
mon. He is acquainted with commerce in all 
its parts, and will tell you that it is a stupid 
and barbarous way to extend dominion by 
arms, for true power is to be got by arts and 
industry. He will often argue that if this 
part of our trade were well cultivated, we 
should gain from one nation, — and if 
another, from another. I have heard him 
prove, that diligence makes more lasting ac- 
quisitions than valor, and that sloth has 
ruined more nations than the sword. He 
abounds in several frugal maxims, amongst 
which the greatest favorite is, "A penny 
saved is a penny got." A general trader of 
good sense is pleasanter company than a 
general scholar; and Sir Andrew having a 
natural unaffected eloquence, the perspicuity 
of his discourse gives the same pleasure that 
wit would in another man. He has made his 
fortunes himself; and says that England 
may be richer than other kingdoms, by as 
plain methods as he himself is richer than 
other men ; though at the same time I can 
say this of him, that there is not a point in 
the compass but blows home a ship in which 
he is an owner. 

Next to Sir Andrew in the club-room sits 
Captain Sentry, a gentleman of great cour- 
age, good understanding, but invincible mod- 
esty. He is one of those that deserve very 
well, but are very awkward at putting their 
talents within the observation of such as 
should take notice of them. He was some 
years a captain, and behaved himself with 
great gallantry in several engagements and 
at several sieges; but having a small estate 
of his own, and being next heir to Sir Roger, 
he has quitted a way of life in which no man 
can rise suitably to his merit, who is not 
something of a courtier as well as a soldier. 
I have heard him often lament, that in a pro- 
fession where merit is placed in so con- 
spicuous a view, impudence should get the 
better of modesty. When he has talked to 
this purpose, I never heard him make a sour 
expression, but frankly confess that he left 
the world, because he was not fit for it. A 
strict honesty and an even, regular behavior 
are in themselves obstacles to him that must 
press through crowds who endeavor at the 
same end with himself, the favor of a com- 
mander. He will, however, in his way of 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IDEALS OF SANITY AND ORDER 



203 



talk, excuse generals for not disposing ac- 
cording to men's desert, or inquiring into it : 
for, says he, that great man who has a mind 
to help me, has as many to break through to 
come at me, as I have to come at him: 
therefore he will conclude, that the man who 
would make a figure, especially in a mili- 
tary way, must get over all false modesty, 
and assist his patron against the importunity 
of other pretenders, by a proper assurance 
in his own vindication. He says it is a civil 
cowardice to be backward in asserting v/hat 
you ought to expect, as it is a military fear 
to be slow in attacking when it is your duty. 
With this candor does the gentleman speak 
of himself and others. The same frankness 
runs through all his conversation. The mili- 
tary part of his life has furnished him with 
many adventures, in the relation of which 
he is very agreeable to the company ; for he 
is never over-bearing, though accustomed to 
command men in the utmost degree below 
him ; nor ever too obsequious, from an habit 
of obeying men highly above him. 

But, that our society may not appear a 
set of humorists, unacquainted with the gal- 
lantries and pleasures of the age, we have 
among us the gallant Will Honeycomb, a 
gentleman who, according to his years, should 
be in the decline of his life, but, having ever 
been very careful of his person, and always 
had a very easy fortune, time has made but 
a very little impression, either by wrinkles 
on his forehead, or traces on his brain. His 
person is well turned, of a good height. He 
is very ready at that sort of discourse with 
which men usually entertain women. He has 
all his life dressed very well, and remem- 
bers habits as others do men. He can smile 
when one speaks to him, and laughs easily. 
He knows the history of every mode, and can 
inform you from what Frenchwomen our 
wives and daughters had this manner of 
curling their hair, that way of placing their 
hoods; and whose vanity to shew her foot 
made that part of the dress so short in such 
a year. In a word, all his conversation and 
knowledge have been in the female Avorld; 
as other men of his age will take notice to 
you what such a minister said upon such and 
such an occasion, he will tell you when the 
Duke of Monmouth danced at court, such a 
woman was then smitten, another was taken 
with him at the head of his troop in the 
Park. In all these important relations, he 
has ever about the same time received a kind 
glance or a blow of a fan from some cele- 



brated beauty, mother of the present lord 
such-a-one. . . . 

This way of talking of his very much 
enlivens the conversation among us of a 
more sedate turn; and I find there is not 
one of the company, but myself, who rarely 
sjjeak at all, but speaks of him as of that 
sort of man who is usually called a well- 
bred, fine gentleman. To conclude his char- 
acter, where women are not concerned, he is 
an honest, worthy man. 

I cannot tell whether I am to account him 
whom I am next to speak of, as one of our 
company; for he visits us but seldom, but 
when he does, it adds to every man else a 
new enjoyment of himself. He is a clergy- 
man, a very philosophic man, of general 
learning, great sanctity of life, and the most 
exact good breeding. He has the misfortune 
to be of a very weak constitution ; and con- 
sequently cannot aceeiDt of such cares and 
business as preferments in his function 
would oblige him to ; he is therefore among 
divines what a chamber-councillor is among 
lawyers. The probity of his mind, and the 
integrity of his life, create him followers, as 
being eloquent or loud advances others. He 
seldom introduces the subject he speaks 
upon ; but we are so far gone in years that 
he observes, when he is among us, an earn- 
estness to have him fall on some divine topic, 
which he always treats with much authority, 
as one who has no interests in this world, as 
one who is hastening to the object of all his 
wishes, and conceives hoj^e from his decays 
and infirmities. These are my ordinary com- 
panions. 

Public Opinion in the Making 

joseph addison 

[The Spectator, No. 403. June 12, 1712.] 

Qui mores hominum multornm vidit.' 

— Horace. 

When I consider this great city in its sev- 
eral quarters and divisions, I look upon it 
as an aggregate of various nations distin- 
guished from each other by their respective 
customs, manners, and interests. The courts 
of two countries do not so much differ from 
one another as the court and city in their 
peculiar ways of life and conversation. In 
short, the inhabitants of St. James's, not- 
withstanding they live under the same laws, 
and speak the same language, are a distinct 

' "Who sees the manners of many men." 



204 



THE OEEAT TEADITION 



people from those of Cheapside, who are 
likewise removed from those of the Temple 
on the one side, and those of Smithfield on 
the other, by several climates and degrees 
in their way of thinking and conversing 
together. 

For this reason, when any public affair is 
upon the anvil, I love to hear the reflections 
that arise upon it in the several districts and 
parishes of London and Westminster, and 
to ramble up and down a whole day together, 
in order to make myself acquainted with the 
opinions of my ingenious countrymen. By 
this means I know the faces of all the prin- 
cipal jDoliticians within the bills of morality ; 
and as every coffee house has some particu- 
lar statesman belonging to it, who is the 
mouth of the street where he lives, I always 
take care to place myself near him, in order 
to know his judgment on the present posture 
of affairs. The last progress that I made 
with this intention was about three months 
ago, wheiT^ we had a current report of the 
king of France's death. As I foresaw this 
would j)roduee a new face of things in 
Europe, and many curious speculations in 
our British coffee houses, I was very de- 
sirous to learn the thoughts of our most emi- 
nent politicians on that occasion. 

That I might begin as near the fountain- 
head as possible, I first of all called in at 
St. James's, where I found the whole out- 
ward room in a buz;z of politics. The specu- 
lations were but very indifferent toward the 
door, but grew finer as you advanced to the 
upper end of the room, and were so very 
much improved by a knot of theorists who 
sat in the inner room, within the steams of 
the coffee pot, that I there heard the whole 
SjDanish monarchy disposed of and all the 
line of Bourbon provided for in less than a 
quarter of an hour. 

I afterwards called in at Giles's, where I 
saw a board of French gentlemen sitting 
upon the . life and death of their grand 
monarque. Those among them who had 
espoused the Whig interest very positively 
affirmed that he departed this life about a 
week since, and therefore proceeded with- 
out any further delay to the release of their 
friends on the galleys, and to their own re- 
establishment ; but finding they could not 
agree among themselves, I proceeded on my 
intended progress. 

Upon my arrival at Jenny Man's, I saw an 
alert young fellow that cocked his hat upon 
a friend of his who entered just at the same 



time with myself, and accosted him after the 
following manner : "Well, Jack, the old prig 
is dead at last. Sharp's the word. Now or 
never, boy. Up to the walls of Paris di- 
rectly." With several other deep reflections 
of the same nature. 

I met with very little variation in the poli- 
tics between Charing Cross and Covent 
Garden. And upon my going into Will's, I 
found their discourse was gone off from the 
death of the French king to that of Monsieur 
Boileau, Racine, Corneille, and several other 
poets, whom they regretted on this occasion, 
as persons who would have obliged the world 
with very noble elegies on the death of so 
great a prince, and so eminent a patron of 
learning. 

At a coffee house near the Temple, I found 
a couple of young gentlemen engaged very 
smartly in a disjjute on the succession to 
the Spanish monarchy. One of them seemed 
to haye been retained as advocate for the 
Duke of .Anjou, the other for his Imperial 
Majesty. They were both for regulating the 
title to that kingdom by the statute laws of 
England ; but finding them going out of my 
depth I passed forward to Paul's church- 
yard, where I listened with great attention 
to a learned man, who gave the company 
an account of the deplorable state of France 
during the minority of the deceased king. 

I then turned on my right hand into Fish 
Street, where the chief politician of that 
quarter, upon hearing the news, (after hav- 
ing taken a pipe of tobacco, and ruminated 
for some time) "If," says he, "the king of 
France is certainly dead, we shall have 
plenty of mackerel this season; our fishery 
will not be disturbed by privateers, as it has 
been for these ten years loast." He after- 
wards considered how the death of this 
great man would affect our pilchards, and 
by several other remarks infused a general 
joy into his whole audience. 

I afterwards entered a by coffee house that 
stood at the upper end of a narrow lane, 
Avhere I met with a nonjuror, engaged very 
Avarmly with a laceman who was the great 
support of a neighboring conventicle. The 
matter in debate was whether the late French 
king was most like Augustus Cassar or Nero. 
The controversy was carried on with great 
heat on both sides, and as each of them 
looked upon me very frequently during the 
course of their debate, I was under some ap- 
prehension that they would appeal to me, 
and therefore laid down my penny at the 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OF SANITY AND OEDER 



205 



bar, and made the best of my way to Cheap- 
side. 

I here gazed upon the signs for some time 
before I found one to my purpose. The 
first object I met in the coffee room was a 
person who expressed a great grief for the 
death of the Trench king; but upon his ex- 
plaining himself, I found his sorrow did not 
arise from the loss of the monarch, but for 
his having sold out of the bank about three 
days before he heard the news of it : upon 
which a haberdasher, who was the oracle of 
the coffee house, and had his circle of ad- 
mirers about him, called several to witness 
that he had declared his opinion above a 
week before that the French king was cer- 
tainly dead ; to which he added, that consid- 
ering the late advices we had received from 
France, it was impossible that it could be 
otherwise. As he was laying these together 
and dictating to his hearers with great 
authority, there came in a gentleman from 
Garraway's, who told us that there were sev- 
eral letters from France just come in, with 
advice that the king was in good health, and 
was gone out a-hunting the very morning the 
post came away: ujDon which the haber- 
dasher stole off his hat that hung upon a 
wooden peg by him, and retired to his shop 
with gTeat confusion. This intelligence put 
a stop to my travels, which I had prose- 
cuted with much satisfaction; not being a 
little pleased to hear so many different opin- 
ions upon so great an event, and to observe 
how naturally upon such a piece of news 
everyone is apt to consider it with a regard 
to his particular interest and advantage. 

A Political Busybody 

JOSEPH ADDISON 

[The Tatter, No. 155. April 6, 1710.] 

Aliena negotia curat, 
Excussus propriis.i 

— Horace. 

From My Own Apartment, April 5. 

There lived some years since, within my 
neighborhood, a very grave person, an up- 
holsterer, who seemed a man of more than 
ordinary application to business. He was a 
very early riser and was often abroad two 
or three hours before any of his neighbors. 
He had a pai-ticular carefulness in the knit- 
ting of his brows and a kind of impatience 
in all his motions that plainly discovered he 

^ "When he had lost all business of his own, 
He ran in quest of news through all the town." 



was always intent on matters of importance. 
Upon my inquiry into his life and conversa- 
tion, I found him to be the greatest news- 
monger in our quarter-: that he rose before 
day to read the Postman; and that he would 
take two or three turns to the other end of 
the town before his neighbors were up, to 
see if there were any Dutch mails come in. 
He had a wife and several children ; but was 
much more inquisitive to know what passed 
in Poland than in his own family and was in 
greater pain and anxiety of mind for King 
Augustus's welfare than that of his near- 
est relations. He looked extremely thin in a 
dearth of news and never enjoyed himself 
in a westerly wind. This indefatigable kind 
of life was the ruin of his shop ; for about 
the time that his favorite prince left the 
crown of Poland, he broke and disap- 
peared. 

This man and his affairs had been long 
out of my mind, until about three days ago, 
as I was walking in St. James's park, I 
heard somebody at a distance hemming 
after me; and who should it be but my 
old neighbor, the upholsterer? I saw he 
was reduced to extreme poverty, by certain 
shabby superfluities in his dress : for, not- 
withstanding that it was a very sultry day 
for the time of the year, he wore a loose 
greatcoat and a muff, with a long campaign 
wig out of curl, to which he had added the 
ornament of a pair of black garters buckled 
under the knee. 

Upon his coming up to me, I was going to 
inquire into his present circumstances; but 
was prevented by his asking me, with a 
whisper, 'whether the last letters .brought 
any accounts that one might rely upon from 
Bender.' 

I told him, "None that I heard of," and 
asked him whether he had yet married his 
eldest daughter. 

He told me, "No. But pray," says he, 
"tell me sincerely what are your thoughts 
of the King of Sweden?" For though his 
wife and children were starving, I found 
his chief concern at present was for this 
great monarch. I told him, that I looked 
ujDon him as one of the first heroes of the 
age. 

"But pray," says he, "do you think there 
is anything in the story of his wound?" 
And finding me surprised at the question, 
"Nay," says he, "I only propose it to you." 

I answered that I thought there was no 
reason to doubt of it. 



206 



THE GEEAT TEAUITION 



''But why in the heel," says he, "more 
than any other part of the bodyf" 

"Because," said I, "the bullet chanced to 
light there." 

This extraordinary dialogue was no 
sooner ended but he began to launch out 
into a long dissertation upon the affairs of 
the North; and after having spent some 
time on them, he told me he was in a great 
perplexity how to reconcile the Supplement 
with the English Post and had been just 
now examining what the other papers say 
upon the same subject. "The Daily Courant," 
says he, "has these words. 'We have ad- 
vices from very good hands that a certain 
prince has some matters of great imjoortanee 
under consideration.' This is very mysteri- 
ous but the Post-hoy leaves us more in the 
dark; for he tells us 'That there are private 
intimations of measures taken by a certain 
prince which time will bring to light.' Now 
the Postman," says he, "who uses to be 
very clear, refers to the same news in these 
words : 'The late conduct of a certain prince 
affords great matter of speculation,' This 
certain jDrince," says the upholsterer, "whom 
they are all so cautious of naming, I take 

to be ." Upon which, though there 

was nobody near us, he whispered some- 
thing in my ear, which I did not hear, 
or think worth my while to make him re- 
peat. 

We were now got to the upper end of the 
Mall, where were three or four very odd 
fellows sitting together upon the bench. 
These I found were all of them politicians 
who used to sun themselves in that place 
every day about dinner time. Observing 
them to be curiosities in their kind and my 
friend's acquaintance, I sat down among 
them. 

The chief politician of the bench was a 
great asserter of paradoxes. He told us, 
with a seeming concern, that by some news 
he had lately read from Muscovy it ap- 
peared to him that there was a storm gather- 
ing in the Black Sea which might in time 
do hurt to the naval forces of this nation. 
To this he added that, for his part, he 
could not wish to see the Turk driven out of 
Europe, which he believed could not but be 
prejudicial to our woolen manufacture. He 
then told us that he looked upon those ex- 
traordinary revolutions which had lately 
happened in those parts of the world to have 
risen chiefly from two persons who were 
not much talked of; "and those," says he 



"are Prince Menzikoff and the Duchess of 
Mirandola." He backed his assertions with 
so many broken hints and such a show of 
dejDth and wisdom that we gave ourselves up 
to his opinions. 

The discourse at length fell upon a point 
which seldom escapes a knot of true-born 
Englishmen, whether, in case of a religious 
war, the Protestants would not be too 
strong for the Papists'? This we unani- 
mously determined on the Protestant side. 
One who sat on my right hand, and, as I 
found by his discourse, had been in the West 
Indies, assured us, that it would be a very 
easy matter for the Protestants to beat the 
Pope at sea; and added that whenever such 
a war does break out, it must turn to the 
good of the Leeward Islands. Upon this, one 
who sat at the end of the bench, and, as I 
afterwards found, was the geographer of the 
company, said that in case the Papists 
should drive the Protestants from these 
parts of Europe, when the worst came to 
the worst, it would be impossible to beat 
them out of Norway and Greenland, pro- 
vided the northern crowns hold together and 
the czar of Muscovy stand neuter. He 
further told us, for our comfort, that there 
were vast tracts of lands about the pole, in- 
habited neither by Protestants nor Papists 
and of greater extent than all the Roman 
Catholic dominions in Europe. 

When we had fully discussed this point 
my friend, the upholstered, began to exert 
himself upon the present negotiations of 
peace; in which he deposed princes, settled 
the bounds of kingdoms, and balanced the 
l^ower of Europe, with great justice and im- 
partiality. I at length took my leave of the 
company, and was going away, but had not 
gone thirty yards before the upholsterer 
hemmed again after me. Upon his ad- 
vancing toward me with a whisper, I ex- 
pected to hear some secret piece of news, 
which he had not thought fit to communi- 
cate to the bench; but instead of that, he 
desired me in my ear to lend him half-a- 
crown. In compassion to so needy a states- 
man, and to dissipate the confusion I found 
he was in, I told him, if he pleased, I would 
give him five shillings, to receive five pounds 
of him when the Great Turk was driven 
out of Constantinople; which he very 
readily accepted, but not before he had 
laid down to me the impossibility of such 
an event as the affairs of Europe now 
stand. 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IDEALS OF SANITY AND OEDER 



207 



This paper I design for the particular 
benefit of those worthy citizens who live 
more in a coffee house than in their shops, 



and whose thoughts are so taken up with 
the affairs of the allies that they forget 
their customers. 



11. STANDARDS OF INTELLECT AND TASTE 



A Busy Life 

JOSEPH ADDISON 

[The Spectator, No. 317. March 4, 1711-12.] 

Fruges consumere nati.' 

— Horace. 

Augustus, a few moments before his 
death, asked his friends who stood about him 
if they thought he had acted his part well ; 
and upon receiving such an answer as was 
due to his extraordinary merit, Let me then, 
says he, go off the stage with your applause, 
using the expression with which the Roman 
actors made their exit at the conclusion of 
a dramatic piece. I could wish that men, 
while they are in health, would consider 
well the nature of the part they are en- 
gaged in, and what figure it will make in 
the minds of those they leave behind them; 
whether it was worth coming into the world 
for, whether it be suitable to a reasonable 
being; in short, whether it appears grace- 
ful in this life, or will turn to an advantage 
in the next. Let the sycophant, or buffoon, 
the satirist, or the good companion, consider 
with himself, when his body shall be laid 
in the grave, and his soul joass into another 
state of existence, how much it will redound 
to his praise to have it said of him that no 
man in England eat better, that he had an 
admirable talent at turning his f I'iends into 
ridicule, that nobody outdid him at an ill- 
natured jest, or that he never went to bed 
before he had dispatched his third bottle. 
These are, however, very common funeral 
orations, and eulogiums on deceased per- 
sons who have acted among mankind with 
some figure and reputation. 

But if we look into the bulk of our species, 
they are such as are not likely to be re- 
membered a moment after their disappear- 
ance. They leave behind them no traces 
of their existence, but are forgotten as 
though they had never been. They are 
neither wanted by the poor, regretted by 
the rich, nor celebrated by the learned. They 
1 "Born but to feed." — Sir Theodore Martin. 



are neither missed in the commonwealth, nor 
lamented by private persons. Their actions 
are of no significancy to mankind, and 
might have been performed by creatures 
of much less dignity than those who are 
distinguished by the faculty of reason. An 
eminent French author speaks somewhere 
to the following purpose : I have often seen 
from my chamber window two noble crea- 
tures, both of them of an erect countenance, 
and endowed with reason. These two in- 
tellectual beings are employed, from morn- 
ing to night, in rubbing two smooth stones 
one upon another; that is, as the vulgar 
phrase it, in polishing marble. 

My friend. Sir Andrew Freeport, as we 
were sitting in 'the Club last night, gave 
us an account of a sober citizen who died 
a few days since. This honest man being 
of greater consequence in his own thoughts 
than in the eye of the world, had for some 
years past kept a journal of his life. Sir 
Andrew showed us one week of it. Since 
the occurrences set down in it mark out such 
a road of action as that I have been speak- 
ing of, I shall present my reader with a 
faithful copy of it; after having first in- 
formed him that the deceased person had 
in his youth been bred to trade, but find- 
ing himself not so well turned for business, 
he had for several years last past lived al- 
together upon a moderate annuity. 

Monday, Eight o'clock. I put on my 
clothes and walked into the parlor. 

Nine o'clock, ditto. Tied my knee- 
strings, and washed my hands. 

Hours ten, eleven, and twelve. Smoked 
three pipes of Virginia. Read the Supple- 
ment and Daily Courant. Things go ill in 
the north. Mr. Nisby's opinion thereupon. 

One o'clock in the afternoon. Chid Ralph 
for mislaying my tobacco-box. 

Two o'clock. Sat down to dinner. Mem. 
Too many plums, and no suet. 

From three to four. Took my afternoon's 
nap. 

From four to six. Walked into the fields. 
Wind, S.S.E. 



208 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



From six to ten. At the Club. Mr. Nis- 
by's opinion about the peace. 

Ten o'clock. Went to bed, slept sound. 

Tuesday^ Being Holiday^ Eight o'clock. 
Rose as usual. 

Nine o'clock. Washed hands and face, 
shaved, put on my double soled shoes. 

Ten, eleven, twelve. Took a walk to 
Islington. 

One. Took a pot of Mother Cob's Mild. 

Between two and three. Returned, dined 
on a knuckle of veal and bacon. Mem. 
Sprouts wanting. 

Three. Nap as usual. 

From four to six. Coffee house. Read 
the news. A dish of twist. Grand Vizier 
strangled. 

From six to ten. At the Club. Mr. 
Nisby's account of the Great Turk. 
. Ten. Dream of the Grand Vizier. Broken 
sleep. 

Wednesday, Eight o'clock. Tongue of 
my shoe-buckle broke. Hands, but not 
face. 

Nine. Paid off the butcher's bill. Mem. 
To be allowed for the last leg of mutton. 

Ten, eleven. At the coffee house. More 
work in the north. Stranger in a black 
wig asked me how stocks went. 

From twelve to one. Walked in the 
fields. Wind to the south. 

From one to two. Smoked a pipe and a 
half. 

Two. Dined as usual. Stomach good. 

Three. Nap broke by the falling of a 
pewter-dish. Mem. Cookmaid in love, and 
grown careless. 

From four to six. At the coffee house. 
Advice from Smyrna, that the Grand Vizier 
was first of all strangled, and afterwards 
beheaded. 

Six o'clock in the evening. Was half an 
hour in the Club before anybody else came. 
Mr. Nisby of opinion that the Grand Vizier 
was not strangled the sixth instant. 

Ten at night. Went to bed. Slept with- 
out waking till nine next morning. 

Thursday, Nine o'clock. Stayed within 
till two o'clock for Sir Timothy, who did not 
bring me my annuity according to his 
promise. 

Two in the afternoon. Sat down to din- 
ner. Loss of appetite. Small beer sour. 
Beef overcorned. 

Three. Could not take my nap. 

Four and five. Gave Ralph a box on the 
ear. Turned off my cookmaid. Sent a mes- 



sage to Sir Timothy. Mem. I did not go 
to the Club tonight. Went to bed at nine 
o'clock. 

Friday. Passed the morning in medita- 
tion upon Sir Timothy, who was with me a 
quarter before twelve. 

Twelve o'clock. ^ Bought a new head to 
my cane, and a tongue to my buckle. Drank 
a glass of purl to recover appetite. 

Two and three. Dined, and slept well. 

From four to six. Went to the coffee 
house. Met Mr. Nisby there. Smoked sev- 
eral pipes. Mr. Nisby of opinion- that laced 
coffee is bad for the head. 

Six o'clock. At the Club as steward. Sat 
late. 

Twelve o'clock. Went to bed, dreamt 
that I drank small beer with the Grand 
Vizier. 

Saturday. Waked at eleven, walked in 
the fields. Wind N.E. 

Twelve. Caught in a shower. 

One in the afternoon. Returned home, 
and dried myself. 

Two. Mr. Nisby dined with me. First 
course mari'ow-bones. Second ox-cheek, 
with a bottle of Brook's and Hellier. 

Three o'clock. Overslept myself. 

Six. Went to the Club. Like to have 
fallen into a gutter. Grand Vizier certainly 
dead, etc. 

I question not but the reader will be sur- 
prised to find the above-mentioned journalist 
taking so much care of a life that was filled 
with such inconsiderable actions and re- 
ceived so very small improvements ; and yet, 
if we look into the behavior of many whom 
we daily converse with, we shall find that 
most of their hours are taken up in those 
tliree important articles of eating, drinking, 
and sleeping; I do not suppose that a man 
loses his time, who is not engaged in i^ublic 
affairs, or in an illustrious course of action. 
On the contrary, I believe our hours may 
very often be more profitably laid out in 
such transactions as make no figure in the 
world than in such as are apt to draw upon 
them the attention of mankind. One may 
become wiser and better by several methods 
of employing one's self in secrecy and si- 
lence, and do what is laudable without noise 
or ostentation. I would, however, recom- 
mend to every one of my readers the keep- 
ing a journal of their lives for one week, 
and setting down punctually their whole 
series of employments during that space 
of time. This kind of self-examination 
would give them a true state of themselves, 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IDEALS OF SANITY AND ORDER 



209 



and incline them to consider seriously what 
they are about. One day would rectify the 
omissions of another, and make a man 
weigh all those indifferent actions, which, 
though they are easily forgotten, must cer- 
tainly be accounted for. 

A Lady's Library 

JOSEPH ADDISON 

[The Spectator, No. 37. Thursday, 
April 12, 1710-lL] 

Non ilia colo calathisve Minervae 

Femineas assueta manus .^ — Virgil. 

Some months ago, ray friend Sir Roger, 
being in the country, enclosed a letter to 
me, directed to a certain lady, whom I shall 
here call by the name of Leonora, and as 
it contained matters of consequence, desired 
me to deliver it to her with my own hand. 
Accordingly I waited upon her Ladyship 
pretty early in the morning, and was de- 
sired by her woman to walk into her Lady's 
library, till such time as she was in a readi- 
ness to receive me. The very sound of a 
lady's library gave me a great curiosity to see 
it ; and as it was some time before the lady 
came to me, I had an opportunity of turn- 
ing over a great many of her books, which 
were ranged together in a very beautiful 
order. At the end of the folios (which 
were finely bound and gilt) were great jars 
of china placed one above another in a very 
noble piece of architecture. The quartos 
were separated from the octavos by a pile 
of smaller vessels, which rose in a delightful 
pyramid. The octavos were bounded by tea- 
dishes of all shapes, colors, and sizes, which 
were so disposed on a wooden frame that 
they looked like one continued pillar in- 
dented with the finest strokes of sculpture 
and stained with the greatest variety of 
dyes. 

That part of the library which was de- 
signed for the reception of plays and 
pamphlets, and other loose papers, was en- 
closed in a kind of square, consisting of 
one of the prettiest grotesque works that ever 
I saw, and made up of scaramouches, lions, 
monkeys, mandarins, trees, shells, and a 
thousand other odd figures in chinaware. 
In the midst of the room was a little japan 
table, with a quire of gilt paper upon it, 
and on the paper a silver snuff box made 
in the shape of a little book. I found there 

' Unbred to spinning, in the loom unskilled. — 
Dryden. 



were several other counterfeit books upon 
the upper shelves, which were carved in 
wood, and served only to fill up the number, 
like fagots in the muster of a regiment. I 
was wonderfully pleased with such a mixed 
kind of furniture as seemed very suitable 
both to the lady and the scholar, and did not 
know, at first, whether I should fancy my- 
self in a grotto or in a library. 

Upon my looking into the books, I found 
there were some few which the lady had 
bought for her own use; but that most of 
them had been got together, either because 
she had heard them praised, or because she 
had seen the authors of them. Among sev- 
eral that I examined, I very well remember 
these that follow: 
Ogilby's Virgil. 
Dryden's Juvenal. 
Cassandra. 
Cleopatra. 

Astraea. 

Sir Isaac Newton's Works. 
The Grand Cyrus; with a pin stuck in 
one of the middle leaves. 

Pembroke's Arcadia. 

Lock of Human Understanding, with a 
paper of patches in it. 

A spelling-book. 

A dictionary for the explanation of hard 
words. 

Sherlock ui3on Death. 

The Fifteen Comforts of Matrimony. 

Sir William Temple's Essays. 

Father Malebranche's Search after Truth ; 
translated into English. 

A book of novels. 

The Academy of Compliments. 

Culpepper's Midwifery. 

The Ladies' Calling. 

Tales in Verse, by Mr. D'Urfey; bound 
in red leather, gilt on the back, and doubled 
down in several places. 

All the classic authors in wood. 

A set of Elzevirs by the same hand. 

Clelia ; which opened of itself in the place 
that describes two lovers in a bower. 

Baker's Chronicle. 

Advice to a Daughter. 

The New Atalantis, with a key to it. 

Mr. Steele's Christian Hero. 

A i^rayer-book ; with a bottle of Hungary 
water by the side of it. 

Dr. Sacheverell's sioeeeh. 

Fielding's Trial. 

Seneca's Morals. 

Taylor's Holy Living and Dying. 



210 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



La Ferte's Instructions for Country 
Dances. » 

I was taking a catalogue in my pocket- 
book of these and several other authors, 
when Leonora entered, and, upon my pre- 
senting her with the letter from the knight, 
told me, with an unspeakable grace, that she 
hoped Sir Roger was in good health; I an- 
swered "Yes," for I hate long speeches, and 
after a bow or two retired. 

Leonora was formerly a celebrated 
beauty, and is still a very lovely woman. 
She has been a widow for two or three 
years, and being unfortunate in her first 
marriage, has taken a resolution never to 
venture ui3on a second. She has no chil- 
dren to take care of, and leaves the man- 
agement of her estate to my good friend Sir 
Roger. But as the mind naturally sinks into 
a kind of lethargy, and falls asleep, that is 
not agitated by some favorite pleasures and 
pursuits, Leonora has turned all the j^as- 
sions of her. sex into a love of books and 
retirement. She converses chiefly with men 
(as she has often said herself), but it is 
only in their writings; and admits of very 
few male visitants except my friend Sir 
Roger, whom she hears with great pleasure 
and without scandal. As her reading has 
lain very much among romances, it has 
given her a very particular turn of think- 
ing, and discovers itself even in her house, 
her gardens, and her furniture. Sit Roger 
has entertained me an hour together with a 
description of her country seat, which is 
situated in a kind of wilderness, about an 
hundred miles distant from London, and 
looks like a little enchanted palace. The 
rocks about her are shajDed into artificial 
grottoes covered with woodbines and jessa- 
mines. The woods are cut into shady walks, 
twisted into bowers, and filled with cages of 
turtles. The springs are made to run 
among pebbles, and by that means taught to 
murmur very agreeably. They are likewise 
collected into a beautiful lake that is in- 
habited by a couple of swans, and empties 
itself by a little rivulet, which runs through 
a green meadow, and is known in the family 
by the name of The Purling Stream. 

The knight likewise tells me that this lady 
preserves her game better than any of the 
gentlemen in the country. "Not," says Sir 
Roger, "that she sets so great a value uiDon 
her partridges and pheasants, as upon her 
larks and nightingales; for she says that 
every bird which is killed in her ground will 



spoil a concert, and that she shall certainly 
miss him the next year." 

When I think how oddly this lady is im- 
proved by learning, I look upon her with a 
mixture of admiration and pity. Amidst 
these innocent entertainments which she has 
formed to herself, how much more valuable 
does she appear than those of her sex who 
employ themselves in diversions that are 
less reasonable, though more in fashion. 
What improvements would a woman have 
made, who is so susceptible of impressions 
from what she reads, had she been guided 
to such books as have a tendency to en- 
lighten the understanding and rectify the 
passions, as well as to those which are of 
little more use than to divert the imagina- 
tion. 

But the manner of a lady's employing 
herself usefully in reading shall be the sub- 
ject of another paper, in which I design to 
recommend such particular books as may be 
proper for the improvement of the sex. And 
as this is a subject of a very nice nature, I 
shall desire my correspondents to give me 
their thoughts upon it. 

The Education of Women 

daniel defoe 

[From An Essay upon Projects, 1697] 

I have often thought of it as one of the 
most barbarous customs in the world, con- 
sidering us as a civilized and a christian 
country, that we deny the advantages of 
learning to women. We reproach the sex 
every day with folly and impertinence; 
while I am confident, had they the advan- 
tages of education equal to us, they would 
be guilty of less than ourselves. 

One would wonder, indeed, how it should 
happen that women are conversible at all, 
since they are only beholden to natural 
parts for all their knowledge. Their youth 
is spent to teach them to stitch and sew, or 
make baubles. They are taught to read, in- 
deed, and perhaps to write their names, or 
so ; and that is the height of a woman's edu- 
cation. And I would but ask any who slight 
the sex for their understanding, what is a 
man (a gentleman, 1 mean) good for, that 
is taught no more? 1 need not give in- 
stances, or examine the character of a gen- 
tleman, with a good estate, of a good fam- 
ily, and with tolerable parts ; and examine 
what figure he makes for want of education. 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OF SANITY AND OEDEE 



211 



The soul is placed in the body like a 
rough diamond, and must be polished, or 
the luster of it will never appear. And 'tis 
manifest, that as the rational soul distin- 
guishes us from brutes, so education carries 
on the distinction, and makes some less brut- 
ish than others. This is too evident to need 
any demonstration. But why then should 
women be denied the benefit of instruction'? 
If knowledge and understanding had been 
useless additions to the sex, God Almighty 
would never have given them capacities ; for 
he made nothing needless. Besides, I would 
ask such, what they can see in ignorance, 
that they should think it a neeessaiy orna- 
ment to a woman? or how much worse is a 
wise woman than a fool? or what has the 
woman done to forfeit the privilege of 
being taught ? Does she plague us with her 
pride and impertinence? Why did we not 
let her learn, that she might have had more 
wit? Shall we upbraid women with folly, 
when 'tis only the error of this inhuman 
custom that hindered them from being made 
wiser? 

The capacities of women are supposed to 
be greater, and their senses quicker than 
those of the men ; and what they might be 
capable of being bred to, is plain from some 
instances of female wit, which this age is 
not without, which upbraids us with injus- 
tice, and looks as if we denied women the 
advantages of education, for fear they 
should vie with the men in their improve- 
ments. . . . 

They should be taught all sorts of breed- 
ing suitable both to their genius and qual- 
ity. And in particular, music and dancing, 
which it would be cruelty to bar the sex of 
because they are their darlings. But be- 
sides this, they should be taught languages, 
as particularly French and Italian, and I 
would venture the injury of giving a woman 
more tongues than one. They should, as a 
particular study, be taught all the graces of 
speech, and all the necessary air of conver- 
sation, which our common education is so 
defective in that I need not expose it. They 
should be brought to read books, and espe- 
cially history ; and so to read as to make 
them understand the world, and be able to 
know and judge of things when they hear 
of them. 

To such whose genius would lead them to 
it, I would deny no sort of learning; but the 
chief thing, in general, is to cultivate the 
understandings of the sex, that they may be 
capable of all sorts of conversation; that 



their parts and judgments being improved, 
they may be as profitable in "their conversa- 
tion as they are pleasant. 

Women, in my observation, have little or 
no difference in them, but as they are or are 
not distinguished by education. Tempers, 
indeed, may in some degree influence them, 
but the mam distinguishing part is their 
breeding. 

The whole sex are generally quick and 
sharp — I believe, I may be allowed to say, 
generally so : for you rarely see them lump- 
ish and heavy when they are children, as 
boys will often be. If a woman be well 
bred, and taught the proper management of 
her natural wit, she proves generally very 
sensible and retentive. 

And, without partiality, a woman of 
sense and manners is the finest and most 
delicate part of God's creation, the glory of 
her Maker, and the great instance of his 
singular regard to man, his darling 
creature, to whom He gave the best gift 
either God could bestow or man receive. 
And 'tis the sordidest piece of folly and in- 
gratitude in the world, to withhold from the 
sex the due luster which the advantages of 
education give 'to the natural beauty of their 
minds. 

A woman .well bred and well taught, fur- 
nished with the additional accomplishments 
of knowledge and behavior, is a creature 
without comparison. Her society is the 
emblem of sublimer enjoyments, her person 
is angelic, and her conversation heavenly. 
She is all softness and sweetness, peace, 
love, wit, and delight. She is every way 
suitable to the sublimest wish ; and the man 
that has such a one to his portion, has noth- 
ing to do but to rejoice in her, and be thank- 
ful. 

On llie other hand, suppose her to be the 
very same woman, and rob her of the bene- 
fit of education, and it follows : 

If her temi3er be good, want of education 
makes her soft and easy. 

Her wit, for want of teaching, makes her 
impertinent and talkative. 

Her knowledge, for want of judgment 
and experience, makes her fanciful and 
whimsical. 

If her temper be bad, want of breeding 
makes her worse; and she grows haughty, 
insolent, and loud. 

If she be passionate, want of manners 
makes her a termagant and a scold, which 
is much at one with lunatic. 

If she be proud, want of discretion 



212 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



(which still is breeding) makes her con- 
ceited, fantastic, and ridiculous. 

And from these she degenerates to be tur- 
bulent, clamorous, noisy, nasty, and the 
devil ! . . . 

The great distinguishing difference, which 
is seen in the world between men and 
women, is in their education; and this is 
-manifested by comparing it with the differ- 
ence between one man or woman, and 
another. 

And herein it is that I take upon me to 
make such a bold assertion, that all the 
world are mistaken in their practice about 
women. For I cannot think that God Al- 
mighty ever made them so delicate, so glori- 
ous creatures, and furnished them with such 
charms, so agreeable and so delightful to 
mankind, with souls capable of the game 
accomplishments with men; and all, to be 
only stewards of our ^ouses, cooks, and 
slaves. 

Not that I am for exalting the female 
government in the least ; but, in short, I 
would have men take women for compan- 
ions, and educate them to be fit for it. A 
woman of sense and breeding will scorn as 
much to encroach upon the prerogative of 
man, as a man of sense will scorn to oppress 
the weakness of the woman. But if the 
women's souls were refined and improved 
by teaching, that word would be lost. To 
say the weakness of the sex, as to judg- 
ment, would be nonsense; for ignorance 
and folly would be no more to be found 
among women than men. 

I remember a passage, which I heard 
from a very fine woman. She had wit and 
capacity enough, an extraordmary shape 
and face, and a great fortune, but had been 
cloistered up all her time, and for fear of 
being stolen, had not had the liberty of 
being taught the common necessary knowl- 
edge of women's affairs. And when she 
came to converse in the world her natural 
wit made her so sensible of the want of 
education, that she gave this short reflec- 
tion on herself: "I am ashamed to talk 
with my very maids," says she, "for I don't 
know when they do right or wrong. I 
had more need go to school, than be mar- 
ried." 

I need not enlarge on the loss the defect 
of education is to the sex, nor argue the 
benefit of the contrary practice. 'Tis a 
thing will be more easily granted than rem- 
edied. This chapter is but an essay at the 
thing; and I refer the practice to those 



happy days (if ever they shall be) when 
men shall be wise enough to mend it. 



From An Essay on Criticism (1711) 

ALEXANDER POPE 

First follow Nature, and your judgment 
frame 

By her just standard, which is still the 
same; 

Unerring Nature, still divinely bright, 

One clear, unchanged, and universal light, 

Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart, 

At once the source, and end, and test of Art. 

Art from that fund each just supply pro- 
vides, 

Works without show, and without pomp 
presides : 

In some fair body thus the informing soul 

With spirits feeds, with vigor fills the whole. 

Each motion guides, and every nerve sus- 
tams ; 

Itself unseen, but in the effects, remains. 

Some, to whom Heaven in wit has been pro- 
fuse, 

Want as much more, to turn it to its use; 

For wit and judgment often are at strife, 

Though meant each other's aid, like man 
and wife. 

'Tis more to guide than spur the Muse's 
steed ; 

Restrain his fury, than provoke his speed; 

The winged courser, like a generous horse. 

Shows most true mettle when you check his 
course. 
Those rules of old discovered, not devised. 

Are Nature still, but Nature methodized; 

Nature, like liberty, is but restrained 

By the same laws which first herself or- 
dained. 
Hear how learned Greece her useful rules 
indites. 

When to repress, and when indulge our 
■flights : 

High on Parnassus' top her sons she 
showed. 

And pointed out those arduous paths they 
trod ; 

Held from afar, aloft, the immortal prize, 

And urged the rest by equal steps to rise. 

Just precepts thus from great examples 
given, 

She drew from them what they derived from 
Heaven. 

The generous critic fanned the poet's fire. 

And taught the world with reason to admire. 

Then criticism the Muses' handmaid proved, 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OF SANITY AND OEDEE 



213 



To dress her charms, and make her more 
beloved : 

But following wits from that intention 
strayed, 

Who could not win the mistress, wooed the 
maid; 

Against the poets their own arms they 
turned. 

Sure to hate most the men from whom they 
learned. 

So modern 'potheearies, taught the art 

By doctor's bills to play the doctor's part, 

Bold in the practice of mistaken rules, 

Prescribe, apply, and call their masters 
fools. 

Some on the leaves of ancient authors 
prey. 

Nor time nor moths e'er spoiled so much as 
they. 

Some dryly plain, without invention's aid. 

Write dull receipts, how poems may be 
made. 

These leave the sense, their learning to dis- 
play, 

And those exjilain the meaning quite away. 
You, then, whose judgment the right 
course would steer. 

Know well each ancient's proper character; 

His fable, subject, scope in every page; 

Religion, country, genius of his age : 

Without all these at once before your eyes. 

Cavil you may, but never criticize. 

Be Homer's works your study and de- 
light. 

Read them by day, and meditate by night; 

Thence form your judgment, thence your 
maxims bring. 

And trace the Muses upward to their spring. 

Still with itself compared, his text peruse; 

And let your comment be the Mantuan 
Muse. 
When first young Maro in his boundless 
mind 

A Avork to outlast immortal Rome designed. 

Perhaps he seemed above the critic's law, 

And but from nature's fountains scorned to 
draw : 

But when to examine every part he came. 

Nature and Homer were, he found, the 
same. 

Convinced, amazed, he checks the bold de- 
sign ; 

And rules as strict his labored work eon- 
fine, 

As if the Stagirite o'erlooked each line. 

Learn hence for ancient rules a just es- 
teem; 

To copy nature is to copy them. 



How TO Judge a Play 

JOSEPH ADDISON 

[The Tatler, No. 165. — Saturday, 
April 29, 17 10 A 

It has always been my endeavor to dis- 
tinguish between realities and appearances 
and to separate true merit from the pre- 
tense to it. As it shall ever be my study to 
make discoveries of this nature in human 
life and to settle the proper distinctions be- 
tween the virtues and perfections of man- 
kind and those false colors and resemblances 
of them that shine alike in the eyes of the 
vulgar, so I shall be more particularly care- 
ful to search into the various merits and 
pretenses of the learned world. This is the 
more necessary, because there seems to be a 
general combination among the pedants to 
extol one another's labors and cry up one 
another's parts; while men of sense, either 
through that modesty which is natural to 
them, or the scorn they have for such tri- 
fling commendations, enjoy their stock of 
knowledge, like a hidden treasure, with sat- 
isfaction and silence. Pedantiy indeed, in 
learning", is like hypocrisy in religion, a 
form of knowledge without the power of 
it; that attracts the eyes of the common 
people; breaks out in noise and show; and 
finds its reward, not from any uiward pleas- 
ure that attends it, but from the praises and 
approbations which it receives from men. 

Of this shallow species there is not a 
more importunate, empty, and conceited an- 
imal than that which is generally known by 
the name of a Critic. This, in the common 
acceptation of the word, is one that, with- 
out entering into the sense and soul of an 
author, has a few general rules, which, like 
mechanical instruments, he applies to the 
works of every writer ; and as they quadrate 
with them, pronounces the author perfect 
or defective. He is master of a certain set 
of words, as Unity, Style, Fire, Phlegm, 
Easy, Natural, Turn, Sentiment, and the 
like; which he varies, compounds, divides, 
and throws together, in every part of his 
discourse, without any thought or meaning. 
The marks you may know him by are an 
elevated eye and a dogmatical brow, a posi- 
tive voice and a contempt for everything 
that comes out, whether he has read it or 
not. He dwells altogether in generals. He 
praises or dispraises in the lump. He shakes 
his head very frequently at the pedantry of 
universities and bursts into laughter when 



214 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



you mention an author that is not known 
at Will's. He hath formed his judgment 
upon Homer, Horace, and Virgil, not from 
their own works, but from those of Rapin 
and Bossu. He knows his own strength so 
well that he never dares praise any thing in 
which he has not a French author for his 
voucher. 

With these extraordinary talents and ac- 
complishments. Sir Timothy Tittle puts men 
in vogue, or condemns them to obscurity, 
and sits as judge of life and death upon 
every author that appears in public. It 
is impossible to represent the pangs, 
agonies, and convulsions which Sir Timothy 
expresses in every feature of his face and 
muscle of his body upon the reading a bad 
poet. 

About a week ago, I was engaged, at a 
friend's house of mine, in an agreeable con- 
versation with his wife and daughters, 
when, in the height of our mirth. Sir Tim- 
othy, who makes love to my friend's eldest 
daughter, came in amongst us, puffing and 
blowing as if he had been very much out 
of breath. He immediately called for a 
chair and desired leave to sit down without 
any further ceremony. I asked him, where 
he had been"? whether he was out of order? 
He only replied, that he was quite spent, 
and fell a cursing in soliloquy. I could 
hear him cry, "A wicked rogue — an ex- 
ecrable wretch — was there ever such a mon- 
ster!" The young ladies upon this began 
to be affrighted, and asked, whether anyone 
had hurt him? He answered nothing, but 
still talked to himself. ''To lay the first 
scene," says he, "ui St. James's Park and 
the last in Northamptonshire!" 

"Is that all?" said I. "Then I suppose 
you have been at the rehearsal of a play 
this morning." 

"Been!" says he; "I have been at North- 
ampton, in the park, in a lady's bed-cham- 
ber, in a dining-room, everywhere ; the rogue 

has led me such a dance " 

Though I could scarce forbear laughing 
at his discourse, I told him I was glad it 
was no worse, and that he was only meta- 
phorically weary. 

"In short, sir," says he, "the author has 
not observed a single unity in his whole 
play; the scene shifts in every dialogue; 
the villain has hurried me up and down at 
such a rate that I am tired off my legs." 

I could not but observe with some pleas- 
ure that the young lady whom he made love 
to conceived a very just aversion toward 



him, upon seeing him so very passionate in 
trifles. And as she had that natural sense 
which makes her a better judge than a thou- 
sand critics, she began to rally him upon 
this foolish humor. "For my part," says 
she, "I never knew a play take that was 
written up to your rules, as you call them." 
"How, Madam !" says he. "Is that your 
opinion? I am sure you have a better 
taste." 

"It is a pretty kind of magic," says she, 
"the poets have, to transport an audience 
from place to place without the help of a 
coach and horses; I could travel round the 
world at such a rate. It is such an enter- 
tainment as an enchantress finds when she 
fancies herself in a wood, or upon a moun- 
tain, at a feast, or a solemnity; though at 
the same time she has never stirred out of 
her cottage." 

"Your simile, Madam," says Sir Tim- 
othy, "is by no means just." 

"Pray," says she, "let my similes pass 
without a criticism. I must confess," con- 
tinued she (for I found she was resolved to 
exasperate him), "I laughed very heartily 
at the last new comedy which you found so 
much fault with." 

"But, Madam," says he, "you ought not 

to have laughed ; and I defy anyone to show 

me a single rule that you could laugh by." 

"Ought not to laugh!" says she; "pray 

who should hinder me?" 

"Madam," says he, "there are such people 
in the world as Rapin, Dacier, and several 
others, that ought to have spoiled your 
mirth." 

"I have heard," says the young lady, 
"that your great critics are always very 
bad poets : I fancy there is as much differ- 
ence between the works of the one and the 
other as there is between the carriage of a 
dancing-master and a gentleman. I must 
confess," continued she, "I would not be 
troubled with so fine a judgment as yours 
is; for I find you feel more vexation in a 
bad comedy than I do in a deep tragedy." 

"Madam," says Sir Timothy, "that is not 
my fault ; they should learn the art of writ- 
ing." 

"For my part," says the young lady, "I 
should think the greatest art in your writers 
of comedies is to please." 

"To please !" says Sir Timothy ; and im- 
mediately fell a-laughing. 

"Truly," says she, "that is my opinion." 
Upon this he composed his countenance, 
looked upon his watch, and took his leave. 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IDEALS OF SANITY AND ORDER 



215 



I hear that Sir Timothy has not been at 
my friend's house since this notable confer- 
ence, to the great satisfaction of the young 
lady, who by this means has got rid of a 
very impertinent fop. 

I must confess, I could not but observe 



with a great deal of surprise how this gen- 
tleman, by his ill-nature, folly, and affecta- 
tion, had made himself capable of suffering 
so many imaginary pains and looking with 
such a senseless severity upon the common 
diversions of life. 



III. POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEALS 



The True Born Englishman (1701) 

daniel defoe 

A true born Englishman's a contradiction ! 
In speech, an irony ; in fact, a fiction ! 
A banter made to be a test of fools! 
Which those that use it, justly ridicules; 
A metaphor invented to express 
A man akin to all the universe ! 

For as the Scots, as learned men have said. 
Throughout the world their wandering seed 

have spread, 
So open-handed England, 'tis believed, 
Has all the gleanings of the world received. 
Some think, of England 'twas, our Savior 

meant 
The Gospel should to all the world be sent, 
Since, when the blessed sound did hither 

reach, 
They to all nations might be said to preach. 

'Tis well that virtue gives nobility; 

How shall we else the want of birth and 

blood supply? 
Since scarce one family is left alive, 
Which does not from some foreigner derive. 
Of sixty thousand English gentlemen 
Whose names and arms in registers remain. 
We challenge all our heralds to declare 
Ten families which English Saxons are ! 

Trance justly boasts the ancient noble line 
Of Bourbon, Montmorency, and Lorraine. 
The Germans, too, their House of Austria 

show, 
And Holland their invincible Nassau — 
Lines which in heraldry were ancient gTown, 
Before the name of Englishman was known. 
Even Scotland, too, her elder glory shows! 
Her Gordons, Hamiltons, and her Monroes; 
Douglas, Maekays, and Grahams, names 

well known 
Long before ancient England knew her 



But England, modern to the last degree. 
Borrows or makes her own nobility ; 



And yet she boldly boasts of pedigree! 
Repines that foreigners are put upon her. 
And talks of her antiquity and honor! 
Her S(aelvvil)les, S(avi)les, C(eci)ls, Dela- 

( me) res, 
M(ohu)ns and M(ontag)ues, D(ura)s, and 

V(ee)res; 
Not one have English names, yet all are 

English peers ! 
Your Houblons, Papillons, and Lethuliers 
Pass now for true born English knights and 

squires. 
And make good senate members, or lord 

mayors. 
Wealth (howsoever got) in England, makes 
Lords, of mechanics ! gentlemen, of rakes ! 
Antiquity and birth are needless here. 
'Tis impudence and money make a peer ! . . . 

Then let us boast .of ancestors no more, 
Or deeds of heroes done in days of yore, 
In latent records of the ages past. 
Behind the rear of time, in long oblivion 

placed. 
For if our virtues must in lines descend. 
The merit with the families would end, 
And intermixtures would most fatal grow, 
For vice would be hereditary too ; 
The tainted blood would of necessity, 
Involuntary wickedness convey ! 
Vice, like ill-nature, for an age or two, 
May seem a generation to pursue : 
But virtue seldom does regard the breed. 
Fools do the wise, and wise men fools suc- 
ceed. 
What is it to us, what ancestors we had'? 
If good, what better? or what worse, if 

bad? 
Examples are for imitation set. 
Yet all men follow virtue with regret. 

Could but our ancestors retrieve their fate. 

And see their offspring thus degenerate ; 

How we contend for birth and names un- 
known, 

And build on their past actions, not our 
own; 



216 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



They'd cancel records, and their tombs de- 
face, 

And openly disown the vile degenerate 
race! 

For fame of families is all a cheat ; 

'Tis personal virtue only makes us great! 

The British Constitution 
joseph addison 

'CI (piKraTri yij firirep^ ws aefivbv crcpoBp' el 
Tots vovv exovcTL KTrjfiaA 

[The Spectator, No. 287. — January 29, 
1712.] 

I look upon it as a peculiar happiness, 
that were I to choose of what religion I 
would be, and under what government I 
would live, I should most certainly give the 
preference to that form of religion and gov- 
ernment which is established in my own 
country. In this point I think I am de- 
termined by reason and conviction; but if 
I shall be told that I am acted by prejudice, 
I am sure it is an honest prejudice; it is a 
prejudice that arises from the love of my 
country, and therefore such an one as I will 
always indulge. I have in several papers 
endeavored to express my duty and esteem 
for the Church of England, and design this 
as an essay upon the civil part of our con- 
stitution, having often entertained myself 
with reflections on this subject, which I have 
not met with in other writers. 

That form of government appears to me 
the most reasonable, which is most con- 
formable to the equality that we find in 
human nature, provided it be consistent with 
public peace and tranquillity. This is what 
may properly be called liberty, which ex- 
empts one man from subjection to another 
so far as the order and economy of govern- 
ment will permit. 

Liberty should reach every individual of 
a people, as they all share one com- 
mon nature; if it only spreads among 
particular branches, there had better be 
none at all, since- such a liberty only aggra- 
vates the misfortune of those who are de- 
prived of it, by setting before them a dis- 
agreeable subject of comparison. 

This liberty is best preserved, where the 
legislative power is lodged in several per- 
sons, especially if those persons are of dif- 
ferent ranks and interests; for where they 

' Dear native land, how do the good and wise 
Thy happy clime and countless blessings prize ! 



are of the same rank, and consequently have 
an interest to manage peculiar to that rank, 
it differs but little from a despotical govern- 
ment in a single person. But the greatest 
security a people can have for their liberty, 
is when the legislative power is in the hands 
of persons so happily distinguished, that 
by providing for the particular interests of 
their several ranks, they are providing for 
the whole body of the people that has not 
a common interest with at least one part 
of the legislators. 

If there be but one body of legislators, 
it is no better than a tyranny; if there are 
only two, there will want a casting voice, and 
one of them must at length be swallowed up 
by disputes and contentions that will nec- 
essarily arise between them. Four would 
have the same inconvenience as two, and a 
greater number would cause too much con- 
fusion. I could never read a passage in 
Polybius, and another in Cicero, to this 
purpose, without a secret pleasure in apply- 
ing it to the English constitution, which 
it suits much better than the Roman. Both 
these great authors give the pre-eminence to 
a mixed government, consisting of three 
branches, the regal, the noble, and the popu- 
lar. They had doubtless in their thoughts 
the constitution of the Roman common- 
wealth, in which the Consul represented the 
king, the Senate the nobles, and the Tribunes 
the people. This division of the three pow- 
ers in the Roman constitution was by no 
means so distinct and natural as it is in the 
English government. Among several objec- 
tions that might be made to it, I think the 
chief are those that affect the consular 
power, which had only the ornaments with- 
out the force of the regal authority. Their 
number had not a casting voice in it; for 
which reason if one did not chance to be em- 
ployed abroad, while the other sat at home, 
the public business was sometimes at a 
stand, while the consuls pulled two different 
ways in it. Besides I do not find that 
the consuls had ever a negative voice 
in the passing of a law, or decree of 
the senate, so that indeed they were rather 
the chief laody of the nobility, or the first 
ministers of state, than a distinct branch 
of the sovereignty, in which none can be 
looked vipon as a part, who are not a part 
of the legislature. Had the consuls been 
invested with the regal authority to as great 
a degree as our monarchs, there would never 
have been any occasion for a dictatorship, 
which had in it the power of all the three 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IDEALS OF SANITY AND ORDEE 



217 



orders, and ended in the subversion of the 
whole constitution. 

Such an history as that of Suetonius, 
which gives us a succession of absolute 
princes, is to me an unanswerable argument 
against despotic power. Where the prince 
is a man of wisdom and virtue, it is indeed 
happy for his people that he is absolute; 
but since, in the common run of mankind, 
for one that is wise and good you find ten 
of a contrary character, it is very danger- 
ous for a nation to stand to its chance, or 
to have its public happiness or misery de- 
pend on the virtue or vices of a single per- 
son. Look into the history I have men- 
tioned, or into any series of absolute princes, 
how many tyrants must you read through, 
before you come to an emperor that is sup- 
portable. But this is not all ; an honest pri- 
vate man often grows cruel and abandoned, 
when converted into an absolute prince. 
Give a man power of doing what he pleases 
with impunity, you extinguish his fear, and 
consequently overturn in him one of the 
great pillars of morality. This too we find 
confirmed by matter of fact. How many 
hopeful heii's apparent to grand empires, 
when in the possession of them, have be- 
come such monsters of lust and cruelty as 
are a reproach to human nature ? 

Some tell us we ought to make our gov- 
ernments on earth like that in heaven, 
which, say they, is altogether monarchical 
and unlimited. Was man like his Creator 
in goodness and justice, I should be for 
following this great model ; but where good- 
ness and justice are not essential to the 
ruler, I would by no means put myself into 
his hands to be disposed of according to 
his particular will and pleasure. 

It is odd to consider the connection be- 
tween despotic government and barbarity, 
and how the making of one person more 
than man, makes the rest less. About nine 
parts of the world in ten are in the lowest 
state of slavery, and consequently sunk in 
the most gross and brutal ignorance. Euro- 
pean slavery is indeed a state of liberty, if 
compared with that which prevails in the 
other three divisions of the world ; and there- 
fore it is no wonder that those who grovel 
under it have many tracks of light among 
them, of which the others are wholly des- 
titute. 

Riches and plenty are the natural fruits 
of liberty, and where these abound, learning 
and all the liberal arts will immediately lift 
up their heads and flourish. As a man 



must have no slavish fears and apprehen- 
sions hanging upon his mind, who will in- 
dulge the flights of fancy or speculation, 
and push his researches into all the abstruse 
corners of truth, so it is necessary for him to 
have about him a competency of all the con- 
veniences of life. 

The first thing every one looks, after is to 
provide himself with necessaries. This point 
will engToss our thoughts till it be satisfied. 
If this is taken care of to our hands, we 
look out for pleasures and amusement; and 
among a great number of idle people, there 
will be many whose pleasures will lie in 
reading and contemplation. These are the 
two great sources of knowledge; and as 
men grow wise, they naturally love to com- 
municate their discoveries; and others, see- 
ing the hapiDiness of such a learned life, 
and improving by their conversation, emu- 
late, imitate, and surpass one another, till 
a nation is filled with races of wise and un- 
derstanding persons. Ease and plenty are 
therefore the great eherishers of knowledge ; 
and as most of the despotic governments of 
the world have neither of them, they are 
naturally over-run with ignorance and bar- 
barity. In Europe, indeed, notwithstanding 
several of its princes are absolute, there are 
men famous for knowledge and learning; 
but the reason is, because the subjects are 
many of them rich and wealthy, the prince 
not thinking fit to exert himself in his full 
tyranny like the princes of the eastern na- 
tions, lest his subjects should be invited to 
new-mould their constitution, having so 
many prospects of liberty within their view. 
But in all despotic governments, though 
a particular prince may favor arts and let- 
ters, there is a natural degeneracy of man- 
kind, as you may observe from Augustus's 
reign, how the Romans lost themselves by 
degrees till they fell to an equality with the 
most barbarous nations that surrounded 
them. Look upon Greece under its free 
state, and you would think its inhabitants 
lived in different climates, and under dif- 
ferent heavens, from those at present; so 
different are the geniuses which are formed 
under Turkish slavery and Grecian liberty. 

Besides poverty and want, there are 
other reasons that debase the minds of men, 
who live under slavery, though I look on it 
as the principal. This natural tendency of 
despotic power to ignorance and barbarity, 
though not insisted upon by others, is, I 
think, an unanswerable argument against 
that form of government, as it shews how 



218 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



repugnant it is to the good of mankind 
and the perfection of human nature, which 
ought to be the great ends of all civil in- 
stitutions. 

The Carkee op Conquest 

eichard steele 

[The Spectator, No. 180.— Sept. 26, 1711.] 

Delirant reges, plectuntur Achivi.^ 

—Horace. 

The following letter has so much weight 
and good sense that I cannot forbear insert- 
ing it, though it relates to an hardened sin- 
ner, whom I have very little hopes of re- 
forming, viz., Lewis XIV of France. 
"Mr. Spectator: 

"Amidst the variety of subjects of which 
you have treated I could wish it had fallen 
in your way to expose the vanity of con- 
quests. This thought would naturally lead 
one to the rreneh king, who has been gen- 
erally esteemed the greatest conqueror of 
our age, till her majesty's armies had torn 
from him so many of his countries, and de- 
prived him of the fruit of all his former 
victories. For my own part, if I were to 
draw his picture, I should be for taking 
him no lower than to the Peace of Reswick, 
just at the end of his triumphs, and before 
his reverse of fortune; and even then I 
should not forbear thinking his ambition 
had been vain and unprofitable to himself 
and his people. 

"As for himself, it is certain he can have 
gained nothing by his conquests, if they 
have not rendered him master of more sub- 
jects, more riches, or greater power. What 
I shall be able to offer upon these heads. 
I resolve to submit to your consideration. 

"To begin, then, with his increase of sub- 
jects. From the time he came of age, and 
has been a manager for himself, all the peo- 
ple he had acquired were such only as he 
had reduced by his wars, and were left in 
his possession by the peace; he had con- 
quered not above one-third part of Flanders, 
and consequently no more than one-third 
part of the inhabitants of that province. 

"About one hundred years ago, the houses 
in that country were all numbered, and by 
a just computation the inhabitants of all 
sorts could not then exceed 750,000 souls. 
And if any man will consider the desola- 

^ "The monarch's folly makes the people rue." 



tion by almost perpetual wars, the numer- 
ous armies that have lived almost ever since 
at discretion upon the people, and how much 
of their commerce has removed for more 
security to other places, he will have little 
reason to imagine that their numbers havp 
since increased; and therefore with one- 
third part of that province that prince can 
have gained no more than one-third part of 
the inhabitants, or 250,000 new subjects, 
even though it should be supposed they were 
all contented to live still in their native 
country, and transfer their allegiance to a 
new master. 

"The fertility of this province, its con- 
venient situation for trade and commerce, 
its capacity for furnishing employment and 
subsistence to great numbers, and the vast 
armies that have been maintained here, make 
it credible that the remaining two-thirds of 
Flanders are equal to all his other con- 
quests; and consequently by all he cannot 
have gained more than 750,000 new subjects, 
men, women, and children, especially if a 
deduction shall be made of such as have 
retired from the conqueror to live under 
their old masters. 

"It is time now to set his loss against his 
profit, and to show for the new subjects 
he had acquired how many old ones he had 
lost in the acquisition. I think that in his 
wars he has seldom brought less into the 
field in all places than 200,000 fighting men, 
besides what have been left in garrisons; 
and I think the common computation is that 
of an army, at the latter end of a campaign, 
without sieges or battle, scarce four-fifths 
can be mustered of those that came into the 
field at the beginning of the year. His wars 
at several times till the last peace have held 
about twenty years; and if 40,000 yearly 
lost, or a fifth part of his armies, are to be 
multiplied by twenty, he cannot have lost 
less than 800,000 of his old subjects, all 
able-bodied men, a greater number than the 
new subjects he had acquired. 

"But this loss is not all. Providence 
seems to have equally divided the whole 
mass of mankind into different sexes that 
every woman may have her husband, and 
that both may equally contribute to the con- 
tinuance of the species. It follows, then, 
that for all the men that have been lost as 
many women must have lived single. In so 
long a course of years great part of them 
must have died, and all the rest must go off 
at last without leaving any representatives 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IDEALS OF SANITY AND ORDER 



219 



behind. By this account he must have lost 
not only 800,000 subjects, but double that 
number, and all the increase that was rea- 
sonably to be exjDected from it. 

"It is said in the last war there was a 
famine in his kingdom which swept away 
two millions of his people. This is hardly 
credible; if the loss was only of one-fifth 
part of that sum it was very great. But 
'tis no wonder there should be famine where 
so much of the people's substance is taken 
away for the king's use that they have not 
sufficient left to provide against accidents, 
where so many of the men are taken from 
the plow to serve the king in his wars, 
and a great part of the tillage is left to the 
weaker hands of so many women and chil- 
dren. Whatever was the loss, it must un- 
doubtedly be placed to the account of his 
ambition. 

"And so must also the destruction or ban- 
ishment of three or four hundred thousand 
of his reformed subjects; he could have no 
other reasons for valuing those lives so very 
cheap but only to recommend himself to the 
bigotry of the Spanish nation. 

"How should there be industry in a 
country where all property is precarious? 
What subject will sow his land that his 
prince may reap the whole harvest ? Parsi- 
mony and frugality must be strangers to 
such a people ; for will any man save today 
what he has reason to fear will be taken 
from him tomorrow? And where is the 
encouragement for marrying 1 Will any man 
think of raising children without any as- 
surance of clothing for their backs, or so 
much as food for their bellies? And thus 
by his fatal ambition he must have lessened 
the number of his subjects, not only by 
slaughter and destruction, but by preventing 
their very births, he has done as much as 
was possible toward destroying posterity it- 
self. 

"Is this then the great, the invincible 
Lewis? This the immortal man, the tout 
puissant, or the almighty, as his flatterers 
have called him? Is this the man that is 
so celebrated for his conquests? For every 
subject he has acquired, has he not lost three 
that were his inheritance? Are not his 
troops fewer, and those neither so well fed, 
or clothed, or paid, as they were formerly, 
though he has now so much greater cause 
to exert himself? And what can be the 
reason of all this but that his revenue is a 
gi'eat deal less, his subjects are either 



poorer, or not so many to be plundered by 
constant taxes for his use? 

"It is well for him he had found out a 
way to steal a kingdom; if he had gone 
on conquering as he did before, his ruin had 
been long since finished. This brings to my 
mind a saying of King Pyrrhus, after he 
had a second time beat the Romans in a 
pitched battle, and was complimented by his 
generals, 'Yes,' says he, 'such another vic- 
tory and I am quite undone.' And since I 
have mentioned Pyrrhus, I will end with a 
very good, though known, story of this am- 
bitious madman. When he had shown the 
utmost fondness for his expedition against 
the Romans, Cyneas, his chief minister, 
asked him what he proposed to himself by 
this war. 

'Why,' says Pyrrhus, 'to conquer the 
Romans, and reduce all Italy to my obedi- 
ence.' 

'What then?' says Cyneas. 

'To pass over into Sicily,' says Pyrrhus, 
'and then all the Sicilians must be our sub- 
jects.' 

'And what does your majesty intend 
next?' 

'Why, truly,' says the king, 'to conquer 
Carthage, and make myself master of all 
Africa.' 

'And what, sir,' says the minister, 'is to 
be the end of all your expeditions?' 

'Why, then,' says the king, 'for the rest of 
our lives we'll sit down to good wine.' 

'How, sir,' replied Cyneas, 'to better than 
we have now before us? Have we not al- 
ready as much as we can drink?' 

"Riot and excess are not the becoming 
characters of princes; but if Pyrrhus and 
Lewis had debauched like Vitellius they had 
been less hurtful to their people. 
"Your humble servant, 

"Philaeithmus.^^ 

Selections from Gulliver^s Travels 
[1726] 1 

JONATHAN SWIFT 

1. Political Acrobatics 

[Gulliver, an English surgeon, is ship- 
wrecked in the country of the Lilliputians, 
a race of pigmies. After many surprising 

1 "These voyages are intended as a moral polit- 
ical romance — to correct vice by showing its de- 
formity in opposition to the beauty of virtue, and 
to amend the false systems of philosophy by point- 
ing out the errors, and applying salutary means 
to avoid them." ■ — Lord Orrery. 



220 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



adventures he is taken to the Emperor's 
court and gains an insight into the causes 
of political preferment and the nature of 
party strife. The selection is from Chapters 
III and IV.] 

My gentleness and good behavior had 
gained so far on the Emperor and his court, 
and indeed upon the army and people in 
general, that I began to conceive hopes of 
getting my liberty in a short time. I took 
all possible methods to cultivate this favor- 
able disposition. The natives came, by de- 
grees, to be less apprehensive of any danger 
from me. I would sometimes lie down and 
let five or six of them dance on my hand; 
and, at last, the boys and girls would ven- 
ture to come and play at hide and seek in 
my hair. I had now made a good progress 
in understanding and speaking their lan- 
guage. . The Emperor had a mind, one day, 
to entertain me with several of the country 
shows, wherein they exceed all nations I 
have known, both for dexterity and mag- 
nificence. I was diverted with none so much 
as that of the rope-dancers performed upon 
a slender white thread, extended about two 
feet, and twelve inches from the gromid. 
Upon which I shall desire liberty, with the 
reader's patience, to enlarge a little. 

This diversion is only practiced by those 
persons who are candidates for great em- 
ployments, and high favor at court. They 
are trained in this art from their youth, and 
are not always of noble birth, or liberal 
education. When a great office is vacant, 
either by death or disgrace, (which often 
happens) five or six of those candidates 
petition the Emperor to entertain his Maj- 
esty and the court with a dance on the rope, 
and whoever jumps the highest, without 
falling, succeeds in the office. Very often 
the chief ministers themselves are com- 
manded to show their skill, and to convince 
the Emperor that they have not lost their 
faculty. Flimnap, the treasurer, is allowed 
to cut a caper on the strait rope at least 
an inch higher than any other lord in the 
whole empire. I have seen him do the 
somerset several times together, upon a 
trencher fixed on the rope, which is no 
thicker than a common pack-thread in Eng- 
land. My friend Reldresal, principal secre- 
tary for private affairs, is, in my opinion, 
if I am not partial, the second after the 
treasurer; the rest of the great officers are 
much upon a par. 

These diversions are often attended with 



fatal accidents, whereof great numbers are 
on record. I myself have seen two or three 
candidates break a limb. But the danger is 
much greater when the ministers themselves 
are commanded to show their dexterity ; for, 
by contending to excel themselves and their 
fellows, they strain so far, that there is 
hardly one of them who hath not received 
a fall, and some of them two. or three. I 
was assured, that, a year or two before my 
arrival, Flimnap would have infallibly broke 
his neck, if one of the king's cushions, that 
accidentally lay on the ground, had not 
weakened the force of his fall. 

There is likewise another diversion, which 
is only shown before the Emperor and Em- 
press, and first minister, upon particular oc- 
casions. The Emperor lays on the table 
three fine silken threads of six inches long; 
one is blue, the other red, and the third 
green. These threads are proposed as prizes 
for those persons whom the Emperor hath 
a mind to distinguish by a peculiar mark 
of his favor. The ceremony is performed 
in his Majesty's great chamber of state, 
w^iere the candidates are to undergo a 
trial of dexterity very different from the 
former, and such as I have not observed the 
least resemblance of in any other country 
of the old or new world. The ' Emperor 
holds a stick in his hands, both ends jDaral- 
lel to the horizon, while the candidates ad- 
vancing, one by one, sometimes leap over the 
stick, sometimes creep under it backwards 
and forwards several times, according as 
the stick is advanced or depressed. Some- 
times the Emperor holds one end of the 
stick, and his first minister the other ; some- 
times the minister has it entirely to him- 
self. Whoever performs his part with most 
agility, and holds out the longest in leap- 
ing and creeping, is rewarded with the blue- 
colored silk, the red is given to the next, 
and the green to the third, which they all 
wear girt twice round about the middle, and 
you see few great persons about the court 
who are not adorned with one of these 
girdles. ... 

The first request I made, after I had ob- 
tained my liberty, was that I might have 
license to see Mildendo, the metropolis; 
which the Emperor easily granted me, but 
with a special charge to do no hurt either 
to the inhabitants or their houses. The 
people had notice by proclamation of my 
design to visit the town. The wall which 
encompassed it is two feet and a half high, 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OF SANITY AND OEDER 



221 



and at least eleven inches broad, so that a 
coach and horses may be driven very safely 
round it ; and it is flanked with strong tow- 
ers, at ten feet distance. I stepped over 
the great Western Gate, and passed very 
gently and sideling through the two prin- 
cipal streets, only in my short waist-coat, 
for fear of damaging the roofs and eaves 
of the houses with the skirts of my coat. 
I walked with utmost circumspection, to 
avoid treading on any stragglers that might 
remain in the streets, although the orders 
were strict that all people should keep in 
their houses at their own peril. The garret- 
windows and tops of houses were so crowded 
with spectators that I thought, in all my 
travels, I had not seen a more populous 
place. The city is an exact square, each 
side of the wall being five hundred feet 
long. The two great streets, which run 
cross, and divide it mto four quarters, are 
five feet wide. The lanes and alleys, which 
I could not enter, but only viewed them as 
I passed, are from twelve to eighteen inches. 
The town is capable of holding five hundred 
thousand souls. The houses are from three 
to five stories; the shops and markets well 
provided. 

The Emperor's palace is in the center of 
the city, where the two great streets met. 
It is inclosed by a wall of two feet high, 
and twenty feet distance from the buildings. 
I had his Majesty's permission to step over 
this wall; and, the space being so wide be- 
tween that and the palace, I could easily 
view it on every side. The outward court 
is a square of forty feet, and includes two 
other courts: in the inmost are the royal 
apartments which I was very desirous to 
see, but found it extremely difficult; for the 
great gates, from one square into another, 
were but eighteen inches high, and seven 
inches wide. Now, the buildings of the 
outer court were at least five feet high, and 
it was impossible for me to stride over them 
without infinite damage to the pile, though 
the walls were strongly built of hewn stone, 
and four inches thick. At the same time, 
the Emperor had a great desire that I should 
see the magnificence of his palace; but this 
I was not able to do till three days after, 
which I spent in cutting down with my 
knife some of the largest trees in the royal 
park, about an hundred yards distance from 
the city. Of these trees I made two stools, 
each about three feet high, and strong 
enough to bear my weight. The people hav- 



ing received notice a second time, I went 
again through the city to the palace, with 
my two stools in my hands. When I came 
to the side of the outer court, I stood upon 
one stool, and took the other in my hand; 
this I lifted over the roof, and gently set it 
down on the space between the first and 
second court, which was eight feet wide. I 
then stepped over the building very con- 
veniently, from one stool to the other, and 
drew up the- first after me with a hooked 
stick. By this contrivance I got into the 
inmost court ; and, lying down upon my 
side, I applied my face to the windows of 
the middle stories, which were left open on 
purpose, and discovered the most splendid 
apartments that can be imagined. There 
I saw the Empress, and the young Princes, 
in their several lodgings, with their chief 
attendants about them. Her Imperial Maj- 
esty was pleased to smile very graciously 
upon me, and gave me out of the window 
her hand to kiss. 

But I shall not anticipate the reader with 
farther descriptions of this kind, because 
I reserve them for a greater work, which is 
now almost ready for the press, containing 
a general description of this empire, from 
its first erection, through a long series of 
princes, with a particular account of their 
wai'S and politics, laws, learning, and re- 
ligion : their plants "and animals, their pe- 
culiar manners and customs, with other 
matters very curious and useful; my chief 
design at present being only to relate such 
events and transactions as happened to the 
public or to myself during* a residence of 
about nine months in that emiDire. 

2. Political Parties and International Rela- 
tions in Lilliput 

[This passage satirizes the English high- 
church or Tory party andthe low-ehureh or 
Whig party. Chapters IV and V.] 

One morning, about a fortnight after I 
had obtained my liberty, Reldresal, princi- 
pal secretary (as they style him) of private 
affairs, came to my house, attended only by 
one servant. He ordered his coach to wait 
at a distance, and desired I would give him 
an hour's audience; which I readily con- 
sented to, on account of his quality, and 
personal merits, as well as the many good 
offices he had done me during my solicita- 
tions at court. I offered to lie down, that 
he might the more conveniently reach my 



222 



THE OREAT TRADITION 



ear; but he chose rather to let me hold hhn 
hi my hand durmg our conversation. He 
began with compliments on my liberty; said 
he might pretend to some merit in it; but, 
however, added, that, if it had not been for 
the present situation of things at court, per- 
haps I might not have obtained it so soon. 
"For," said he, "as flourishing a condition 
as we may appear to be in to foreigners, we 
labor under two mighty evils ; a violent fac- 
tion at home, and the danger- of an inva- 
sion by a most potent enemy from abroad. 
As to the first, you are to understand that, 
for above seventy moons past, there have 
been two struggling parties in this empire, 
under the names of Tramecksan and Sla- 
mecksan, from the high and Ioav heels of 
their shoes, by which they distinguish them- 
selves. It is alleged, indeed, that the high 
heels are most agreeable to our ancient con- 
stitution; but, however this be, his Majesty 
hath determined to make use of only low 
heels in the administration of the govern- 
ment, and all offices in the gift of the crown, 
as you cannot but observe ; and particularly, 
that his Majesty's imperial heels are lower 
at least by a drurr than any of his court 
(drurr is a measure about the fourteenth 
part of an inch). The animosities between 
these two parties run so high that they will 
neither eat nor drink nor talk with each 
other. We compute the Tramecksan, or 
high heels, to exceed us in number; but the 
power is wholly on our side. We appre- 
hend his Imperial Highness, the heir to the 
crown, to have some tendency towards the 
high-heels; at least, we can plainly discover 
that one of his heels is higher than the other, 
which gives him a hobble in his gait. Now, 
in the midst of these intestine disquiets, we 
are threatened with an invasion from the 
island of Blefuscu, which is the other great 
empire of the universe, almost as large and 
powerful as this of his Majesty. For as to 
what we heard you affirm, that there are 
other kingdoms and states in the world, in- 
habited by human creatures as large as 
yourself, our philosophers are in much 
doubt, and would rather conjecture that you 
dropped from the moon, or one of the stars ; 
because it is certain that an hundred moi'- 
tals of your bulk would, in a short time, 
destroy all the fruits and cattle of his Maj- 
esty's dominions. Besides, our histories of 
six thousand moons make no mention of 
any other regions than the two great em- 
pires of Lilliput and Blefuscu, which two 
mighty powers have, as I was going to tell 



you, been engaged in a most obstinate war 
for six and thirty moons past. It began 
upon the following occasion : It is allowed 
on all hands that the primitive way of 
breaking eggs before we eat them was upon 
the larger end ; but his present Majesty's 
grandfather while he was a boy, going to 
eat an egg, and breaking it according to the 
ancient i^raetice, happened to cut one of his 
fingers. Whereupon the Emperor, his 
father, published an edict, commanding all 
his subjects upon great penalties, to break 
the smaller end of their eggs. The people 
so highly resented this law, that our his- 
tories tell us, there have been six rebellions 
raised on that account; wherein one em- 
peror lost his life, and another his crown. 
These civil commotions were constantly fo- 
mented by the monarehs of Blefuscu; and 
when they were quelled, the exiles always 
fled for refuge to that empire. It is com- 
puted that eleven thousand persons have at 
several times suffered death rather than sub- 
mit to break their eggs at the smaller end. 
Many hundred large volumes have been pub- 
lished upon this controversy; but the books 
of the Big-endians have been long forbid- 
den, and the whole party rendered incapa- 
ble by law of holding employments. Dur- 
mg the course of these troubles the emper- 
ors of Blefuscu did frequently expostulate 
by their ambassadors, accusing us of mak- 
ing a schism in religion, by offending against 
a fundamental doctrine of our great 
Prophet Lustrog, in the fifty-fourth chap- 
ter of the Blundeeral (which is their Al- 
coran). This, however, is thought to be a 
mere strain upon the text; for the words 
are these : That all true believers break 
their eggs at the convenient end. And which 
is the convenient end seems, in my humble 
opinion, to be left to every man's con- 
science, or at least in the power of the chief 
magistrate to determine. Now, the Big- 
endian exiles have found so much credit in 
the Emperor of Blefuseu's court and so 
much private assistance and encouragement 
from their party here at home, that a bloody 
war hath been carried on between the two 
empires for thirty-six moons, with various 
success; during which time we have lost 
forty capital ships, and a much greater 
number of smaller vessels, ■ together with 
thirty thousand of our best seamen and sol- 
diers; and the damage received by the 
enemy is reckoned to be somewhat greater 
than ours. However, they have now 
equipped a numerous fleet, and are just pre- 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OF SANITY AND ORDER 



223 



paring to make a descent upon us; and his 
Imperial Majesty, placing great confidence 
in your valor and strength, hath commanded 
me to lay this account of his affairs before 
you." 

I desired the secretary to present my 
humble duty to. the Emperor, and to let him 
know that I thought it would not become 
me, who was a foreigner, to interfere with 
parties; but I was ready, with the hazard 
of my life, to defend his person and state 
against all invaders. 

The empire of Blefuscu is an island, sit- 
uated to the north-east side of Lilliput, 
from whence it is parted only by a channel 
of eight hundred yards wide. I had not 
yet seen it, and upon this notice of an in- 
tended invasion, I avoided a^rpearing on 
that side of the coast, for fear of being dis- 
covered by some of the enemy's ships, who 
had received no intelligence of me, all in- 
tercourse between the two empires having 
been strictly forbidden during the war, 
upon pain of death, and an embargo laid 
by our Emperor upon all vessels whatso- 
ever. I communicated to his Majesty a 
project I had formed of seizing the.enemy's 
whole fleet : which, as our scouts assured us, 
lay at anchor in the harbor ready to sail 
with the first fair wind. I consulted the 
most experienced seamen upon the depth of 
the channel, which they had often plumbed, 
who told me, that in the middle, at high 
water, it was seventy glumgiuffs deep, which 
is about six feet of European measure; and 
the rest of it fifty glumgiuffs at most. I 
walked towards the north-east coast, over 
against Blefuscu ; where, lying down behind 
a hillock, I took out my small perspective 
glass, and viewed the enemy's fleet at an- 
chor, consisting of about, fifty men-of-war, 
and a great number of transports: I then 
eiame back to my house, and gave order 
(for which I had a warrant) for a great 
quantity of the strongest cable and bars of 
iron. The cable was about as thick as pack- 
thread, and the bars of the length and size 
of a knitting needle. I trebled the cable 
to make it stronger, and, for the same rea- 
son, I twisted three of the iron bars to- 
gether, binding the extremities into a hook. 
Having thus fixed fifty hooks to as many 
cables, I went back to the north-east coast, 
and putting off my coat, shoes, and stock- 
ings, walked into the sea, in my leathern 
jerkin, about an hour before high water. 
I waded with what haste I could, and swam 
in the middle about thirty yards, till I felt 



ground; I arrived to the fleet in less than 
half an hour. The enemy was so frighted 
when they saw me, that they leaped out of 
their ships, and swam to shore, where there 
could not be fewer than thirty thousand 
souls. I then took my tackling, and, fasten- 
ing a hook to the hole at the prow of each, 
1 tied all the cords together at the end. 
While I was thus employed, the enemy dis- 
charged several thousand arrows, many of 
which stuck in my hands and face : and, be- 
sides the excessive smart, gave me much dis- 
turbance in my work. My greatest appre- 
hension was for mine eyes, which I should 
have infallibly lost, if I had not suddenly 
thought of an expedient. I kept among 
other little necessaries a pair of spectacles 
in a private pocket, which, as I observed 
before, had escaped the Emperor's search- 
ers. These I took out and fastened as 
strongly as I could upon my nose, and, thus 
armed, went on boldly with my work in 
spite of the enemy's arrows, many of which 
struck against the glasses of my spectacles, 
but without any other effect, farther than a 
little to discompose them. I had now fas- 
tened all the hooks, and, taking the knot 
in my hand, began to pull, but not a ship 
would stir, for they were all too fast held 
by their anchors, so that the boldest part 
of my enterprise remained. I therefore let 
go the cord, and leaving the hooks fixed 
to the ships, I resolutely cut with my knife 
the cables that fastened the anchors, re- 
ceiving above two hundred shots in my 
face and hands; then I took up the knot- 
ted end of the cables to which my hooks 
were tied, and with great ease drew fifty 
of the enemy's largest men-of-war after 
me. 

The Blefuscudians, who had not the least 
imagination of what I intended, were at 
first confounded with astonishment. They 
had seen me cut the cables, and thought my 
design was only to let the ships run adrift, 
or fall foul on each other: but when they 
perceived the whole fleet moving in order, 
and saw me pulling at the end, they set up 
such a scream of grief and despair, that it 
is almost impossible to describe or conceive. 
When I had got out of danger, I stopped a 
while to pick out the arrows that stuck in 
my hands and face : and rubbed on some of 
the same ointment that was given me at my 
first arrival, as I have formerly mentioned. 
I then took off my spectacles, and, waiting 
about an hour till the tide was a little fallen, 
I waded through the middle with my cargo, 



224 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



and arrived safe at the royal port of Lilli- 
put. 

The Emperor and his whole court stood 
on the shore expecting the issue of this 
great adventure. They saw the ships move 
forward in a large half -moon, but could 
not discern me, who was up to my breast in 
water. When I advanced to the middle of 
the channel, they were yet in more pam, 
because I was under water to my neck. The 
EmiDeror concluded me to be drowned, and 
that the enemy's fleet was approaching in 
a hostile manner : but he was soon eased of 
his fears, for the channel growing shallower 
every step I. made, I came in a short time 
within hearmg, and, holding up the end of 
the cable by which the fleet was fastened, I 
cried in a loud voice. Long live the most 
puissant Emperor of Lilliput ! This great 
prince received me at my landing with all 
possible encomiums, and created me a nar- 
dac upon the spot, which is the highest title 
of honor among them. 

His Majesty desired I would take some 
other opportunity of bringing all the rest 
of his enemy's ships into his ports. And so 
unmeasurabie is the ambition of princes, 
that he seemed to think of nothing less than 
reducing the whole empire of Blefuscu into 
a province, and governing it by a viceroy; 
of destroymg the Big-endian exiles, and 
compellmg that people to break the smaller 
end of their eggs, by which he would re- 
main the sole monarch of the whole world. 
But I endeavored to divert him from his 
design, by many arguments drawn from the 
topics of policy as well as justice : and I 
plainly protested, that I would never be an 
instrument of bringing a free and brave 
people into slavery. And, when the matter 
was debated in council, the wisest part of 
the ministiy were of my opinion. 

This open bold declaration of mine was 
so opposite to the schemes and polities of 
his Imperial Majesty, that he could never 
forgive me; he mentioned it in 'a very art- 
ful manner at council, where I was told that 
some of the wisest appeared, at least, by 
their silence, to be of my opinion; but 
othei's, who were my secret enemies, could 
not forbear some expressions, which by a 
side-wind reflected on me. And from this 
time began an intrigue between his Majesty 
and. a junto of ministers maliciously bent 
against me, which broke out in less than 
two months, and had like to have ended in 
my utter destruction. Of so little weight 
are the greatest services to princes, when 



put into the balance with a refusal to 
gratify their passions. 

About three weeks after this exploit, 
there arrived a solemn embassy from Ble- 
fuscu, with humble offers of a peace ; which 
was soon concluded upon conditions very 
advantageous to our Emperor, wherewith I 
shall not trouble the reader. There were 
six ambassadors, with a train of about five 
hundred persons, and their entry was very 
magnificent, suitable to the grandeur of 
their master, and the importance of their 
business. When their treaty was finished, 
wherein I did them several good offices by 
the credit I now had, or at least appeared 
to have at court, their Excellencies, who 
were privately told how much I had been 
their friend, made me a visit in form. They 
began with many compliments upon my 
valor and generosity, invited me to that 
kingdom in the Emperor their master's 
name, and desired me to show them some 
proofs of my prodigious strength, of which 
they had heard so many wonders ; wherein I 
readily obliged them, but shall not trouble 
the reader with the particulars. 

When I had for some time entertained 
their Excellencies to their infinite satisfac- 
tion and surprise, I desired they would do 
me the honor to present my most humble 
respects to the Emperor their master, the 
renown of whose virtues had so justly filled 
the whole world with admiration, and whose 
royal person I resolved to attend before I 
returned to my own country : accordingly, 
the next time I had the honor to see our 
Emperor, I desired his general license to 
wait on the Blefuseudian monarch, which he 
was pleased to grant me, as I could plainly 
perceive, in a very cold manner; but. could 
not guess the reason, till I had a whisper 
from a certain person, that Flimnap and 
Bolgolam had represented my intercourse 
with those ambassadors as a mark of disaf- 
fection, from which I am sure my heart 
was wholly free. And this was the first 
time I began to conceive some imperfect 
idea of courts and ministers. 

It is to be observed, that these ambassa- 
dors spoke to me by an interpreter, the 
languages of both empires differing as 
much from each other as any two in Eu- 
rope, and each nation priding itself upon 
the antiquity, beauty, and energy of their 
own tongues, with an avowed contempt for 
that of their neighbor; yet our Emperor, 
standing upon the advantage he had got by 
the seizure of their fleet, obliged them to de- 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OF SANITY AND OEDER 



225 



liver their credentials and make their speech 
in the Lilliputian tongue. And it must be 
confessed that, from the great intercourse 
of trade and commerce between both realms, 
from the continued reception of exiles, 
which is mutual among them, and from the 
custom in each empire to send their young 
nobility and richer gentry to the other, in 
order to polish themselves by seeing the 
world, and understanding men and man- 
ners, there are few persons of distinction, or 
merchants, or seamen, who dwell in the mari- 
time parts, but Avhat can hold conversation 
in both tongues; as I found some weeks 
rafter, when I went to pay my respects to the 
Emperor of Blefuscu, which, in the midst of 
great misfortunes through the malice of my 
enemies, proved a very happy adventure 
to me, as I shall relate in its proper place. 

3. Public Servants in Lilliput 

In choosing persons for all employments, 
they have more regard to good morals than 
to great abilities; for, since Government is 
necessary to mankind, they believe that the 
common size of human understandings is 
fitted to some station or other, and that 
Providence never intended to make the man- 
agement of public affairs a mystery, to be 
comprehended only by a few jDersons of sub- 
lime genius, of which there seldom are three 
born in an age ; but they suppose truth, jus- 
tice, temjoerance, and the like, to be in every 
man's power, the practice of which virtues, 
assisted by exiDerienee and a good intention, 
would qualify any man for the service of his 
country, except where a course of study is 
required. But they thought the want of 
moral virtues was so far from being supplied 
by superior endowments of the mind, that 
employments could never be put into such 
dangerous hands as those of persons so 
qualified; and at least, that the mistakes, 
committed by ignorance in a virtuous dis- 
position, would never be of such fatal eon- 
sequence to the public weal as the practices 
of a man whose inclinations led him to be 
corrupt, and had great abilities to manage 
and multiply and defend his corruptions. 

4. English Institutions 

[In his second voyage Gulliver visits the 
Brobdingnagians, men of giant stature in 
comparison with whom Gulliver himself be- 
comes the Lilliputian. In the course of his 
association with the Emperor he takes oc- 



casion to "celebrate the praise of his own 
dear native country, in n, style equal to its 
merits and felicity." From Part II, Chap- 
ter VI.] 

The king, who, as I before observed, was 
a prince of excellent understanding, would 
frequently order that I should be brought 
in my box, and set upon the table in his 
closet : he would then command me to bring 
one of my chairs out of the box, and sit 
down within three yards distance upon the 
top of the cabinet, which brought me almost 
to a level with his face. In this manner I 
had several conversations with him. I one 
day took the freedom to tell his Majesty, 
that the contempt he discovered towards 
Europe, and the rest of the world, did not 
seem answerable to those excellent qualities 
of mind he was master of. That reason did 
not extend itself with the bulk of the body : 
on the contrary, we observed in our country, 
that the tallest persons were usually least 
provided with it. That, among other ani- 
mals, bees and ants had the reputation of 
more industry, art, and sagacity, than many 
of the larger kinds ; and that, as inconsidera- 
ble as he took me to be, I hoped I might live 
to do his Majesty some signal service. The 
king heard me with attention, and began to 
conceive a much better opinion of me than 
he had ever before. He desired I would give 
him as exact an account of the government 
of England as I possibly could; because, as 
fond as princes commonly are of their own 
customs (for so he conjectured of other 
monarchs by my former discourses) he 
should be glad to hear of anything that 
might deserve imitation. 

Imagine with thyself, courteous reader, 
how often I then wished for the tongue of 
Demosthenes or Cicero, that might have 
enabled me to celebrate the praise of my 
own dear native country, in a style equal to 
its merits and felicity. 

I began my discourse, by informing his 
Majesty, that our dominions consisted of 
two islands, which composed three mighty 
kingdoms under one sovereign, besides our 
plantations in America. I dwelt long upon 
the fertility of our soil, and the tempera- 
ture of our climate. I then spoke at large 
upon the constitution of an English Parlia- 
ment, partly made up of an illustrious body, 
called the House of Peers, persons of the 
noblest blood, and of the most ancient 
and ample patrimonies. I described that 
extraordinary care always taken of their 
education in arts and arms, to qualify them 



226 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



for being counselors both to the king and 
kingdom; to have a share in the Legisla- 
ture; to be members of the highest court of 
judicature, from whence there could be 
no appeal; and to be champions always 
ready for the defense of their prince and 
country, by their valor, conduct, and fidelity. 
That these were the ornament and bulwark 
of the kingdom^ worthy followers of their 
most renowned ancestors, whose honor had 
been the reward of their virtue from which 
their posterity were never once known to 
degenerate. To these were joined several 
holy persons, as part of that assembly, under 
the title of bishops, whose peculiar business 
it is to take care of religion, and of those 
who instruct the people therein. These were 
searched and sought out through the whole 
nation, by the prince and his wisest coun- 
selors, among such of the priesthood as 
were most deservedly distinguished by the 
sanctity of their lives, and the depth of 
their erudition, who were, indeed, the spir- 
itual fathers of the clergy and the people. 

That the other part of the Parliament con- 
sisted of an assembly called the House of 
Commons, who were all principal gentlemen, 
freely picked and culled out by the people 
themselves, for their great abilities, and love 
of their country, to represent the wisdom of 
the whole nation. And these two bodies 
make up the most august assembly in 
Europe, to whom, in conjunction with the 
prince, the whole Legislature is committed. 

I then descended to the courts of justice, 
over which the judges, those venerable sages 
and interpreters of the law, presided, for 
determining the disputed rights and prop- 
erties of men, as well as for the punishment 
of vice, and protection of innocence. I men- 
tioned the prudent management of our 
Treasury, the valor and achievements of our 
forces by sea and land. I computed the 
number of our people, by reckoning how 
many millions there might be of each re- 
ligious sect, or political party among us. 
I did not omit even our sports and .pastimes, 
or any other particular which I thought 
might redound to the honor of my country. 
And I finished all with a brief historical ac- 
count of affairs and events in England, for 
about an hundred years past. 

This conversation was not ended under 
five audiences, each of several hours; and 
the king heard the whole with gi-eat atten- 
tion, frequently taking notes of what I 
spoke, as well as memorandums of several 
questions he intended to ask me. 



When I had put an end to these long 
discourses, his Majesty, in a sixth audience, 
consulting his notes, proposed many doubts, 
queries, and objections upon every article. 
He asked what methods were used to culti- 
vate the minds and bodies of our young 
nobility, and in what kind of business they 
commonly spent the first and teachable part 
of their lives. What course was taken to 
supply that assembly when any noble family 
became extinct. What qualifications were 
necessary in those who are to be created new 
lords : whether the humor of the prince, a 
sum of money to a court lady, or a prime 
minister, or a design of strengthening a 
party opposite to the public interest, ever 
happened to be motives in those advance- 
ments. What share of knowledge these lords 
had in the laws of their country, and how 
they came by it, so as to enable them to 
decide the properties of their fellow-sub- 
jects in their last resort. Whether they were 
always so free from avarice, partialities, or 
want, that a bribe, or some other sinister 
view, could have no place among them. 
Whether those holy lords I spoke of, were 
always promoted to that rank upon account 
of their knowledge in religious matters, and 
the sanctity of their lives, had never been 
compilers with the times, while they were 
common priests, or slavish prostitute chap- 
lains to some nobleman, whose opinions they 
continued servilely to follow, after they 
were admitted into that assembly. 

He then desired to know what arts were 
practiced in electing those whom I called 
commoners : whether a stranger, with a 
strong purse, might not influence the vulgar 
voters to choose him before their own land- 
lord, or the most considerable gentleman in 
the neighborhood. How it came to pass, 
that people were so violently bent upon get- 
ting into this assembly, which I allowed to 
be a great trouble and expense, often to the 
ruin of their families, without any salary or 
pension: because that appeared such an 
exalted strain of virtue and public spirit, 
that his Majesty seemed to doubt it might 
possibly not be always sincere: and he de- 
sired to know whether such zealous gentle- 
men could have any views of refunding 
themselves for the charges and trouble they 
were at, by sacrificing the public good to the 
designs of a weak and vicious prince, in con- 
junction with a corrupted ministry. He 
multiplied his questions, and sifted me 
thoroughly upon every part of this head, 
proposing numbei"less enquiries and objec- 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IDEALS OF SANITY AND ORDER 



227 



tions, which I think it not prudent or con- 
venient to repeat. 

Upon what I said in relation to our courts 
of justice, his Majesty desired to be satis- 
fied in several points: and this I was the 
better able to do, having been formerly 
almost ruined by a long suit in chancery, 
which was decreed for me with costs. He 
asked what time was usually spent in de- 
termining between right and wrong, and 
what degree of expense. Whether advocates 
and orators had liberty to plead in causes 
manifestly known to be unjust, vexatious, or 
oppressive. Whether party in religion or 
politics were observed to be of any weight 
in the scale of justice. Whether those plead- 
ing orators were persons educated in the 
general knowledge of equity, or only in pro- 
vincial, national, and other local customs. 
Whether they or their judges had any part 
in penning those laws which they assumed 
the liberty of interpreting and glossing upon 
at their pleasure. Whether they had ever 
at different times pleaded for and against 
the same cause, and cited precedents to 
prove contrary opinions. Whether they 
were a rich or a poor corporation. Whether 
they received any pecuniary reward for 
pleading or delivering their opinions. And 
particularly, whether they were ever ad- 
mitted as members in the lower senate. 

He fell next upon the management of our 
treasury and said he thought my memory 
had failed me, because I computed our taxes 
at about five or six millions a year, and, when 
I came to mention the issues, he found they 
sometimes amounted to more than double; 
for the notes he had taken were very par- 
ticular in this point, because he hoped, as 
he told me, that the knowledge of our con- 
duct might be useful to him, and he could 
not be deceived in his calculations : but, if 
what I told him were true, he was still at a 
loss how a kingdom could run out of its 
estate like a private person. He asked me 
who were our creditors, and where we 
should find money to pay them. He won- 
dered to hear me talk of such chargeable and 
expensive wars; that certainly we must be 
a quarrelsome people, or live among very 
bad neighbors, and that our generals must 
needs be richer than our king. He asked 
what business we had out of our own islands, 
unless upon the score of trade or treaty, or 
to defend the coast with our fleet. Above all, 
he was amazed to hear me talk of a mer- 
cenary standing army in the midst of peace. 



and among a free people. He said, if we 
were governed by our own consent in the 
persons of our representatives, he could not 
imagine of whom we were afraid, or against 
whom we were to fight ; and would hear my 
opinion, whether a private man's house 
might not better be defended by himself, his 
children, and family, than by half a dozen 
rascals picked up at a venture in the streets, 
for small wages, who might get an hundred 
times more by ciitting their throats. 

He laughed at my odd kind of arithmetic 
(as he was pleased to call it) in reckoning 
the numbers of our peo^jle by a computation 
drawn from the several sects among us in 
religion and politics. He said he knew no 
reason why those who entertain opinions 
prejudicial to the public, should be obliged 
to change, or should not be obliged to con- 
ceal them. And as it was tyranny in any 
government to require the first, so it was 
weakness not to enfoi"ce the second: for a 
man may be allowed to keep poisons in his 
closet, but not to vend them about for cor- 
dials. 

He observed that, among the diversions of 
our nobility and gentry, I had mentioned 
gaming. He desired to know at what age 
this entertainment was usually taken up, 
and when it was laid down; how much of 
their time it employed ; whether it ever went 
so high as to affect their fortunes; whether 
mean, vicious people, by their dexterity in 
that art, might not arrive at great riches, and 
sometimes keep our very nobles in depend- 
ence, as well as habituate them to vile com- 
panions, wholly take them from the im- 
provement of their minds, and force them, 
by the losses they have received, to learn 
and practice that infamous dexterity upon 
others. 

He was perfectly astonished with the his- 
torical account I gave him of our affairs 
during the last century, protesting it was 
only a heap of consiDiracies, rebellions, mur- 
ders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, 
the very worst effects that avarice, faction, 
hypocrisy, perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, 
madness, hatred, envy, lust, malice, or am- 
bition, could produce. 

His Majesty in another audience was at 
the pains to recapitulate the sum of all I 
had spoken; compared the questions he 
made with the ansAvers I had given ; then 
taking me into his hands, and stroking me 
gently, delivered himself in these words, 
which I shall never forget, nor the manner 



228 



THE GREAT TEADITION 



he spoke them in : ''My little fiiend Grildrig, 
you have made a most admirable panegyric 
upon your country : you have clearly proved, 
that ignorance, idleness, and vice are the 
pi'oper ingredients for qualifying a legis- 
lator : that laws are best explained, in- 
terpreted, and applied by those whose in- 
terest and abiUties he in perverting, eon- 
founding, and eluding them. I observe 
among you some lines of an institution 
which, in its original, might have been tolera- 
ble ; but these half erased, and the rest whol- 
ly blurred and blotted by corruptions. It 
doth not appear from all you have said, how 
any one perfection is required toward the 
procurement of any one station among you ; 
much less that men are ennobled on account 
of their virtue, that priests are advanced f or 
their piety or learning, soldiers for their 
conduct or valor, judges for their integrity, 
senators for the love of their country, or 
counselors for their wisdom. As for your- 
self (continued the king), who have spent 
the greatest part of your hf e in traveling, I 
am well disposed to hope you may hitherto 
have escaped many vices of your country. 
But, by what I have gathered from your 
own relation, and the answers I have with 
much pain wringed and extorted from you, 
I cannot but conclude the bulk of your na- 
tives to be the most pernicious race of little 
odious vermin that Nature ever suffered to 
crawl upon the surface of the earth." 

5. Besearch 

[The third adventure is in the flying 
island of Laputa, a land in which the in- 
habitants, though of normal size, are 
strangely warped in intellect, being given 
over entirely to abstruse mathematical spec- 
ulation. Gulliver makes a ' visit to their 
academy of Lagado. Part III, Chapters V 
and VI.] 

This academy is not an entire single build- 
ing, but a continuation of several houses on 
both sides of a street, which, growing waste, 
was purchased, and applied to that use. I 
was received very kindly by the warden, 
and went for many days to the academy. 
Every room hath in it one or more project- 
ors ; and, I beheve, I could not be in fewer 
than five hundred rooms. 

The first man I saw was of a meager as- 
pect, with sooty hands and face, his hair 
and beard long, ragged, and singed in sev- 
eral places. His clothes, shirt, and skin 
were all of the same color. He had been 



eight years upon a project for extracting 
sun-beams out of cucumbers, which were tc 
be put into vials hermetically sealed, and 
let out to warm the air in raw inclement 
summers. He told me, he did not doubt, in 
eight years more, he should be able to sup- 
ply the governor's gardens with sunshine at 
a reasonable rate; but he complained that 
his stock was low, and entreated me to give 
him something as an encouragement to in- 
genuity, especially since this had been a 
very clear season for cucumbers. I made 
him a small present, for my lord had fur- 
nished me with money on purpose, because 
he knew their practice of begging from all 
who go to see them. ... 

I saw another at work to calcine ice intcn 
gunpowder, who likewise showed me a treat- 
ise he had written concerning the malleabil- 
ity of fire, which he mtended to publish. 

There was a most ingenious architect, 
Avho had contrived a new method for build- 
ing houses, by beginning at the roof, and 
working downwards to the foundation, 
which he justified to me, by the like prac- 
tice of those two prudent insects, the bee 
and the spider. 

There was a man born blind, who had sev- 
eral apprentices in his own condition ; their 
employment was to mix colors for painters, 
Avhich their masters taught them to distin- 
guish by feeling and smelling. It was, in- 
deed, my misfortune to find them, at that 
time, not very perfect in their lessons, and 
the professor himself happened to be gen- 
erally mistaken : this artist is much encour- 
aged and esteemed by the whole fraternity. 
In 'another apartment, I was highly 
pleased with a projector who had found a 
device of plowing the ground with hogs, to 
save the charges of plows, cattle, and 
labor. The method is this: in an acre of 
ground you buiy, at six inches distance, 
and eight deep, a quantity of acorns,, dates, 
chestnuts, and other mast, or vegetables, 
whereof these animals are fondest : then 
you drive six hundred or more of them into 
the field, where, in few days, they will root 
up the whole ground in search of their 
food, and make it fit for sowing; it is true, 
upon experiment, they found the charge 
and trouble very great, and they had little 
or no crop. However, it is not doubted 
that this invention may be capable of great 
improvement. 

I went into another room, where the walls 
and ceiling were all hung round with cob- 
webs, except a narrow passage for the art- 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OF SANITY AND OEDEE 



229 



ist to go in and out. At my entrance he 
called aloud to me not to disturb his webs. 
He lamented the fatal mistake the world 
had been so long in of using silk-worms, 
while we had such plenty of domestic in- 
sects, who infinitely excelled the former, 
because they understood how to weave, as 
well as spin. And he proposed farther, 
that, by employing spiders, the charge of 
dying silks would be wholly saved ; whereof 
I was fully convinced, when he showed me 
a vast number of flies most beautifully col- 
ored, wherewith he fed his spiders, assuring 
us that the webs would take a tincture from 
them; and, as he had them of all hues, he 
hoped to fit everybody's fancy, as soon as 
he could find proper food for the flies, of 
certain gums, oils, and other glutinous mat- 
ter, to give a strength and consistence to 
the threads. 

There was an astronomer who had under- 
taken to jDlace a sundial upon the great 
M^eathercock on the town house, by adjust- 
ing the annual and diurnal motions of the 
earth and sun, so as to answer and coin- 
cide with all accidental turnings of the 
wind. ... 

I visited many other apartments, but 
shall not trouble my reader with all the 
curiosities I observed, being studious of 
brevity. 

I had hitherto seen only one side of the 
'academy, the other being appropriated to 
the advancers of speculative learning, of 
whom I shall say something, when I have 
mentioned one illustrious person more, who 
is called among them the universal artist. 
He told us he had been thirty years employ- 
ing his thoughts for the improvement of 
human life. He had two large rooms full 
of wonderful curiosities, and flfty men at 
work. Some were condensing air into a 
dry tangible substance, by extracting the 
niter, and letting the aqueous or fluid par- 
ticles percolate; others softening marble 
for pillows and pin-cushions; others petri- 
fying the hoofs of a living horse, to pre- 
serve them from fomidering. The artist 
himself was at that time busy upon two 
great designs; the first to sow land with 
chaff, wherein he affirmed the true seminal 
virtue to be contained, as he demonstrated 
by several experiments which I was not 
skilful enough to comprehend. The other 
was, by a certain composition of gums, min- 
erals, and vegetables, outwardly applied, to 
prevent the growth of wool upon two young 
lambs; and he hoped, in a reasonable time, 



to propagate the breed of naked sheep all 
over the kingdom. 

We crossed a walk to the other part of 
the academy, where, as I have already said, 
the projectors in speculative learning re- 
sided. 

The first professor I saw was in a very 
large room, with forty pupils about him. 
After salutation, observing me to look ear- 
nestly upon a frame which took up the 
greatest part of both the length and breadth 
of the room, he said, perhaps I might won- 
der to see him employed in a project for 
imiDroving speculative knowledge by prac- 
tical and mechanical operations. But the 
world would soon be sensible of its useful- 
ness; and he flattered himself that a more 
noble exalted thought never sprang in any 
other man's head. Everyone knew how la- 
borious the usual method is of attaining to 
arts and sciences; whereas, by his contriv- 
ance, the most ignorant person, at a reason- 
able charge, and with a little bodily labor, 
may write books m philosophy, poetry, pol- 
itics, law, mathematics, and theology, with- 
out the least assistance from genius or 
study. He then led me to the frame, about 
the sides whereof all his pupils stood in 
ranks. It was twenty feet square, placed 
in the middle of the room. The superficies 
was composed of several bits of wood, about 
the bigness of a die, but some larger than 
others. They were all linked together by 
slender wires. These bits of wood were 
covered on every square with paper pasted 
on them; and on these papers were written 
all the words of their language in their sev- 
eral moods, tenses, and declensions;, but 
without any order. The professor then de- 
sired me to observe, for he was going to set 
his engine at work. The pupils, at his com- 
mand, took each of them hold of an iron 
handle, whereof there were forty fixed 
round the edges of the frame; and, giving 
them a sudden turn, the whole disposition 
of the words was entirely changed. He 
then commanded six and thirty of the lads 
to read the several lines softly, as they ap- 
peared upon the frame; and, where they 
found three or four words together that 
might make part of a sentence, they dic- 
tated to the four remaining* boys who were 
scribes. This work was repeated three or 
four times, and at every turn, the engine 
was so contrived that the words shifted into 
new places as the square bits of wood moved 
upside down. 

Six hours a day the young students were 



230 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



employed in this labor, and the professor 
showed me several volumes in large folio 
already collected, of broken sentences, which 
he intended to piece together, and, out of 
those rich materials, to give the world a 
complete body of all arts and sciences; 
which, however, might be still improved, 
and much expedited, if the public would 
raise a fund for making and employing five 
hundred such frames in Lagado, and oblige 
the managers to contribute in common their 
several collections. 

He assured me that this invention had 
employed all his thoughts from his youth ; 
that he had emptied the whole vocabulary 
into his frame, and made the strictest com- 
putation of the general proportion there is 
in books between the numbers of particles, 
nouns, and verbs, and other parts of speech. 

I made my humblest acknowledgment to 
this illustrious person for his great commu- 
nicativeness; and promised, if ever I had 
the good fortune to return to my native 
country, that I would do him justice, as the 
sole inventor of this wonderful machine; 
the form and contrivance of which I de- 
sired leave to delineate upon paper, as in 
the figure here annexed. I told him, al- 
though it were the custom of our learned in 
Europe to steal inventions from each other, 
who had thereby, at least, this advantage, 
that it became a controversy which Avas the 
right owner, yet I would take such caution 
that he should have the honor entire, with- 
out a rival. 

We next went to the school of languages, 
where three professors sat in consultation 
upon improving that of their own country. 

The first project was to shorten discourse 
by cutting polysyllables into one, and leav- 
ing out verbs and participles; because, in 
reality, all things imaginable are but nouns. 

The other project was a scheme for en- 
tirely abolishing all words whatsoever; and 
this was urged as a great advantage in point 
of health, as well as brevity. For it is 
plain that every word we speak is, in some 
degree, a diminution of our lungs by cor- 
rosion ; and consequently contributes to the 
shortening of our lives. An expedient was 
therefore offered, that since words are only 
names for things, it would be more con- 
venient for all men to carry about them 
such things as were necessary to express the 
particular business they are to discourse on. 
And this invention would certainly have 
taken place, to the great ease as well as 
health of the subject, if the women, in con- 



junction with the vulgar and illiterate, had 
not threatened to raise a rebellion, unless 
they might be allowed the liberty to speak 
with their tongues after the manner of their 
forefathers; such constant irreconcilable 
enemies to science are the common people. 
However, many of the most learned and 
wise adhere to the new scheme of express- 
ing themselves by things; which hath only 
this inconvenience attending it, that if a 
man's business be very great, and of vari- 
ous kinds he must be obliged, in proportion, 
to carry a greater bundle of things upon his 
back, unless he can afford one or two strong 
servants to attend him. I have often beheld 
two of these sages almost sinking under the 
weight of their packs, like pedlars among 
us ; who, when they met in the streets, would 
lay down their loads, open their sacks, and 
hold conversation for an hour together; 
then put up their implements, help each 
other resume their burdens, and take their 
leave. 

But, for short conversations, a man may 
carry implements in his pockets and under 
his arms, enough to supply him: and in his 
house he cannot be at a loss. Therefore the 
room where company meet, who practice 
this art, is full of all things ready at hand, 
requisite to furnish matter for this kind of 
artificial converse. 

Another great advantage, proposed by 
this invention, was, that it would serve as 
an universal language, to be understood in 
all civilized nations, whose goods and uten- 
sils are generally of the same kind, or nearly 
resembling, so that their uses might easily 
be comprehended. And thus ambassadors 
would be qualified to treat with foreign 
princes, or ministers of state, to whose 
tongues they were utter strangers. 

I was at the mathematical school, where 
the master taught his pupils after a method 
scarce imaginable to us in Europe. The 
proposition and demonstration were fairly 
written on a thin wafer, with ink composed 
of a cephalic tincture. This the student 
was to swallow upon a fasting stomach, and 
for three days following eat nothing but 
bread and water. As the wafer digested, 
the tincture mounted to his brain, bearing 
the proposition along with it. But the suc- 
cess had not hitherto been answerable, partlv 
by some error in the quantum or composi- 
tion, and partly by the perverseness of lads ; 
to whom this bolus is so nauseous that they 
generally steal aside and discharge it up- 
wards before it can operate ; neither have 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OF SANITY AND OEDER 



231 



they been yet persuaded to use so long an 
abstinence as the prescription requires. 

In the school of political projectors, I 
was but ill entertained; the professors ap- 
pearing, in my judgment, wholly out of 
their senses; which is a scene that never 
fails to make me melancholy. These un- 
happy people were proposing schemes for 
persuading monarehs to choose favorites 
upon the score of their wisdom, capacity, 
and virtue; of teaching ministers to consult 
the public good; of reAvarding merit, great 
abilities, and eminent services; of instruct- 
ing princes to know their true interest, by 
placing it on the same foundation with that 
of their people; of choosmg for employ- 
ment persons qualified to exercise them ; 
with many other wild impossible chimeras, 
that never entered before into the heart of 
man to conceive; and confirmed in me the 
old observation that there is nothing so ex- 
travagant and irrational which some philos- 
ophers have not maintained for truth. 

But, however, I shall so far do justice to 
this part of the academy, as to acknowledge 
that all of them were not so visionary. 
There was a most ingenious doctor, who 
seemed to be perfectly versed in the whole 
nature and system of government. This 
illustrious person had very usefully em- 
ployed his studies in finding out effectual 
remedies for all diseases and corruptions to 
which the several kinds of public adminis- 
tration are subject, by the vices or infirmi- 
ties of those who govern, as well as by the 
licentiousness of those who are to obey. For 
instance, whereas all writers and reasoners 
have agreed that there is a strict universal 
resemblance between the natural and the 
political body; can there be anything more 
evident than that the health of both must 
be preserved, and the diseases cured by the 
same prescriptions. It is allowed that sen- 
ates and great councils are often troubled 
with redundant, ebullient, and other peccant 
humors; with many diseases of the head, 
and ftiore of the heart; with strong convul- 
sions, with grievous contractions of the 
nerves and sinews in both hands, but espe- 
cially the right ; with spleen, flatus, vertigos, 
and deliriums; with scrofulous tumors full 
of fetid purulent matter; with foul frothy 
ruetations, with canine appetites and crude- 
ness of digestion, besides many others need- 
less to mention. This doctor therefore pro- 
posed, that, upon the meeting of a senate, 
certain physicians should attend at the three 
first days of their sitting, and at the close of 



each day's debate, feel the pulses of every 
senator; after which, having maturely con- 
sidered, and consulted upon the nature of 
the several maladies and the methods of 
cure, they should on the fourth day return 
to the senate-house, attended by their apoth- 
ecaries stored with proper medicines; and, 
before the members sat, administer to each 
of them lenitives, aperitives, abstersives, cor- 
rosives, restringents, palliatives, laxatives, 
cephalalgics, icterics, apoijhlegmatics, acous- 
tics, as their several cases required ; and, ac- 
cording as these medicines should operate, 
repeat, alter, or admit them at the next 
meeting. 

This project could not be of any great ex- 
pense to the public, and would, in my poor 
opinion, be of much use for the dispatch of 
business in those countries where senates 
have any share in the legislative power; 
beget unanimity, shorten debates, open a few 
mouths which are now closed, and close 
many more which are now open; curb the 
petulancy of the young, and correct the posi- 
tiveness of the old, rouse the stupid, and 
damp the pert. 

Again : because it is a general complaint, 
that the favorites of princes are troubled 
with short and weak memories, the same doc- 
tor proposed, that whoever attended a first 
minister, after having told his business with 
the utmost brevity, and in the plainest 
words, should, at his departure, give the 
said minister a tweak by the nose, or a kick 
in the belly, or tread on his corns, or lug 
him thrice by both ears, or run a pin into his 
breech, or pinch his arm black and blue, to 
prevent f orgetf ulness ; and at every levee 
day, repeat the same operation, till the busi- 
ness were done, or absolutely refused. 

He likewise directed, that every senator 
in the great council of a nation, after he had 
delivered his opinion, and argued in the de- 
fense of it, should iDe obliged to give his 
vote directly contrary : because, if that were 
done, the result would infallibly terminate 
in the good of the public. 

When parties in a state are violent, he 
offered a wonderful contrivance to reconcile 
them. The method is this: you take an 
hundred leaders of each party; you dispose 
them into cou^^les of such whose heads are 
nearest of a size; then let two nice opera- 
tors saw off the occiput of each couple at 
the same time, in such a manner that the 
brain may be equally divided. Let the oc- 
ciputs thus cut off be interchanged, applying 



232 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



each to the head of his opposite party-man. 
It seems, indeed, to be a work that requireth 
some exactness, but the professor assured 
us that, if it were dexterously performed, 
the cure would be infallible. For he argued 
thus ; that the two half brains being left to 
debate the matter between themselves, within 
the space of one skull, would soon come to 
a good understanding, and produce that 
moderation, as well as regularity of think- 
ing, so much to be wished for in the heads of 
those who imagine they come into the world 
only to watch and govern its motion: and 
as to the difference of brains in quantity or 
quality, among those who are directors in 
faction, the doctor assured us, from his own 
knowledge, that it was a perfect trifle. 

I heard a very warm debate between two 
professors, about the most commodious and 
effectual ways and means of raising money 
without grieving the subject. The first af- 
firmed the justest method would be to lay 
a certain tax upon vices and folly : and the 
sum fixed upon every man to be rated after 
the fairest manner by a jury of his neigh- 
bors. The second was of an opinion directly 
contrary, to tax those qualities of body and 
mind for which men chiefly value them- 
selves ; the rate to be more or less according 
to the degrees of excelling: the decision 
whereof should be left entirely to their own 
breast. The highest tax was upon men who 
are the greatest favorites of the other sex, 
and the assessments according to the num- 
ber and natures of the favors they have re- 
ceived; for which they are allowed to be 
their own vouchers. Wit, valor, and polite- 
ness were likewise proposed to be largely 
taxed, and collected in the same manner, by 
every person giving his own word for the 
quantum of what he possessed. But as to 
honor, justice, wisdom, and learning, they 
should not be taxed at all ; because they are 
qualifications of so singular a kind that no 
man will either allow them in his neighbor or 
value them in himself. 

The women were proposed to be taxed 
according to their beauty, and skill in dress- 
ing; wherein they had the same privilege 
with the men, to be determined by their own 
judgment. But constancy, chastity, good 
sense, and good nature were not rated, be- 
cause they would not bear the charge of col- 
lecting. 

To keep senators in the interest of the 
crown, it was proposed that the members 
should raffle for employments; every man 



first taking an oath, and giving security that 
he would vote for the court, whether he won 
or no; after which the losers had, in their 
turn, the liberty of raffling upon the next 
vacancy. Thus hope and expectation would 
be kept alive; none would complain of 
broken promises, but impute their disap- 
pointments wholly to Fortune, whose shoul- 
ders are broader and stronger than those of 
a ministry. 

6. War 

[In his last voyage Gulliver comes to the 
country of the Houyhnhnms, in which the 
horses are endowed with reason and are lords 
and masters of creation. In character they 
retain the primitive simplicity of brutes, 
being wholly exempt from the vices and 
sophistication of civilized man. The real 
beasts of this kingdom are the Yahoos, 
creatures corrupt and irrational, who yet 
have forms of human beings. Gulliver in- 
forms his horse master about the state of 
England. From Part IV, Chapter V.] 

The reader may please to observe, that the 
following extract of many conversations I 
had with my master, contains a summary of 
the most material points, which were dis- 
coursed at several times, for above two 
years ; his Honor often desiring fuller satis- 
faction, as I farther improved in the Houy- 
hnhnm tongue. I laid before him, as well as 
I could, the whole state of Europe; I dis- 
coursed of trade and manufactures, of arts 
and sciences; and the answers I gave to 
all the questions he made, as they arose 
upon several subjects, were a fund of con- 
versation not to be exhausted. But I shall 
hei'e only set down the substance of what 
passed between us concerning my own coun- 
try, reducing it into order as well as I can, 
without any regard to time, or other cir- 
cumstances, while I strictly adhere to truth. 
My only concern is, that I shall hardly be 
able to do justice to my master's arguments 
and expressions, which must needs suffer by 
my want of capacity, as well as by a trans- 
lation into our barbarous English. 

In obedience, therefore, to his Honor's 
commands, I related to him the revolution 
under the Prince of Orange; the long war 
with France entered into by the said Prince, 
and renewed by his successor the present 
Queen, wherein the greatest powers of 
Christendom were engaged, and which still 
continued: I computed, at his request, that 
about a million of Yahoos might have been 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OF SANITY AND OEDEE 



233 



killed in the whole progress of it ; and, per- 
haiDS, a hundred or more cities taken, and 
five times as many ships burnt or sunk. 

He asked me what were the usual causes 
or motives that made one country go to war 
with another. I answered they were in- 
numerable ; but I should only mention a few 
of the chief. Sometimes the ambition of 
princes, who never think they have land or 
people enough to govern ; sometimes the cor- 
ruption of ministers, who engage their mas- 
ter in a war, in order to stifle or divert the 
clamor of the subjects against their evil ad- 
ministration. Difference in opinion hath 
cost many millions of lives : for instance, 
whether flesh be bread, or bread be flesh; 
whether the juice of a certain berry be blood 
or wine ; whether whistling be a vice or vir- 
tue; whether it be better to kiss a post, or 
throw it into the fire ; what is the best color 
for a coat, whether black, white, red, or 
gray ; and whether it should be long or short, 
narrow or wide, dirty or clean, with many 
more. Neither are any wars so furious and 
bloody, or of so long continuance, as those 
occasioned by difference in opinion, espe- 
cially if it be in things indifferent. 

Sometimes the quarrel between two 
princes is to decide which of them shall dis- 
possess a third of his dominions, where 
neither of them pretend to any right. Some- 
times one prince quarreleth with another, 
for fear the other should quarrel with him. 
Sometimes a war is entered upon, because 
the enemy is too strong; and sometimes 
because he is too weak. Sometimes our 
neighbors want the things which we have, or 
have the things which we want ; and we both 
fight, till they take ours, or give us theirs. 
It is a very justifiable cause of a war, to 
invade a country, after the people have been 
wasted by famine, destroyed by pestilence, 
or embroiled by factions among themselves. 
It is justifiable to enter into war against our 
nearest ally, when one of his towns lies con- 
venient for us, or a territory of land that 
would render our dominions round and com- 
plete. If a prince sends forces into a na- 
tion, where the people are poor and ignorant, 
he may lawfully put half of them to death, 
and make slaves of the rest, in order to 
civilize and reduce them from their bar- 
barous way of living. It is a very kingly, 
honorable, and frequent practice when one 
prince desires the assistance of another to 
secure him against an invasion, that the as- 
sistant, when he hath driven out the in- 



vader, should seize on the dominions himself, 
and kill, imprison, or banish the prince he 
came to relieve. Alliance by blood, or mar- 
riage, is a frequent cause of war between 
princes; and the nearer the kindred is, the 
greater is their disposition to quarrel : poor 
nations are hungry, and rich nations are 
proud; and pride and hunger will ever be 
at variance. For these reasons, the trade of 
a soldier is held the most honorable of all 
others : because a soldier is a Yahoo hired 
to kill in cold blood as many of his own 
species, who had never offended him, as 
possibly he can. 

There is, likewise, a kind of beggarly 
princes in Europe, not able to make war by 
themselves, who hire out their troops to 
richer nations, for so much a day to each 
man; of which they keep three-fourths to 
themselves, and it is the best part of their 
maintenance; such are those in Germany 
and other northern parts of Europe. 

"What you have told me" (said my mas- 
ter) "upon the subject of war, does, indeed, 
discover most admirably the effects of that 
reason you pretend to : however, it is happy 
that the shame is greater than the danger; 
and that Nature hath left you utterly incapa- 
ble of doing much mischief. 

"For, your mouths lying flat with your 
faces, you can hardly bite each other to any 
purpose, unless by consent. Then as to the 
claws upon your feet before and behind, 
they are so short and tender, that one of our 
Yahoos would drive a dozen of yours before 
him. And, therefore, in recounting the 
numbers of those who have been killed in 
battle, I cannot but think that you have 
said the thing which is not." 

I could not forbear shaking my head, and 
smiling a little at his ignorance. And, being 
no stranger to the art of war, I gave him a 
description of cannon, culverins, muskets, 
carbines, pistols, bullets, powder, swords, 
bayonets, battles, sieges, retreats, attacks, 
undermines, countermines, bombardments, 
sea-fights ; ships sunk with a thousand men ; 
twenty thousand killed on each side; dying 
groans, limbs flying in the air ; smoke, noise, 
confusion, tramjDling to death under horses' 
feet; flight, pursuit, victory; fields strewed 
with carcases, left for food to dogs and 
wolves, and birds of prey; plundering, 
stripping, ravishing, burning, and destroy- 
ing. And, to set forth the valor of my OAvn 
dear countrymen, I assured him that I had 
seen them blow up a hundred enemies at 



234 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



once in a siege, and as many in a ship ; and 
beheld the dea* bodies come down in pieces 
from the clouds to the great diversion of the 
spectators, 

I was going on to more particulars when 
my master commanded me silence. He said, 
whoever understood the nature of Yahoos 
might easily beheve it possible for so vile an 
animal, to be capable of every action I had 
named, if their strength .aid cunning equaled 
their malice. But as my discourse had in- 
creased his abhorrence of the whole species, 
so he found it ga-ve him a disturbance in his 
mind, to which he was wholly a stranger be- 
fore. He thought his ears, being used to 
such abominable words, might, by degrees, 
admit them with less detestation. That 
although he hated the Yahoos of this coun- 
try, yet he no more blamed them for their 
odious qualities, than he did a gnnayh (a 
bird of prey) for its cruelty,, or a sharp 
stone for cutting his hoof. But when a crea- 
ture, pretending to reason, could be capable 
of such enormities, he dreaded lest the cor- 
ruption of that faculty might be worse than 
brutality itself. He seemed therefore con- 
fident that, instead of reason, we were only 
possessed of some quality fitted to increase 
our natural vices; as the reflection from a 
troubled stream returns the image of an 
ill-shapen body, not only larger, but more 
distorted. 



7. The Uses of Wealth 

[From A Voyage to the Houyhnhnms. 
Chapter VI.] 

My master was yet wholly at a loss to un- 
derstand what motives could incite this race 
of lawyers to perplex, disquiet, and weary 
themselves, and engage in a confederacy of 
injustice, merely for the sake of injuring 
their fellow-animals; neither could he com- 
prehend what I meant in saying, they did 
it for hire. Whereupon I was at much pains 
to describe to him the use of money, the ma- 
terials it was made of, and the value of the 
metals ; that, when a Yahoo had got a great 
store of this precious substance, he was able 
to purchase whatever he had a mind to, the 
finest clothing, the noblest houses, great 
tracts of land, the most costly meats and 
drinks; and have his choice of the most 
beautiful females. Therefore, since money 
alone was able to perform all these feats, 
our Yahoos thought they could never have 
enough of it to spend, or to save, as they 



found themselves inclined, from their nat- 
ural bent either to profusion or avarice. 
That the rich man enjoyed the fruit of the 
poor man's labor, and the latter were a thou- 
sand to one in iDroportion to the former. 
That the bulk of our people were forced to 
live miserably, by laboring every day for 
small wages, to make a few live plentifully. 
I enlarged myself much on these and many 
other particulars, to the same purpose, but 
his Honor was still to seek: for he went 
upon a supposition, that all animals had a 
title to their share in the productions of the 
earth; and especially those who presided 
over the rest. Therefore he desired I would 
let him know Avhat these costly meats were, 
and how any of us happened to want 
them. Whereupon I enumerated as many 
sorts as came into my head, with the various 
methods of dressing them, which could not 
be done without sending vessels by sea to 
every part of the world, as well for liquors 
to drink, as for sauces, and innumerable 
other conveniences. I assured him, that this 
whole globe of earth must be at least three 
times gone round, before one of our better 
female Yahoos could get her breakfast, or 
a cup to put it in. He said, that must needs 
be a miserable country, which cannot fur- 
nish food for its own inhabitants. But what 
he chiefly wondered at, was how such vast 
tracts of ground as I described, should be 
wholly without fresh water, and the people 
put to the necessity of sending over the sea 
for drink, I replied, that England (the 
dear place of my nativity) was computed to 
produce three times the quantity of food, 
more than its inhabitants are able to con- 
sume, as well as liquors extracted from 
grain, or pressed out of the fruit of certain 
trees, which made excellent drink; and the 
same proportion in every other convenience 
of life. But in order to feed the luxury and 
intemperance of the males, and the vanity of 
the females, we sent away the greatest part 
of our necessary things to other countries, 
from whence, in return, we brought the ma- 
terials of diseases, folly, and vice, to spend 
among ourselves. Hence it follows of neces- 
sity, that vast numbers of our people are 
compelled to seek their livelihood by beg- 
ging, robbing, stealing, cheating, forswear- 
ing, flattering, suborning, forging, gaming, 
lying, fawning, hectoring, voting, scribbling, 
star-gazing, poisoning, canting, libeling, free- 
thinking, and the like occupations : every one 
of which terms I was at much pains to make 
him understand. 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OF SANITY AND OEDER 



235 



That wine was not imported among us 
from foreign countries, to supply the want 
of water or other drinks, but because it was 
a sort of liquid which made us merry, by 
putting us out of our senses; diverted all 
melancholy thoughts, begat wild extravagant 
imaginations in the brain, raised our hopes, 
and banished our fears; suspended every 
office of reason for a time, and deprived 
us of the use of our limbs till we fell into a 
profound sleep ; although it must be con- 
fessed, that we always awaked sick and 



dispirited; and that the use of this liquor 
filled us with diseases, which made our lives 
uncomfortable and short. 

But, beside all this, the bulk of our people 
supported themselves by furnishing Uie 
necessities or conveniences of life to the 
rich, and to each other. For instance, when 
I am at home, and dressed, as I ought to be, 
I carry on my body the workmanship of an 
hundred tradesmen ; the building and fur- 
niture of my house employ as many more, 
and five times the number to adorn my wife. 



IV. PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE 



Woman 

alexander pope 

[From the Moral Essays^ 1735.] 

! blest with temper, whose unclouded ray 
Can make tomorrow cheerful as today; 
She who can love a sister's charms, or hear 
Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear ; 
She who ne'er answers till a husband cools. 
Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules; 
Charms by accei)ting, by submitting sways, 
Yet has her humor most when she obeys ; 
Let Fops or Fortune fly which way they will, 
Disdains all loss of tickets or Codille ; 
Spleen, Vapors, or Smallpox, above them 

all. 
And mistress of herself, tho' china fall. 
And yet believe me, good as well as ill. 
Woman's at best a contradiction still. 
Heav'n when it strives to polish all it can 
Its last best work, but forms a softer Man ; 
Picks from each sex to make the fav'rite 

blest. 
Your love of pleasure, our desire of rest ; 
Blends, in exception to all gen'ral rules, 
Your taste of follies with our scorn of fools ; 
Reserve with Frankness, Art with Truth, 

allied, 
Courage with Softness, Modesty with Pride ; 
Fix'd principles, with fancy ever new : 
Shakes all together, and produces — You. 
Be this a woman's fame ; with this unblest, 
Toasts live a scorn, and Queens may die a 

jest. 
This Phoebus promis'd (I forget the year) 
When those blue eyes first open'd on the 

sphere ; 
Ascendant Phoebus watch'd that hour with 

care, 



Averted half your parents' simple prayer, 
And gave you beauty, but denied the pelf 
That buys your sex a tyrant o'er itself. 
The gen'rous God who wit and gold refines, 
And ripens spirits as he ripens mines. 
Kept dross for Duchesses, the world shall 

know it. 
To you gave Sense, Good-humor, and a Poet. 

The Golden Mean 

alexander pope 

[From The Second Epistle of the Second 
Book of Horace, 1737.] 

Yes, sir, how small soever be my heap, 
A part I will enjoy as well as keep. 
My heir may sigh, and think it want of grace 
A man so poor would live without a j)laee; 
But sure no statute in his favor says. 
How free or frugal I shall pass my days ; 
I who at some times spend, at others spare. 
Divided between carelessness and care. 
'Tis one thing, madly to disperse my store; 
Another, not to heed to treasure more ; ' 
Glad, like a boy, to snatch the first good day, 
And pleas'd if sordid want be far away. 
What is 't to me (a passenger, God wot) 
Whether my vessel be first-rate or not ? 
The ship itself may make a better figure, 
But I that sail, am neither less nor bigger. 
I neither strut with every fav'ring breath. 
Nor strive with all the tempest in my teeth ; 
In Power, Wit, Figure, Virtue, Fortune, 

placed 
Behind the foremost, and before the last. 
"But why all this of Av'riee? I have none." 
I wish you joy, sir, of a tyrant gone : 
But does no other lord it at this hour, 
As wild and mad ? the avarice of Pow'r ? 



236 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Does neither Rage inflame nor Fear appall ? 
Not the black fear of Death, that saddens all ? 
With terrors round, can Reason hold her 

throne, 
Despise the known, nor tremble at th' un- 
known ? 
Survey both worlds, intrepid and entire, 
In spite of witches, devils, dreams, and fire. 
Pleas'd to look forward, pleas'd to look 

behind. 
And count each birthday with a grateful 

mind? 
Has life no sourness, drawn so near its end ? 
Canst thou endure a foe, forgive a friend"? 
Has age but melted the rough parts away. 
As winter fruits grow mild ere they decay? 
Or will you think, my friend ! your bus'ness 

done, 
When of a hundred thorns you pull out one ? 
Learn to live well, or fairly make your will ; 
You've play'd and lov'd, and ate and drank, 

your fill. 
Walk sober off, before a sprightlier age 
Comes titt'i'ing on, and shoves you from the 

stage; 
Leave such to trifle with more grace and 

ease, 
Whom Tolly pleases, and whose follies 

please. 

A Perfect Universe 

ALEXANDER POPE 

[Prom An Essay on Man, 1733-4.] 

Awake, my St. John ! leave all meaner things 
To low ambition, and the pride of kings. 
Let us (since life can little more supply 
Than just to look about us and to die) 
Expatiate free o'er all this scene of man ; ^ 
A mighty maze ! but not without a plan ; 
A wild, where weeds and flowers promiscu- 

' ous shoot; 
Or garden, tempting with forbidden fruit. 
Together let us beat this ample field, 
Try what the open, what the covert yield ; I*' 
The latent tracts, the giddy heights, explore 
Of all who blindly creep, or sightless soar; 
Eye nature's walks, shoot folly as it flies, 
And catch the manners living as they rise ; 
Laugh where we must, be candid where we 
can ; 1^ 

But vindicate the ways of God to man. 

I. Say first, of God above, or man below. 
What can we reason, but from what we 

knoAv ? 
Of man, what see we biTt his station here 
From which to reason, or to which refer? 20 



Through worlds unnumbered though the God 

be known, 
'Tis ours to trace him only in our own. 
He, who through vast immensity can pierce, 
See worlds on worlds compose one universe. 
Observe how system into system runs, 25 
What other planets circle other suns, 
What varied being peoples every star, 
May tell Avhy Heaven has made us as we are. 
But of this frame the bearings, and the ties, 
The strong connections, nice dependencies, ^^ 
Gradations just, has thy pervading soul 
Looked through? or can a part contain the 

whole? 
Is the great chain, that draws all to agree. 
And drawn supports, upheld by God, or 

thee? 

II. Presumptu.ous man! the reason 

wouldst thou find, ^^ 

Why formed so weak, so little, and so blind ? 
First, if thou canst, the harder reason guess, 
Why formed no weaker, blinder, and no 

less? 
Ask of thy mother earth, why oaks are made 
Taller or stronger than the weeds they 

shade? 40 

Or ask of yonder argent fields above. 
Why Jove's satellites are less than Jove. 
Of systems possible, if 'tis confessed 
That wisdom infinite must form the best, 
Where all must full or not coherent be, ^^ 
And all that rises, rise in due degree ; ■ 
Then, in the scale of reasoning life, 'tis 

plain. 
There must be, somewhere, stich a rank as 

man : 
And all the question (wrangle e'er so long) 
Is only this, if God has placed him wrong ? 50 
Respecting man, whatever wrong we call, 
May, must be right, as relative to all. 
In human works, though labored on with 

pain, 
A thousand movements scarce one purpose 

gain; _ 

In God's, one single can its end produce ; °^ 
Yet serves to second too some other use. 
So man, who here seems principal alone, 
Perhaps acts second to some sphere un- 
known, 
Touches some wheel, or verges to some goal ; 
'Tis but a part AA'e see, and not a whole. ^^ 
When the proud steed shall know why 

man restrains 
His fiery course, or drives him o'er the 

plains ; 
When the dull ox, why now he breaks the 

clod, 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OF SANITY AND ORDEE 



237 



Is now a victim, and now Egypt's god : 
Then shall man's pride and dullness com- 
prehend 6S 
His actions', passions', being's, use and end ; 
Why doing, suffering, checked, impelled; 

and why 
This hour a slave, the next a deity. 

Then say not man's imperfect, Heaven in 
fault ; 
Say rather, man's as perfect as he ought : ™ 
His knowledge measured to his state and 

place, 
His time a moment, and a point his space. 
If to be perfect in a certain sphere. 
What matter, soon or late, or here or there ? 
The blest today is as completely so, "^^ 

As who began a thousand years ago. 

III. Heaven from all creatures hides the 
book of fate. 
All but the page jDrescribed, their present 

state : 
From brutes what men, from men what spir- 
its know: 
Or who could suffer being here below? so 
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed today, 
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play ? 
Pleased to the last, he crops the flowery 

food. 
And licks the hand just raised to shed his 

blood. 
Oh, blindness to the future ! kindly given, ^^ 
That each may fill the circle marked by 

Heaven : 
"V^^io sees with equal eye, as God of all, 
A hero perish, or a sparrow fall. 
Atoms or systems into ruin hurled. 
And now a bubble burst, and now a world. ^^ 
Hope humbly then; with trembling pin- 
ions soar; 
Wait the great teacher Death; and God 

adore. 
What future bliss, he gives not thee to know. 
But gives that hope to be thy blessing 

now. 
Hope springs eternal in the human breast : ^5 
Man never is, but always to be, blest. 
The soul, uneasy and confined from home, 
Rests and expatiates in a life to come. 
Lo, the poor Indian ! whose untutored 
mind 
Sees God in clouds,' or hears him in the 
wind; 100 

His soul, proud science never taught to stray 
Far as the solar walk, or milky way ; 
Yet simple nature to his hope has given, 
Behind the cloud-topped hill, an humbler 
Heaven ; 



Some safer world in depths of woods em- 
braced, 105 
Some happier island in the watery waste. 
Where slaves once more their native land 

behold. 
No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for 

gold. 
To be, contents his natural desire. 
He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire ; ^^ 
But thinks, admitted to that equal sky. 
His faithful dog shall bear him company. 

IV. Go, wiser thou ! and, in thy scale of 
sense 

Weigh thy opinion against Providence; 
Call imperfection what thou fanciest such, 
Say, "Here he gives too little, there too 

much" ; 
Destroy all creatures for thy sport or gust, 
Yet cry, "If man's unhappy, God's unjust" ; 
If man alone engross not Heaven's high 

care. 
Alone made perfect here, immortal there, i^o 
Snatch from his hand the balance and the 

rod. 
Re-judge his justice, be the god of God. 
In pride, in reasoning- pride, our error lies ; 
All quit their sphere, and rush into the skies. 
Pride still is aiming at the blest abodes, 1^5 
Men would be angels, angels would be gods. 
Aspiring* to be gods, if angels fell. 
Aspiring to be angels, men rebel: 
And who but wishes to invert the laws 
Of order, sins against the Eternal Cause, i^o 

V. Ask for Avhat end the heavenly bodies . 
shine, 

Earth for whose use? Pride answers, " 'Tis 
for mine : 

For me kind nature wakes her genial power. 

Suckles each herb, and spreads out every 
flower ; 

Annual for me, the grape, the rose, renew i^^ 

The juice nectareous, and the balmy dew; 

For me, the mine a thousand treasures 
brings ; 

For me, health gushes from a thousand 
springs ; 

Seas roll to waft me, suns to light me rise ; 

My footstool earth, my canopy the skies." i^o 
But errs not Nature from this gracious 
end. 

From burning suns when livid deaths de- 
scend. 

When earthquakes swallow, or when tem- 
pests sweep . 

Towns to one grave, whole nations to the 
deep? 

No ('tis replied), the first Almighty Cause 



238 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



155 



Acts not by partial, but by general laws ; ^46 

Til' exceptions few; some change, since all 
began : 

And what created perfect? — Why then 
man 1 

If the great end be human happiness, ^^^ 

Then nature deviates; and can man do less? 

As much that end a constant course requires 

Of showers and sunshine, as of man's de- 
sires ; 

As much eternal springs and cloudless 
skies, 

As men forever temperate, calm, and wise. 

If plagues or earthquakes break not Heav 
en's design. 

Why then a Borgia, or a Catiline ? 

Who knows but He, whose hand the light- 
ning forms. 

Who heaves old ocean, and who wings the 
storms ; 

Pours fierce ambition in a Caesar's mind. 

Or turns young Ammon loose to scourge 
mankind? 160 

From pride, from pride, our very reasoning 
springs. 

Account for moral, as for natural things : 

Why charge we Heaven in those, in these 
acquit ? 

In both, to reason right is to submit. 

Better for us, perhaps, it might appear, 

Were there all harmony, all virtue here; ^^^ 

That never air or ocean felt the wind; 

That never passion discomposed the mind. 

But all subsists by elemental strife; 

And passions are the elements of life. ^'^^ 

The general order, since the whole began, 

Is kept in nature, and is kept in man. 

VI. What would this man"? Now up- 
ward will he soar. 

And little less than angel, would be more ; 

Now looking downwards, just as grieved ap- 
pears ■'■^^ 

To want the strength of bulls, the fur of 
bears. 

Made for his use all creatures if he call, 

Say what their use, had he the powers of 
all? 

Nature to these, without profusion, kind, 

The proper organs, proper powers assigned ; 

Each seeming want compensated of course, 

Here with degrees of swiftness, there of 
force ; ■'^" 

All in exact proportion to the state ; 

Nothing to add, and nothing to abate. 

Each beast, each insect, happy in its own : ^^^ 

Is Heaven unkind to man, and man alone? 

Shall he alone, whom rational we call. 



Be pleased with nothing, if not blessed with 
all? 
The bliss of man (could pride that bless- 
ing find) 
Is not to act or think beyond mankind ; ^^'^ 
No powers of body or of soul to share. 
But what his nature and his state can bear. 
Why has not man a microscopic eye? 
For this plain reason, man is not a fly. 
Say what the use, were finer optics given, l^^ 
T' inspect a mite, not comprehend the 

heaven ? 
Or touch, if tremblingly alive all o'er, 
To smart and agonize at every pore? 
Or, quick effluvia darting through the brain, 
Die of a rose in aromatic pain? 200 

If nature thundered in his opening ears. 
And stunned him with the music of the 

spheres. 
How would he wish that Heaven had left 

him still 
The whispering zephyr, and the purling 

rill? 
Who finds not Providence all good and wise. 
Alike in what it gives, and what denies? ^^^ 

VII. Far as creation's ample range ex- 
tends. 
The scale of sensual, mental power ascends. 
Mark how it mounts, to man's imperial race. 
From the green myriads in the peopled 
grass : 210 

What modes of sight betwixt each wide ex- 
treme. 
The mole's dim curtain, and the lynx's beam : 
Of smell, the headlong lioness between 
And hound sagacious on the tainted green : 
Of hearing, from the life that fills the flood. 
To that which warbles through the vernal 
wood : 216 

The spider's touch, how exquisitely fine ! 
Feels at each thread, and lives along the 

line : 
In the nice bee, what sense so subtly true 
From poisonous herbs extracts the healing 
dew? 220 

How instinct varies in the grovelling swine. 
Compared, half-reasoning elephant, with 

.thine ! 
'Twixt that and reason, what a nice barrier. 
Forever separate, yet forever near! 
Eemembrance and reflection how allied ; 225 
What thin partitions sense from thought di- 
vide: 
And middle natures, how they long to join. 
Yet never pass th' insuperable line ! 
Without this just gradation, could they be 
Subjected, these to those, or all to thee? 230 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY IDEALS OF SANITY AND OKDEE 



239 



The powers of all subdued by thee alone, 
Is not thy reason all these powers in one ? 

VIII. See, through this air, this ocean, 
and this earth 

All matter quick, and bursting into birth. 
Above, how high, progressive life may go ! 
Around, how wide ! how deep extend below ! 
Vast chain of being ! which from God began, 
Natures ethereal, human, angel, man, 
Beast, bird, fish, insect, what no eye can see, 
No giass can reach ; from infinite to thee, 240 
From thee to nothing. — On superior powers 
Were we to press, inferior might on ours ; 
Or in the full creation leave a void. 
Where, one step broken, the great scale's 

destroyed : 
From nature's chain whatever link you 

strike, 245 

Tenth, or ten thousandth, breaks the chain 

alike. 
And, if each system in gradation roll 
Alike essential to th' amazing whole. 
The least confusion but in one, not all 
That system only but the whole must fall. 250 
Let earth unbalanced from her orbit fly, 
Planets and suns run lawless through the 

sky; 
Let ruling angels from their spheres be 

hurled, 
Being on being wrecked, and world on 

world ; 
Heaven's whole foundations to their center 

nod, 255 

And nature tremble to the throne of God. 
All this dread order break — for whom? for 

thee"? 
Vile worm ! — Oh, madness ! pride ! impiety ! 

IX. What if the foot, ordained the dust 
to tread. 

Or hand, to toil, aspired to be the head*? 260 
What if the head, the eye, or ear repined 
To serve mere engines to the ruling mind? 
Just as absurd for any part to claim 
To be another, in this general frame; 
Just as absurd, to mourn the tasks or pains, 
The gi'eat directing Mind of all ordains. 266 
All are but parts of one stupendous 

whole. 
Whose body nature is, and God the soul ; 
That, changed through all, and yet in all the 

same ; 
Great in the earth, as in th' ethereal frame; 
Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, 2'i'i 
Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees. 
Lives through all life, extends through all 

extent, 
Spreads undivided, operates unspent; 



Breathes in our soul, informs our mortal 
part, 275 

As full, as perfect, in a hair as heart ; 
As full, as perfect, in vile man that xiiourns. 
As the rapt seraph that adores and burns : 
To him no high, no low, no great, no small ; 
He fills, he bounds, connects, and equals all. 

X. Cease then, nor order imperfection 

name : 281 

Our proper bliss depends on what we blame. 

Kjiow thy own point : this kind, this due 

degree 
Of blindness, weakness. Heaven bestows on 

thee. 
Submit. — In this, or any other sphere, 285 
Secure to be as blest as thou canst bear: 
Safe in the hand of one disjDOsing Power, 
Or in the natal, or the mortal hour. 
All nature is but art, unknown to thee; 
All chance, direction, which thou canst not 



see; 



290 



All discord, harmony not understood; 
All partial evil, universal good : 
And, spite of pride, in erring reason's spite. 
One truth is clear, Whatever is, is right. 

Self Love and Reason 

alexander pope 

[From An Essay on Man, 1733-4] 

Two principles in Human Nature reign, 
Self-love to urge and Reason to restrain ; 
Nor this a good nor that a bad we call ; 
Each works its end, to move or govern all : 
And to their jaroper operation still ^ 

Ascribe all good, to their improper, ill. 
Self-love, the spring of motion, acts the 

soul ; 
Reason's comparing balance rules the whole. 
Man but for that no action could attend. 
And, but for this were active to no end : ^^ 
Fix'd like a plant on his peculiar spot. 
To draw nutrition, propagate, and rot ; 
Or meteor-like, flame lawless thro' the void. 
Destroying others, by himself destroy'd. 
Most strength the moving princij)le re 

quires ; 

Active its task, it prompts, impels, inspires : 
Sedate and quiet the comparing* lies, 
Form'd but to check, delib'rate, and advise. 
Self-love still stronger, as its objects nigh ; 
Reason's at distance and in prospect lie : 20 
That sees immediate good by present sense ; 
Reason, the future and the consequence. 
Thicker than arguments, temptations 

throng ; 



15 



240 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



At best more watchful this, but that more 
strong. 

The action of the stronger to suspend, 25 

Reason still use, to Reason still attend. 

Attention habit and experience gains ; 

Each strengthens Reason and Self-love re- 
strains. 

Let subtle schoolmen teach these friends to 
fight, 

More studious to divide than to unite ; ^0 

And Grace and Virtue, Sense and Reason 
split, 

With all the rash dexterity of Wit. 

Wits, just like fools, at war about a name. 

Have full as oft no meaning, or the same. 

Self-love and Reason to one end aspire, 35 

Pain their aversion, Pleasure their desire ; 

But greedy that, its object would devour; 

This taste the honey, and not woimd the 
flower : 

Pleasure, or wrong or rightly understood. 

Our greatest evil or our greatest good. ^o 

Government 

alexander pope 

[From An Essay on Man, 1733-4] 

Who first taught souls enslaved, and 
realms undone, 

Th' enormous faith of many made for one ; 

That proud exception to all Nature's laws, 

T' invert the world, and counterwork its 
cause 1 

Force first made conquest, and that conquest 
law; 

Till Superstition taught the tyrant awe. 

Then shared the tyranny, then lent it aid, 

And Gods of conquerors, Slaves of subjects 
made. 

She, 'midst the lightning's blaze and thun- 
der's sound. 

When rock'd the mountains, and when 
groan'd the ground. 

She taught the weak to bend, the proud to 
pray 

To PoAver unseen, and mightier far than 
they: 

She, from the rending earth and bursting 
skies, 

Saw Gods descend, and Fiends infernal rise : 

Here fix'd the dreadful, there the bless'd 
abodes ; 

Fear made her Devils, and weak hope her 
Gods; 

Gods, partial, changeful, passionate, un- 
just; 



Whose attributes were rage, revenge, or 

lust; 
Such as the souls of cowards might con- 
ceive, 
And, formed like tyrants, tyrants would be- 
lieve. 
Zeal then, not Charity, became the guide, 
And Hell was built on spite, and Heav'n on 

pride : 
Then sacred seem'd th' ethereal vault no 

more ; 
Altars grew marble then, and reek'd with 

gore : 
Then first the flamen tasted living food, 
Next his grim idol smear'd with human 

blood ; 
With Heav'n's own thunders shook the 

world below, 
And play'd the God an engine on his foe. 
So drives Self-love thro' just and thro' un- 
just. 
To one man's power, ambition, lucre, lust : 
The same Self-love in all becomes the cause 
Of what restrains him, government and 

laws. 
For, what one likes if others like as well, 
What serves one well, when many wills 

rebel? 
How shall he keep what, sleeping or awake, 
A weaker may surprise, a stronger take? 
His safety must his liberty restrain : 
All join to guard what each desires to 

gain. 
Forc'd into virtue thus by self-defence, 
Ev'n kings learn'd justice and benevolence: 
Self-love forsook the path it first pursued, 
And found the private in the public good. 
'Twas then the studious head, or gen'rous 
mind. 
Follower of God, or friend of human kind. 
Poet or patriot, rose but to restore 
The faith and moral Nature gave before ; 
Relumed her ancient light, not kindled new ; 
If not God's image, yet his shadow drew; 
Taught power's due use to people and to 

kings, 
Taught nor to slack nor strain its tender 

strings. 
The less or greater set so justly true. 
That touching one must strike the other 

too; 
Till jarring int'rest of themselves create 
Th' according music of a well-mix'd state. 
Such is the world's great harmony, that 

springs 
From order, union, full consent of things; 
Where small and great, where weak and 
mighty made 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OF SANITY AND OEDER 



241 



To serve, not suffer, strengthen, not invade; 
More powerful each as needful to the 

rest, 
And, in proportion as it blesses, blest; 
Draw to one point, and to one center bring 
Beast, man, or angel, servant, lord, or 

king. 
For forms of government let fools contest; 
Whate'er is best administer'd is best : 
For modes of faith let graceless zealots 

fight; 
His can't be wrong whose life is in the right. 
In Faith and Hope the world will disagree, 
But all mankind's concern is Charity: 
All must be false that thwart this one great 

end. 
And all of God that bless mankind or mend. 
Man, like the gen'rous vine, supported 

lives ; 
The strength he gains is from th' embrace 

he gives. 
On their own axis as the planets run, 
Yet made at once their circle round the sun ; 
So two consistent motions act the soul. 
And one regards itself, and one the Whole. 
Thus God and Nature linked the gen'ral 

frame. 
And bade Self-love and Social be the same. 



Equality 

alexander pope 

[From An Essay on Man, 1733-4] 

Order is Heav'n's first law; and, this con- 
fessed, 
Some are, and must be, greater than the rest. 
More rich, more wise; but who infers from 

hence 
That such are happier, shocks all common 

sense. 
Heav'n to mankmd impartial we confess, 
If all are equal in their happiness increase ; 
All Nature's difference keeps all Nature's 

peace. 
Condition, circumstance, is not the thing ; 
Bliss is the same in subject or in king. 
In who obtain defence, or who defend, 
In him who is, or him who 'finds a friend : 
Heav'n breathes thro' every member of the 

whole 
One common blessing, as one common 

soul. 
But Fortune's gifts, if each alike possessed, 
And each were equal, must not all contest? 
If then to all men happiness was meant, 
God in externals could not place content. 



Virtue 

alexander pope 

[From An Essay on Man, 1733-4] 

Know then this truth (enough for man to 

know), 
"Virtue alone is happiness below ;" 
The only point where human bliss stands 

still, 
And tastes the good without the fall to ill; 
Where only merit constant pay receives, 
Is bless'd in what it takes and what it gives ; 
The joy unequal'd if its end it gain. 
And, if it lose, attended wiin no pain ; 
Without satiety, tho' e'er so bless'd, 
And but more relish'd as the more distress'd : 
The broadest mirth unfeeling Folly wears, 
Less pleasing far than Virtue's very tears : 
Good from each object, from each place 

acquired, 
For ever exercised, yet never tired; 
Never elated while one man's oppress'd; 
Never 'dejected while another's bless'd : 
And where no wants, no wishes can remain, 
Since but to wish more virtue is to gain. 
See the sole bliss Heav'n could on all bestow ; 
Which who but feels can taste, but thinks 

can know: 
Yet poor with fortune, and with learning 

blind. 
The bad must miss, the good untaught will 

find: 
Slave to no sect, who takes no i^rivate road, 
But looks thro' Nature up to Nature's God ; 
Pursues that chain which links th' immense 

design, 
Joins Heav'n and earth, and mortal, and 

divine ; 
Sees that no being any bliss can know. 
But touches some above and some below ; 
Learns from this union of the rising whole 
The first, last purpose of the human soul ; 
And knows where faith, law, morals, all 

began. 
All end, in love of God and love of ]\Ian. 

Men of Fire 

richard steele 

[The Tatter, No. 61 :1. Tuesday, August 30, 

1709] 

Quicquid agunt homines 

— nostri est farrago libelli.^ 

— Juvenal. 

Among many phrases which have crept 

into conversation, especially of such eom- 

1 "Whate'er men do, or say, or think, or dream, 
Our motley paper seizes for its theme." 



242 



THE GREAT TEADITION 



pany as frequent this place, there is not one 
which misleads men more than that of a 
"Fellow of a great deal of fire." This meta- 
phorical term, Fire, has done much good in 
keeping coxcombs in awe of one another; 
but, at the same time, it has made them 
troublesome to everybody else. You see in 
the very air of a "Fellow of Fire," some- 
thing so expressive of what he would be at 
that if it were not for self-preservation a 
man would laugh out. 

I had last night the fate to drink a bottle 
with two of these Firemen, who are indeed 
dispersed like the myrmidons in all quarters 
and to be met with among those of -the most 
different education. One of my companions 
was a scholar with Fire; and the other a 
soldier of the same complexion. My learned 
man would fall into disputes and argue 
without any manner of jDrovocation or con- 
tradiction: the other was decisive without 
words and would give a shrug or an oath to 
express his opinion. My learned man was a 
mere scholar and my man of war as mere a 
soldier. The particularity of the first was 
ridiculous, that of the second, terrible. They 
were relations by blood, which in some meas- 
ure moderated their extravagances toward 
each other: I gave myself up merely as a 
person of no note in the company ; but as if 
brought to be convinced that I was an in- 
considerable thing, any otherwise than that 
they would show each other to me and make 
me spectator of the triumph they alternately 
enjoyed. The scholar has been very con- 
versant with books and the other with men 
only; which makes them both superficial: 
for the taste of books is necessary to our 
behavior in the best company and the knowl- 
edge of men is required for a true relish of 
books: but they have both Fire, which 
makes one pass for a man of sense, the 
other for a fine gentleman. I found I 
could easily enough pass my time with the 
scholar: for, if I seemed not to do justice 
to his parts and sentiments, he pitied me, 
and let me alone. But the warrior could 
not let it rest there; I must know all that 
happened within his shallow observations 
of the nature of the war: to all which 
he added an air of laziness, and contempt 
of those of his comi3anions who were 
eminent for delighting in the exercise and 
knowledge of their duty. Thus it is that 
all the young fellows of much animal life 
and little understanding who repair to our 
armies usurp upon the conversation of 



reasonable men, under the notion of having 
Fire. 

The word has not been of greater use to 
shallow lovers to supply them with chat to 
their mistresses than it has been to pretended 
men of pleasure to support them in being 
pert and dull and saying of every fool of 
their order, "Such a one has Fire." There is 
Colonel Truncheon, who marches with di- 
visions ready on all occasions; a hero who 
never doubted in his life but is ever posi- 
tively fixed in the wrong, not out of obstinate 
opinion, but invincible stupidity. 

It is very unhapi^y for this latitude of 
London that it is possible for such as can 
learn only fashion, habit, and a set of com- 
mon phrases of salutation, to pass with no 
other accomplishments, in this nation of 
freedom, for men- of conversation and sense. 
All these ought to pretend to is not to offend ; 
but they carry it so far as to be negligent 
whether they oif end or not ; "for they have 
Fire." But their force differs from true 
spirit as much as a vicious from a mettle- 
some horse. A man of Fire is a general 
enemy to all the waiters where you drink; 
is the only man affronted at the company's 
being neglected; and makes the drawers 
abroad, his valet de chamhre and footman 
at home, know he is not to be provoked with- 
out danger. 

This is not the Fire that animates the 
noble Marinus, a youth of good nature, af- 
fability, and moderation. He commands 
his ship as an intelligence moves its orb : he 
is the vital life and his officers the limbs of 
the machine. His vivacity is seen in doing 
all the offices of life with readiness of spirit 
and propriety in the manner of doing them. 
To be ever active in laudable pursuits is the 
distinguishing character of a man of merit ; 
while the common behavior of every gay cox- 
comb of Fire is to be confidently in the 
wrong and dare to persist in it. 

A Vision of Human Life 

JOSEPH ADDISON 

[The Spectator, No. 159. September, 1711] 

Omnem, quae nunc obducta tuenti 

Mortales hebetat visus tibi, et humida circum 
Caligat, nubem eripiam .i — Virgil. 

When I was at Grand Cairo, I picked up 

several oriental manuscripts, which I have 

still by me. Among others I met with one, 

1 "I will take away wholly the cloud whose veil, 
cast over your eyes, dulls your mortal vision and 
darkles round you damp and thick." 

• — John Conington. 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS OF SANITY AND OEDEE 



243 



entitled The Visions of Mirzah, which I have 
read over with great pleasure. I intend to 
give it to the public when I have no other 
entertainment for them and shall begin with 
the first vision, which I have translated, 
word for word, as f oiiows : 

"On the fifth day of the moon, which, ac- 
cording to the custom of my forefathers, I 
always keep holy, after having washed my- 
self and offered up my morning devotions, I 
ascended the high hills of Bagdat, in order 
to pass the rest of the day in meditation and 
prayer. As I was here airing myself on the 
tops of the mountains, I fell into a pro- 
found contemplation on the vanity of human 
life; and passing from one thought to an- 
pther. Surely, said I, man is but a shadow 
and life a dream. Whilst I was thus musing, 
I cast my eyes toward the summit of a rock 
that was not far from me, Avhere I discov- 
ered one in the habit of a shepherd, with a 
little musical instrument in his hand. As I 
looked upon him, he applied it to his lips, 
and began to play upon it. The sound of it 
was exceeding sweet, and Avrought into a 
variety of tunes that were inexpressibly 
melodious, and altogether different from 
anything I had ever heard. They put me in 
mind of those heavenly airs that are played 
to the departed souls of good men upon their 
first arrival in paradise, to wear out the im- 
pressions of the last agonies, and qualify 
them for the pleasures of that happy place. 
My heart melted away in secret raptures. 

"I had been often told that the rock before 
me was the haunt of a genius ; and that sev- 
eral had been entertained with music who 
had passed by it, but never heard that the 
musician had before made himself visible. 
When he had raised my thoughts, by those 
transporting airs which he played, to taste 
the pleasures of his conversation, as I looked 
upon him like one astonished, he beckoned 
to me, and by the waving of his hand di- 
rected me to approach the place where he 
sat. I drew near with that reverence which 
is due to a superior nature ; and as my heart 
was entirely subdued by the captivating 
strains I had heard, I fell down at his feet 
and wept. The genius smiled upon me with 
a look of compassion and affability that 
familiarized him to my imagination, and at 
once dispelled all the fears and apprehen- 
sions with which I approached him. He 
lifted me from the ground, and taking me 
by the hand, Mirzah, said he, I have heard 
thee in thy soliloquies ; Follow me. 



"He then led me to the highest pinnacle 
of the rock, and placing me on the top of it, 
Cast thy eyes eastward, said he, and tell me 
what thou seest. I see, said I, a huge valley 
and a prodigious tide of water rolling 
through it. The valley that thou seest, said 
he, is the vale of misery, and the tide of 
water that thou seest is part of the great tide 
of eternity. What is the reason, said I, 
that the tide I see rises out of a thick mist 
at one end, and again loses itself in a thick 
mist at the other? What thou seest, said 
he, is that jDortion of eternity which is called 
time, measured out by the sun, and reaching 
from the beginning of the world to its con- 
summation. Examine now, said he, this sea 
that is bounded with darkness at both ends, 
and tell me what thou dissoverest in it. I 
see a bridge, said I, standing in the midst of 
the tide. The bridge thou seest, said he, is 
human life ; consider it attentively. Upon a 
more leisurely survey of it, I found that it 
consisted of threescore and ten entire arches, 
with several broken arches, which, added to 
those that were entire, made up the number 
about an hundred. As I was counting the 
arches, the genius told me that this bridge 
consisted at first of a thousand arches; but 
that a great flood swept away the rest, and 
left the bridge in the ruinous condition I 
now beheld it. But tell me further, said he, 
what thou diseoverest on it. I see multitudes 
of people passing over it, said I, and a black 
cloud hanging on each end of it. As I looked 
more attentively, I saw several of the passen- 
gers dropjoing through the bridge, into the 
great tide that flowed underneath it; and 
upon fui'ther examination, jDereeived there 
were innumerable trapdoors that lay con- 
cealed in the bridge, which the passengers no 
sooner trod upon but they fell through them 
into the tide and immediately disappeared. 
These hidden pitfalls were set very thick at 
the entrance of the bridge, so that throngs 
of people no sooner broke through the cloud 
but many of them fell into them. They 
grew thinner toAvard the middle, but multi- 
plied and lay closer together toward the end 
of the arches that were entire. 

"There were indeed some persons, but 
their number was very small, that continued 
a kind of hobbling march on the broken 
arches, but fell through one after another, 
being quite tired and spent with so long a 
walk. 

"I passed some time in the contemplation 
of this wonderful strtieture, and the gTeat 



244 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



variety of objects which it presented. My 
heart was filled with a deep melancholy to 
see several dropping unexpectedly in the 
midst of mirth and jollity, and catching at 
everything that stood by them to save them- 
selves. Some were looking up toward the 
heavens in a thoughtful posture, and in the 
midst of a speculation stumbled and fell out 
of sight. Multitudes were very busy in the 
pursuit of bubbles that glittered in their 
eyes and danced before them, but often 
when they thought themselves within the 
reach of them their footing failed and down 
they sunk. In this confusion of objects, I 
observed some with scimitars in their hands, 
who ran to and fro upon the bridge, thrust- 
ing several persons on trapdoors which did 
not seem to lie in their way, and which they 
might have escaped had they not been thus 
forced upon them. 

"The genius, seeing me indulge myself in 
this melancholy prospect, told me I had 
dwelt long enough upon it : Take thine eyes 
off the bridge, said he, and tell me if thou 
yet seest anything thou dost not compre- 
hend. Upon looking up. What mean, said I, 
those gTeat flights of birds that are per- 
petually hovering about the bridge, and set- 
tling upon it from time to time 1 I see vul- 
tures, harpies, ravens, cormorants; and 
among many other feathered creatures sev- 
eral little winged boys that perch in great 
numbers ujDon the middle arches. These, said 
the genius, are envy, avarice, superstition, 
despair, love, with the like cares and pas- 
sions, that infest human life. 

"I here fetched a deep sigh. Alas, said I, 
man was made in vain ! How is he given 
away to misery and mortality! tortured in 
life, and swallowed up in death ! The genius 
being moved with compassion toward me, 
bid me quit so uncomfortable a prospect: 
Look no more, said he, on man in the first 
stage of his existence, in his setting out for 
eternity; but cast thine eye on that thick 
mist into which the tide bears the several 
generations of mortals that fall into it. I 
directed my sight as I was ordered, and 
(whether or no the good genius strengthened 
it with any supernatural force, or dissipated 
part of the mist that was before too thick for 
the eye to penetrate) I saw the valley open- 
ing at the further end, and spreading forth 
into an immense ocean, that had a huge rock 
of adamant running through the midst of it, 
and dividing it into two equal parts. The 
clouds still rested on one-half of it, inso- 



much that I could discover nothing in it, but 
the other appeared to me a vast ocean 
planted with innumerable islands, that were 
covered with fruits and flowers, and inter- 
woven with a thousand little shining seas 
that ran among them. I could see persons 
dressed in glorious habits, with garlands 
upon their heads, passing among the trees, 
lying down by the sides of fountains, or rest- 
ing on beds of flowers ; and could hear a con- 
fused harmony of singing birds, falling 
waters, human voices, and musical instru- 
ments.. Gladness grew in me upon the dis- 
covery of so delightful a scene. I wished for 
the wings of an eagle that I might fly away 
to those happy seats ; but the genius told me 
there was no joassage to them, except through 
the gates of death that I saw opening every 
moment upon the bridge. The islands, said 
he, that lie so fresh and green before thee, 
and with which the whole face of the ocean 
appears spotted as far as thou canst see, are 
more in number than the sands on the sea- 
shore; there are myriads of islands behind 
those which thou here discoverest, reaching 
further than thine eye or even thine imagi- 
nation can extend itself. These are the man- 
sions of good men after death, who, ac- 
cording to the degree and kinds of virtue 
in which they excelled, are distributed 
among these several islands, which abound 
with pleasures of different kinds and de- 
grees, suitable to the relishes and perfec- 
tions of those who are settled in them ; every 
island is a paradise accomrnodated to its 
respective inhabitants. Are not these, 
Mirzah, habitations worth contending for? 
Does life appear miserable, that gives thee 
opportunities of earning such a reward? Is 
death to be feared, that will convey thee 
to so happy an existence? Think not man 
was made in vain, who has such an eternity 
reserved for him. I gazed with inexpressi- 
ble pleasure on these happy islands. At 
length, said I, show me now, I beseech thee, 
the secrets that lie hid under those dark 
clouds which cover the ocean on the other 
side of the rock of adamant. The genius 
making me no answer, I turned about to ad- 
dress myself to him a second time, but I 
found that he had left me; I then turned 
again to the vision which I had been so long 
contemiDlating, but instead of the rolling 
tide, the arched bridge, and the happy 
islands, I saw nothing but the long hollow 
valley of Bagdat, with oxen, sheep, and 
camels grazing upon the sides of it." . . . 



THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 

I. THE ERA OF REVOLUTION 



1. THE NEW SYMPATHY 



An Elegy Written in a Country 
Churchyard 

thomas gray 

1 

The Curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 

The lowing herd wind slowly o'er the lea, 

The plowman homeward plods his weary 

way. 

And leaves the world to darkness and to 

me. 

2 

Now fades the glimmering landscape on the 
sight, 
And all the air a solemn stillness holds, 
Save where the beetle wheels his droning 
flight, 
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant 
folds ; 

3 

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r 
The moping owl does to the moon com- 
plain 

Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r, 
Molest her ancient solitary reign. 



Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's 
shade, 
Where heaves the turf in many a mould- 
'ring heap. 
Each in his narrow cell for ever laid, 
The rude Forefathers of the hamlet sleep. 



The breezy call of incense-breathing Mom, 
The swallow twitt'ring from the straw- 
■ built shed, 
The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing 
horn, 
No more shall rouse them from their 
lowly bed. 



For them no more the blazing hearth shall 
burn. 
Or busy housewife ply her evening care : 
No children run to lisp their sire's return, 
Or climb his knees the envied kiss to 
share. 

7 

Oft did the harvest to their sickle yield, 
Their furrow oft the stubborn glebe has 
broke ; 
How jocund did they drive their team afield ! 
How bow'd the woods beneath their sturdy 
stroke ! 

8 

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil. 
Their homely joys, and destiny obscure; 

Nor Grandeur hear with a disdainful smile. 
The short and simple annals of the poor. 

9 

The boast of heraldry, the pomp of pow'r. 
And all that beauty, all that wealth e'er 
gave, 

Awaits alike th' inevitable hour. 

The paths of glory lead but to the grave. 

10 
Nor you, ye Proud, impute to These the 
fault. 
If Mem'ry o'er their Tomb no Trophies 
raise, 
Where thro' the long-drawn aisle and fretted 
vault 
The pealing anthem swells the note of 
praise. 

11 

Can storied urn or animated bust 

Back to its mansion call the fleeting 
breath"? 
Can Honor's voice provoke the silent dust, 
Or Flatt'ry sooth the dull cold ear of 
Death? 



245 



246 



THE GEEAT TBADITION 



12 

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid 

Some heart once pregnant with celestial 
fire; 
Hands, that the rod of empire might have 
sway'd, 
Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre. 

13 

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample 
page 
Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er un- 
roll; 
Chill Penury repressed their noble rage, 
And froze the genial current of the soul. 

14 

Full many a gem of purest ray serene, 
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean 
bear: 

Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, 
And waste its sweetness on the desert air. 

15 

Some village Hampden, that with dauntless 

breast 

The little Tyrant of his fields withstood; 

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, 

Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's 

blood. 

16 

Th' applause of list'ning senates to com- 
mand. 

The threats of pain and ruin to despise. 
To scatter plenty o'er a smiling land. 

And read their hist'ry in a nation's eyes, 

17 

Their lot forbade: nor circumscrib'd alone 

Their growing virtues, but their crimes 

confin'd ; 

Forbade to wade through slaughter to a 

throne, 

And shut the gates of mercy on mankind, 

18 

The struggling pangs of conscious truth to 
hide. 
To quench the blushes of ingenuous 
shame, 
Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride 
With incense kindled at the Muse's flame. 



19 

Far from the madding crowd's ignoble 
strife, 
Their sober wishes never leam'd to stray ; 
Along the cool sequester'd vale of life 
They kept the noiseless tenor of their 
way. 

20 

Yet ev'n these bones from insult to protect. 
Some frail memorial still erected nigh, 

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculp- 
ture deck'd, 
Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. 



21 

Their name, their years, spelt by th' unlet- 
ter'd muse. 

The place of fame and elegy supply : 
And many a holy text around she strews, 

That teach the rustic moralist to die. 



22 

For who to dumb Forgetf ulness a prey, 

This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned, 
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful 
day, 
Nor cast one longing lingering look be- 
hind? 

23 

On some fond breast the parting soul relies. 
Some pious drops the closing eye re- 
quires ; 
Ev'n from the tomb the voice of Nature 
cries, 
Ev'n in our Ashes live their wonted Fires. 



24 

For thee, who mindful of th' unhonored 
Dead 
Dost in these lines their artless tale re- 
late; 
If chance, by lonely contemplation led, 
Some kindred Spirit shall inquire thy 
fate, 

25 

Haply some hoary-headed Swain may say, 
"Oft have we seen him at the peep of 
dawn 

Brushing with hasty steps the dews away 
To meet the sun upon the upland lawn. 



THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



247 



26 

"There at the foot of yonder nodding beech 

That wreathes its old fantastic roots so 

high, 

His listless length at noontide would he 

stretch, 

And pore upon the brook that babbles by. 



27 



"Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in 
scorn, 
Mutt'ring his wayward fancies he would 
rove, 
Now drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn, 
Or craz'd with care, or cross'd in hope- 
less love. 

28 

"One morn I miss'd him on the customed 
hill. 
Along the heath and near his fav'rite 
tree; 
Another came; nor yet beside the rill. 
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he ; 



29 



"The next with dirges due in sad array 
Slow thro' the church-way path we saw 
him borne. 
Approach and read (for thou can'st read) 
the lay, 
Grav'd on the stone beneath yon aged 
thorn." 

The Epitaph 

Here rests his head upon the lap of Earth, 
A Youth to Fortune and to Fame un- 
known. 
Fair Science frown'd not on his humble 
birth, 
And Melancholy mark'd him for her own. 

Large was his bounty, and his soul sincere, 
Heav'n did a recompense as largely send: 

He gave to Mis'ry all he had, a tear, 

He gain'd from Heav'n {'twas all he 
wish'd) a friend. 

No farther seek his merits to disclose, 
Or draw his frailties from their dread 
abode, 
{There they alike in trembling hope repose) 
The bosom of his Father and his God. 

(1751) 



16 



The Wrongs of Man 

william cowper 
[From The Task, 1785] 
Of Slavery 
for a lodge in some vast wilderness, 
Some boundless contiguity of shade, 
Where rumor of oppression and deceit, 
Of unsuccessful or successful war, 
Might never reach me more. My ear is 

pained, 5 

My soul is sick with every day's report 
Of wrong and outrage with which earth is 

filled. 
There is no flesh in man's obdurate heart. 
It does not feel for man ; the natural bond 
Of brotherhood is severed as the flax i^ 

That falls asunder at the touch of fire. 
He finds his fellow guilty of a skin 
Not colored like his own ; and having power 
T' enforce the wrong, for such a worthy 

cause 
Dooms and devotes him as his lawful prey 
Lands intersected by a narrow frith 
Abhor each other. Mountains interposed 
Make enemies of nations, who had else 
Like kindred drops been mingled into one. 
Thus man devotes his brother, and destroys ; 
And, worse than all, and most to be de- 
plored 21 
As human nature's broadest, foulest blot, 
Chains him, and tasks him, and exacts his 

sweat 
With stripes, that mercy with a bleeding 

heart 
Weeps when she sees inflicted on a beast. ^5 
Then what is man? And what man, seeing 

this. 
And having human feelings, does not blush, 
And hang his head, to think himself a man ? 
I would not have a slave to till my ground, 
To carry me, to fan me while I sleep, ^^ 

And tremble when I wake, for all the wealth 
That sinews bought and sold have ever 

earned. 
No : dear as freedom is, and in my heart's 
Just estimation prized above all prize, 
I had much rather be myself the slave, ^^ 
And wear the bonds, than fasten them on 

him. 
We have no slaves at home — then why 

abroad ? 
And they themselves once ferried o'er the 

wave 
That parts us, are emancipate and loosed. 
Slaves cannot breathe in England : if their 

lungs 40 

Receive our air, that moment they are free; 



248 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



They touch our country, and their shackles 

fall. 
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud 
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then 
And let it circulate through every vein 45 
Of all your empire; that, where Britain's 

power 
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too. 

The Lot of Poverty 

In such a world, so thorny, and where 

none 
Finds happiness unblighted, or, if found. 
Without some thistly sorrow at its side, ^^ 
It seems the part of wisdom, and no sin 
Against the law of love, to measure lots 
With less distinguished than ourselves ; that 

thus 
We may with patience bear our moderate 

ills, 54 

And sympathize with others suffering more. 
Ill fares the traveler now, and he that stalks 
In ponderous boots beside his reeking team. 
The w.ain goes heavily, impeded sore 
By congregated loads adhering close 
To the clogged wheels; and in its sluggish 

pace ^^ 

Noiseless appears a moving hill of snow. 
The toiling steeds expand the nostril wide. 
While every breath, by respiration strong 
Forced downward, is consolidated soon 
Upon their jutting chests. He, formed to 

bear ^^ 

The pelting brunt of the tempestuous night. 
With half-shut eyes, and puckered cheeks 

and teeth 
Presented bare against the storm, plods on. 
One hand secures his hat, save when with 

both 
He brandishes his pliant length of whip, '^^ 
Resounding oft, and never heard in vain. 
happy; and in my account denied 
That sensibility of pain, with which 
Refinement is endued, thrice happy thou ! '^4 
Thy frame, robust and hardy, feels indeed 
The piercing cold, but feels it unimpaired. 
The learned finger never need explore 
The vigorous pulse; and the unhealthful 

east, 
That breathes the spleen, and searches every 

bone 
Of the infirm, is wholesome air to thee. ^'^ 
Thy days roll on exempt from household 

care. 
Thy wagon is thy wife ; and the poor beasts. 
That drag the dull companion to and fro. 
Thine helpless charge, dependent on thy 

care. 



Ah treat them kindly ! rude as thou appear- 

est, 85 

Yet show that thou hast mercy! which the 

great. 
With needless hurry whirled from place to 

place. 
Humane as they would seem, not always 

show. 
Poor, yet industrious, modest, quiet, neat. 
Such claim compassion in a night like this, 
And have a friend in every feeling heart. ^^ 
Warmed, while it lasts, by labor, all day 

long 
They brave the season, and yet find at eve, 
111 clad and fed but sparely, time to cool. 
The frugal housewife trembles when she 

lights 95 

Her scanty stock of brushwood, blazing 

clear. 
But dying soon, like all terrestrial joys. 
The few small embers left she nurses well; 
And, while her infant race, with outspread 

hands. 
And crowded knees sit cowering o'er the 

sparks, ' 1*^ 

Retires, content to quake, so they be 

warmed. 
The man feels least; as more inured than 

she 
To winter and the current in his veins 
More briskly moved by his severer toil ; l*'^ 
Yet he too finds his own distress in theirs. 
The taper soon extinguished, which I saw 
Dangled along at the cold finger's end 
Just when the day declined; and the brown 

loaf 
Lodged on the shelf, half eaten without 

sauce ^^ 

Of savory cheese, or butter, costlier still; 
Sleep seems their only refuge; for alas! 
Where penuiy is felt the thought is chained. 
And sweet colloquial pleasures are but few. 
With all this thrift they thrive not. All the 

care 
Ingenious parsimony takes, but just ^^ 
Saves the small inventory, bed, and stool, 
Skillet, and old carved chest, from public 

sale. 
They live, and live without extorted alms 
From grudging hands ; but other boast have 

none 
To soothe their honest pride, that scorns to 

beg, _ ^ 120 

Nor comfort else, but in their mutual love. 
I praise you much, ye weak and patient 

pair, 
For ye are worthy ; choosing rather far 
A dry but independent crust, bard earned, 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCRACY 



249 



And eaten with a sigh, than to endure 125 
The rugged frowns and insolent rebuffs 
Of knaves in office, partial in the work 
Of distribution ; liberal of their aid 
To clamorous Importunity in rags. 
But ofttimes deaf to suppliants, who would 

blush 130 

To wear a tattered garb, however coarse, 
Whom famine cannot reconcile to filth : . 
These ask with painful shyness, and, re- 
fused 
Because deserving, silently retire ! 1^4 

But be ye of good courage! Time itself 
Shall much befriend you. Time shall give 

increase 
And all your numerous progeny, well 

tramed 
But helpless, in few years shall find their 

hands, 
And labor too. Meanwhile ye shall not 

want 
What, conscious of your virtues, we can 

spare. i^o 

Of War 

Great princes have great playthings. Some 

have played 
At hewing mountains into men, and some 
At building human wonders mountain high. 
Some have amused the dull, sad years of 

life, • 144 

(Life spent in indolence, and therefore sad) 
With schemes of monumental fame; and 

sought 
By pyramids and mausoleum pomp. 
Short-lived themselves, t' immortalize their 

bones. 
Some seek diversion in the tented field. 
And make the sorrows of mankind their 

sport. 150 

But war's a game, which, were their sub- 
jects wise. 
Kings would not play at. Nations would 

do well 
T' extort their truncheons from the puny 

hands 
Of heroes, whose infirm and baby minds i^* 
Are gTatified with mischief, and who spoil, 
Because men suffer it, their toy the world. 



Of Tyranny 

Then shame to manhood, and opprobri- 
ous more 
To France than all her losses and defeats, 



Old or of later date, by sea or land. 

Her house of bondage, worse than that of 

old 160 

Which God avenged on Pharaoh — the Bas- 

tile. 
Ye horrid towers, the abode of broken 

hearts ; 
Ye dungeons and ye cages of despair. 
That monarchs have supplied from age to 

age 
With music, such as suits their sovereign 

ears, i^^ 

The sighs and groans of miserable men! 
There's not an English heart that would 

not leap 
To hear that ye were fallen at last ; to know 
That e'en our enemies, so oft employed 
In forging chains for us, themselves were 

free. i^o 

For he who values Liberty, confines 
His zeal for her predominance within 
No narrow bounds; her cause engages him 
Wherever pleaded. 'Tis the cause of man. 
There dwell the most forlorn of human kind. 
Immured though unaccused, condemned un- 
tried. 176 
Cruelly spared, and hopeless of escape. 
There, like the visionary emblem seen 
By him of Babylon, life stands a stump. 
And, filleted about with hoops of brass. 
Still lives, though all his pleasant boughs 

are gone 1^1 

To count the hour-bell and expect no 

change ; 
And ever as the sullen sound is heard. 
Still to reflect, that, though a joyless 

note 
To him whose moments all have one dull 

pace, 185 

Ten thousand rovers in the world at large 
Account it music; that it summons some 
To theater or jocund feast or ball ; 
The wearied hireling finds it a release i^^ 
From labor; and the lover, who has chid 
Its long delay, feels every welcome stroke 
Upon his heart-strings, trembling with de- 
light- 
To fly for refuge from distracting thought 
To such amusements as ingenious woe 
Contrives, hard-shifting, and without her 

tools— 195 

To read engraven on the mouldy walls. 
In staggering types, his predecessor's tale, 
A sad memorial, and subjoin his own — 
To turn purveyor to an overgorged i^^ 

And bloated spider, till the pampered pest 
Is made familiar, watches his approach, 



250 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



Comes at his call and serves him for a 

friend — 
To Avear out time in numbering to and fro 
The studs, that thick emboss his iron door ; 
Then downward and then ujDward, then 
aslant 2°^ 

And then alternate ; Avith a sickly hope 
By dint of change to give his tasteless task 
Some relish; till the sum, exactly found 
In all directions, he begins again — 209 

Oh comfortless existence ! hemmed around 
With woes^ which who that suffers would 

not kneel 
And beg for exile, or the pangs of death "? 
That man should thus encroach on fellow- 
man, 
Abridge him of his just and native rights, 
Eradicate him, tear him from his hold 215 
Upon the endearments of domestic life 
And social, ni^D his fruitfulness and use, 
And doom him for perhaps a heedless word 
To barrenness, and solitude, and tears, 219 
Moves indignation, makes the name of king 
(Of king whom such prerogative can 

please) 
As dreadful as the Manichean god : 
Adored through fear, strong only to de- 
stroy. 
'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower 
Of fleeting life its luster and perfume ; 225 
And we are weeds without it. All constraint, 
Except Avhat wisdom lays on evil men, 
Is evil : hurts the faculties, impedes 
Their progress in the road of science, blinds 
The eyesight of Discovery ; and begets, 230 
In those that suffer it, a sordid mind, 
Bestial, a meager intellect, unfit 
To be the tenant of man's noble form. 
Thee therefore still, blame-worthy as thou 

art 
With all thy loss of empire, and though 
squeezed 235 

By public exigence, till annual food 
Falls for the craving hunger of the state, 
Thee I account still happy, and the chief 
Among the nations, seeing thou art free ; 239 
My native nook of earth ! Thy Clime is rude, 
Eeplete with vapors, and disposes much 
All hearts to sadness, and none more than 

mine : 
Thine unadulterate manners are less soft 
And plausible than social life requires. 
And thou hast need of discipline and art, 245 
To give thee what politer France receives 
From nature's bounty — that humane address 
And sweetness, without which no pleasure is 
In converse, either starved by cold reserve, 



Or flushed with fierce dispute, a senseless 

brawl; 250 

Yet being free I love thee : for the sake 
Of that one feature can be well content, 
Disgraced as thou hast been, poor as thou 

art. 
To seek no sublunary rest beside. 
But, once enslaved, farewell! I could en- 
dure 255 
Chains nowhere patiently; and chains at 

home 
Where I am free by birthright, not at all. 
Then what were left of roughness in the 

grain 
Of British natures, wanting its excuse 259 
That it belongs to freemen, would disgust 
And shock me. I should then with double 

pain 
Feel all the rigor of thy fickle clime 
And if I must bewail the blessing lost, 
For which our Hampdens and our Sidneys 

bled, 
I would at least bewail it under skies 265 
Milder, among a people less austere, 
In scenes which, having never known me 

free, 
Would not reproach me with the loss I felt. 
Do I forebode impossible events. 
And tremble at vain dreams ? Heaven grant 

I may. 270 

But th' age of virtuous politics is past, 
And we are deep in that of cold pretence. 
Patriots are grown too shrewd to be sincere. 
And we too wise to trust them. He that 

takes 
Deep in his soft credulity the stamp 275 

Designed by loud declaimers on the part 
Of liberty, themselves the slaves of lust, 
Incurs derision for his easy faith. 
And lack of knowledge, and with cause 

enough : 
For when was public virtue to be found 280 
Where private was not? Can he love the 

whole 
Who loves no part ? He be a nation's friend, 
Who is in truth the friend of no man there ? 
Can he be strenuous in his country's cause. 
Who slights the charities, for whose dear 

sake 285 

That country, if at all, must be beloved ? 

'Tis therefore sober and good men are sad 
For England's glory, seeing it wax pale 
And sickly, while her champions wear their 

hearts 
So loose to private duty, that no brain, 290 
Healthful and undisturbed by factious 

fumes. 



THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



251 



Can dream them trusty to the general weal. 
Such were not they of old, whose tempered 

blades 
Dispersed the shackles of usurped control, 
And heAved them link from link; then Al- 
bion's sons 295 
Were sons indeed : they felt a filial heart 
Beat high within them at a mother's wrongs ; 
And, shining each in his domestic sphere, 
Shone brighter still, once called to public 
view. 299 
'Tis therefore many, whose sequestered lot 
Forbids their interference, looking on. 
Anticipate jDerforce some dire event ; 
And, seeing the old castle of the state. 
That promised once more firmness, so as- 
sailed, 304 
That all its tempest-beaten turrets shake, 
Stand motionless, expectant of its fall. 
All has its date below; the fatal hour 
Was registered in heaven ere time began. 
We turn to dust, and all our mightiest 
works ^^^ 
Die too : the deep foundations that we lay. 
Time ploughs them up, and not a trace re- 
mains. 
We build with what we deem eternal rock: 
A distant age asks where the fabric stood; 
And in the dust, sifted and searched in vain, 
The undiscoverable secret sleeps. ^15 

My Country 

England, with all thy faults I love thee 

still— 
My country ! and while yet a nook is left, 
Where English minds and manners may be 

found, 
Shall be constrained to love thee. Though 

thy clime 319 

Be fickle, and thy year most part deformed 
With dripping rains, or withered by a frost, 
I would not yet exchange thy sullen skies. 
And fields without a flower, for warmer 

France 
With all her vines ; nor for Ausonia's groves 
Of golden fruitage, and her myrtle bowers. 
To shake thy senate, and from heights 

sublime 326 

Of patriot eloquence to flash down fire 
Upon thy foes, was never meant my task : 
But I can feel thy fortunes, and partake 
Thy joys and sorrows, with as true a heart 
As any thunderer there. And I can feel 
Thy follies too ; and with a just disdain, 332 
Frown at effeminates, whose very looks 
Reflect dishonor on the land I love. 



How, in the name of soldiership and sense, 
Should England prosper, when such things, 

as smooth 
And tender as a girl, all essenced o'er 
With odors, and as profligate as sweet 
Who sell their laurel for a myrtle wreath, 
And love when they should fight ; when such 

as these 340 

Presume to lay their hands upon the ark 
Of her magnificent and awful cause ? 
Time was when it was praise and boast 

enough 
In every clime, and travel where we might, 
That we were born her children. Praise 

enough 345 

To fill th' ambition of a private man, 
That Chatham's language was his mother 

tongue, 
And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his 

own. 
Farewell those honors, and farewell with 

them 
The hope of such hereafter! They have 

fallen 350 

Each in his field of glory; one in arms. 
And one in council — Wolfe upon the lap 
Of Smiling Victory that moment won, 
And Chatham heart-sick of his country's 

shame ! 354 

They made us many soldiers. Chatham, still 
Consulting England's happiness at home, 
Secured it by an unforgiving frown. 
If any wronged her. Wolfe, where'er he 

fought. 
Put so much of his heart into his act, 359 
That his example had a magnet's force. 
And all were swift to follow whom all loved. 
Those suns are set. rise some other such ! 
Or all that we have left is empty talk 
Of old achievements, and despair of new. 

The Reality of Humble Liee 

GEORGE CRABBE 

[From The Village, 1783] 

The Village Life, and every care that reigns 
O'er youthful peasants and declining 

swains ; 
What labor yields, and what, that labor 

past. 
Age, in its hour of languor, finds at last; 
What form the real Picture of the Poor, ^ 
Demand a song — the Muse can give no 

more. 
Fled are those times, when, in harmonious 

strains, 



252 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



The rustic poet praised his native plains : 
No shepherds now, in smooth alternate 

verse, 
Their country's beauty or their nymphs re- 
hearse ; ■'■^ 
Yet still for these we frame the tender 

strain, 
Still in our lays fond Corydons complain. 
And shepherds' boys their amorous pains 

reveal, 
The only pains, alas ! they never feel. 

On Mincio's banks, in Caesar's bounteous 

reign, ^^ 

If Tityrus found the Golden Age again, 
Must sleepy bards the flattering dream pro- 
long, 
Mechanic echoes of the Mantuan song? 
From Truth and Nature shall we widely 

stray, 
Where Virgil, not where Fancy, leads the 

way? 20 

Yes, thus the Muses sing of happy swains. 
Because the Muses never knew their pains : 
They boast their peasants' pipes; but peas- 
ants now 
Resign their pipes and plod behind the 

plow ; 
And few, amid the rural tribe, have time 25 
To number syllables, and play with rime ; 
Save honest Duck, what son of verse could 

share 
The poet's rapture and the peasant's care? 
Or the great labors of the field degrade, 
With the new peril of a poorer trade? 20 
From this chief cause these idle praises 

spring, 
That themes so easy few forbear to sing; 
For no deep thought the trifling subjects 

ask; 
To sing of shepherds is an easy task; 
The happy youth assumes the common 

strain, ^^ 

A nymph his mistress, and himself a swain ; 
With no sad scenes he clouds his tuneful 

prayer, 
But all, to look like her, is painted fair. 
I grant indeed that fields and flocks have 

charms 
For him that grazes or for him that 

farms ; '^ 

But when amid such pleasing scenes I 

trace 
The poor laborious natives of the place, 
And see the mid-day sun, with fervid ray. 
On their bare heads and dewy temples play ; 
While some, with feebler heads, and fainter 

hearts 45 



Deplore their fortune, yet sustain their 
parts — 

Then shall I dare these real ills to hide. 

In tinsel trappings of poetic pride? 

No ; cast by Fortune on a frowning coast, 

Which neither groves nor happy valleys 
boast ; 50 

Where other cares than those the Muse re- 
lates, 

And other shepherds dwell with other mates ; 

By such examples taught, I paint the 
Cot, 

As Truth will paint it, and as Bards will 
not: 

Nor you, ye poor, of lettered scorn com- 
plain, 55 

To you the smoothest song is smooth in 
vain ; 

O'eroome by labor, and bowed down by time, 

Feel you the barren flattery of a rime? 

Can poets soothe you, when you pine for 
bread. 

By winding myrtles round your ruined 
shed? 60 

Can their light tales your weighty griefs 
o'erpower. 

Or glad with airy mirth the toilsome hour?- 
Lo ! where the heath, with withering brake 
grown o'er, 

Lends the light turf that warms the neigh- 
boring poor 

From thence a length of burning sand ap- 



pears. 



65 



Where the thin harvest waves its withered 

ears. 
Rank weeds, that every art and care defy. 
Reign o'er the land, and rob the blighted 

rye ; 
There thistles stretch their prickly arms 

afar. 
And to the ragged infant threaten war; '^'^ 
There poppies, nodding, mock the hope of 

toil, 
There the blue bugloss paints the sterile 

soil ; 
Hardy and high, above the slender sheaf. 
The slimy mallow waves her silky leaf; 
O'er the young shoot the charlock throws a 

shade, '^5 

And clasping tares cling round the sickly 

blade ; 
With mingled tints the rocky coasts abound. 
And a sad splendor vainly shines around. 
So looks the nymph whom wretched arts 

adorn, 
Betrayed by man, then left for man to 

scorn ; 



80 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCRACY 



258 



Whose cheek in vain assumes the mimic 
rose, 

While her sad eyes the troubled breast dis- 
close : 

Whose outward splendor is but folly's dress, 

Exposing most when most it gilds distress. 

Here joyless roam a wild amphibious 

race, ^^ 

With sullen woe displayed in every face; 

Who, far from civil arts and social fly. 

And scowl at strangers with suspicious eye. 
Here too the lawless merchant of the main 

Draws from his plow the intoxicated 
swain ; ^0 

Want only claimed the labor of the day, 

But vice now steals his nightly rest away. 
Where are the swains, who, daily labor 
done, 

With rural games played down the setting 
sun; 

Who struck with matchless force the bound- 
ing ball, ^^ 

Or made the ponderous quoit obliquely fall ; 

While some huge Ajax, terrible and strong, 

Engaged some artful stripling of the throng. 

And fell beneath him, foiled, while far 
around 

Hoarse triumph rose, and rocks returned 
the sound? lOO 

Where now are these"? — Beneath yon cliff 
they stand. 

To show the freighted pinnace where to 
land ; 

To load the ready steed with guilty haste. 

To fly in terror o'er the pathless waste. 

Or, when detected, in their straggling 
course, 105 

To foil their foes by cunning or by force ; 

Or, yielding part (which equal knaves de- 
mand), 

To gain a lawless passport through the 
land. 

The Cotter's Satueday Night 

inscribed to robert aiken, esq. 

robert burns 

Let not Ambition mock their useful toil, 
Their homely joys and destiny obscure ; 

Nor Qrandeur hear with a disdainful smile, 
The short and simple annals of the poor. 

Gray. 



My lov'd, my honor'd, much respected 
friend ! 
No mercenary bard his homage pays; 
With honest pride, I scorn each selfish 
end: 



My dearest meed a friend's esteem and 

praise : 
To you I sing, in simple Scottish lays. 
The lowly train in life's sequester'd 
scene ; 
The native feelings strong, the guileless 
ways;_ 
What Aiken in a cottage would have been ; 
Ah! tho' his worth unknown, far happier 
there, I ween! 



November chill blaws loud wi' angry 
sugh,i 
The short'ning winter day is near a 
close ; 
The miry beasts retreating frae the 
pleugh. 
The black'ning trains o' craws to their 

repose ; 
The toil-worn Cotter frae his labor 
goes,— 
This night his weekly moil is at an end, — 
Collects his spades, his mattocks and his 
hoes, 
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to 
spend. 
And weary, o'er the moor, his course does 
hameward bend. 



At length his lonely cot appears in 
view. 
Beneath the shelter of an aged tree; 
Th' expectant wee-things, toddlin, staeher^ 
through 
To meet their dad, wi' flichterin^ noise 

an' glee. 
His wee bit ingle,^ blinkin bonilie. 
His clean hearth-stane, his thrifty wifie's 
smile. 
The lisping infant prattling on his 
knee. 
Does a' his weary kiaugh^ and care be- 
guile. 
An' makes him quite forget his labor an' 
his toil. 



Beljrve,^ the elder bairns come drappin in. 
At service out amang the farmers 

roun' ; 
Some ca'^ the pleugh, some herd, some 

tentie^ rin 



* sound 


* fire-place 


' drive 


' stagger 


" anxiety 


* careful 


' fluttering 


« presently 





254 



THE GREAT TEADITION 



A cannie errand to a neibor toun: 
Their eldest hope, their Jenny, woman- 
grown, 
In youthfu' bloom, love sparkling in her 
ee, 
Comes hame, perhaps to shew a braw^ 
new gown, 
Or deposite her sair-won^O penny-fee, 
To help her parents dear, if they in hard- 
ship be. 



With joy unfeign'd brothers and sisters 
meet, 
An' each for other's weelfare kindly 
spiers :^^ 
The social hours, swift-wing'd, unnotic'd 
fleet; 
Each tells the ur'xosi^ that he sees or 

hears. 
The loarents, partial, eye their hopeful 
years ; 
Anticipation forward points the view ; 
The mother, wi' her needle an' her 
shears, 
Garsi^ auld claes look amaist as weel's 
the new; 
The father mixes a' wi' admonition due. 

6 

Their master's an' their mistress's com- 
mand 
The younkers a' are warned to obey; 
An' mind their labors wi' an eydenti* 
hand, 
An' ne'er tho' out o' sight, to jauk or 

play: 
"An' ! be sure to fear the Lord alway, 
An' mind your duty, duly, morn an' 
night ! 
Lest in temptation's path ye gang 
astray, 
Implore His counsel and assisting might : 
They never sought in vain that sought the 
Lord aright !" 



But hark ! a rap comes gently to the door. 

Jenny, wha kens the meaning o' the 

same, 

Tells how a neibor lad cam o'er the moor, 

To do some errands, and convoy her 

hame. 



»fine 
1" hard-won 



" asks " makes 

" odds and ends " diligent 



The wily mother sees the conscious 
flame 
Sparkle in Jenny's ee, and flush her 
cheek ; 
Wi' heart-struck, anxious care, inquires 
his name. 
While Jenny hafflins ^^ is afraid to speak ; 
Weel pleas'd the mother hears it's nae wild 
worthless rake. 



Wi' kindly welcome Jenny brings him 
ben,i6 
A strappin youth ; he takes the mother's 
eye; 
Blythe Jenny sees the visit's no ill taen ; 
The father cracks of horses, pleughs, 

and kye.i''' 
The youngster's artless heart o'erflows 
wi' joy. 
But, blate ^^ and laithfu',19 scarce can weel 
behave ; 
The mother wi' a woman's wiles can 
spy 
What maks the youth sae bashfu' an' sae 
grave, 
Weel-pleas'd to think her bairn's respected 
like the lave.^o 

9 

happy love! where love like this is 
found ! 
heart-felt raptures ! bliss beyond com- 
pare! 
I've paced much this weary, mortal round. 
And sage exijerience bids me this de- 
clare — 
"If Heaven a draught of heavenly 
pleasure spare. 
One cordial in this melancholy vale, 
'Tis when a youthful, loving, modest 
pair, 
In other's arms breathe out the tender 
tale, 
Beneath the milk-white thorn that scents 
the ev'ning gale." 

10 

Is there, in human form, that bears a 
heart, 
A wretch! a villain! lost to love and 
truth ! 
That can with studied, sly, ensnaring art 



partly 
within 



" cows 

'* shy 



" bashful 
» rest 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



255 



Betray sweet Jenny's unsuspecting 

■ youth? 
Curse on his perjur'd arts ! dissembling 
smooth ! 
Are honor, virtue, conscience, all exil'd? 
\s there no pity, no relenting ruth, 
Points to the parents fondling o'er their 

child, 
Then paints the ruin'd maid, and their dis- 
traction wild? 

11 

But now the supper crowns their simple 
board, 
The halesome parritch,2i chief of Sco- 
tia's food; 
The sowpe22 their only hawkie^^ does af- 
ford, 
That yont 24 the hallan 25 snugly chows 

her cud. 
The dame brings forth, in complimental 
mood, 
To grace the lad, her weel-hain'd 26 keb- 
buck fell,27 
An' aft 28 he's prest, an' aft he ea's it 

guid; 
The frugal wifie, garrulous, will tell. 
How 'twas a towmond 2& auld, sin' lint 30 was 
i' the bell. 

12 

The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face. 

They round the ingle form a circle 

wide; 

The sire turns o'er with patriarchal grace 

The big ha'-bible,^! ance his father's 

pride ; 
His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside. 
His lyart32 haffets^S wearing thin and 
bare; 
Those strains that once did sweet in 
Zion glide. 
He wales ^^ a portion with judicious care ; 
And, "Let us worship God," he says with 
solemn air. 

13 

They chant their artless notes in simple 
guise; 
They tune their hearts, by far the 
noblest aim : 



=1 porridge -" well-saved " hall Bible 

^2 milk ^ strong cheese ^^ gray 

^ cow =s often ^^ locks 

^ beyond -s twelve-month ^ chooses 

^5 partition 3" since flax 



Perhaps Dundee's wild-warbling measures 
rise, 
Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the 

name. 
Or noble Elgin beets ^^ the heaven-ward 
flame. 
The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lays. 
Compar'd with these, Italian trills are 
tame; 
The tickl'd ear no heart-felt raptures 
raise ; 
Nae unison hae they with our Creator's 
praise. 

14 

The priest-like father reads the sacred 
page,— 
How Abram was the friend of God on 
high ; 
Or Moses bade eternal warfare wage 
With Amalek's ungracious progeny ; 
Or how the royal bard did groaning lie 
Beneath the stroke of heaven's avenging 
ire; 
Or Job's pathetic plaint, and wailing 
cry;_ 
Or rapt Isaiah's wild, seraphic fire ; 
Or other holy seers that tune the sacred 
lyre. 

15 

Perhaps the Christian volume is the 
theme, — 
How guiltless blood for guilty man was 
shed; 
How He, who bore in heav'n the second 
name, 
Had not on earth whereon to lay His 

head: 
How His first followers and servants 
sped ; 
The precepts sage they wrote to many a 
land; 
How he, who lone in Patmos banished, 
Saw in the sun a mighty angel stand, 
And heard great Bab'lon's doom pronounced 
by Heav'n's command. 

16 

Then kneeling down to Heaven's Eternal 
King, 
The saint, the father, and the husband 
prays : 

^^ incites, kindles 



256 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Hope "springs exulting on triumphant 
wing," 
That thus they all shall meet in future 

days : 
There ever bask in uncreated rays, 
No more to sigh or shed the bitter tear. 
Together hymning their Creator's 
praise, 
In such society, yet still more dear. 
While circling Time moves round in an 
eternal sphere. 

17 

Compar'd with this, how poor Religion's 
pride 
In all the pomp of method and of art, 
When men display to congregations wide 
Devotion's ev'ry grace except the heart ! 
The pow'r, incens'd, the pageant will 
desert, 
The pompous strain, the sacerdotal stole; 
But haply in some cottage far apart 
May hear, well pleased, the language of 
the soul. 
And in His book of life the inmates poor 
enrol. 

18 

Then homeward all take off their sev'ral 
way; 
The youngling cottagers retire to rest ; 
The parent-pair their secret homage pay, 
And proffer up to Heav'n the warm 

request, 
That He, who stills the raven's clam'- 
rous nest 
And decks the lily fair in flow'ry pride, 
Would, in the way His wisdom sees the 
best. 
For them and for their little ones pro- 
vide; 
But chiefly, in their hearts with grace divine 
preside. 

19 

From scenes like these old Scotia's gran- 
deur springs, 
That makes her lov'd at home, rever'd 
abroad : 
Princes and lords are but the breath of 
kings, 
'■'An honest man's the noblest work of 

God" : 
And certes, in fair Virtue's heavenly 
road, 
The cottage leaves the palace far behind : 



What is a lordling's pomp ? a cumbrous 
load, 
Disguising oft the wretch of human kind, 
Studied in arts of hell, in wickedness re- 
fin'd! 

20 

Scotia ! my dear, my native soil ! 

For whom my warmest wish to Heaven 
is sent ! 
Long may thy hardy sons of rustic toil 
Be blest with health, and peace, and 

sweet content ! 
And, oh ! may Heaven their simple lives 
prevent 
From luxury's contagion, weak and vile ! 
Then, howe'er crowns and coronets be 
rent, 
A virtuous populace may rise the while, 
And stand a wall of fire around their much- 
lov'd isle. 

21 

Thou ! who pour'd the patriotic tide 
That stream'd thro' Wallace's un- 
daunted heart, 
Who dar'd to nobly stem tyrannic pride. 
Or nobly die, the second glorious 

part, — 
(The patriot's God peculiarly thou art. 
His friend, insj^irer, guardian, and re- 
ward ! ) 
never, never Scotia's realm desert, 
But still the patriot, and the patriot-bard, 
In bright succession raise, her ornament and 
guard ! 

A Winter Night 

ROBERT BURNS 

Poor naked wretches, -wheresoe'er you are, 
That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm ! 
How shall your houseless heads, and unfed sides, 
Your loop'd and window'd raggedness, defend you 
From seasons such as these V — Shakespeare. 

When biting Boreas, fell and doure,'^ 
Sharp shivers thro' the leafless bow'r; 
When Phoebus gies a short-liv'd glow'r^ 

Far south the lif t,^ 
Dim-dark'ning through the flaky show'r, 

Or whirling drift : 

Ae night the storm the steeples rocked, 
Poor labor sweet in sleep was locked. 



• keen and severe 



* stare 



'sky 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



257 



While burns,* wi' snawy wreaths up-choked, 

^ild-eddying savu'1, 
Or thro' the minmg outlet boeked,^ 

Down headlong hurl. 

'List'ning' the doors an' winnocks rattle, 
I thought me on the ourie ^ cattle, 
Or silly sheep, wha bide this brattle ^ 

0' winter war. 
And thro' the drift, deep-lairing sprattle,® 

Beneath a seaur.^ 

Ilk happing bird, wee, helpless thing ! 
That, in the merry months o' sprmg. 
Delighted me to hear thee sing. 

What comes o' thee? 
Whare wilt thou cow'r thy chittering wing, 

An' close thy e'e? 

Ev'n you, on murd'ring errands toil'd, 
'Lone from your savage homes exil'd, 
The blood-stain'd roost, and sheep-cote 
spoil'd 

My heart forgets, 
While pitiless the tempest wild 

Sore on you beats. 
Now Phoebe, in her midnight reign, 
Dark-muffl'd, view'd the dreary plain j 
Still crowding thoughts, a pensive train, 

Rose in my soul, 
When on my ear this plaintive strain, 

Slow, solemn, stole : — 

"Blow, blow, ye winds with heavier gust ! 
And freeze, thou bitter-biting frost ! 
Descend, ye chilly, smothering snows ! 
Not all your rage, as now united, shows 
More hard unkindness unrelenting, 
Vengeful malice unrepenting. 
Than heav'n-illumin'd man on brother man 
bestows. 

"See stern oppression's iron grip, 
Or mad ambition's goi-y hand. 
Sending, like blood-hounds from the slip. 
Woe, want, and murder o'er a land ! 
Ev'n in the peaceful rural vale. 
Truth, weeping, tells the mournful tale. 
How pamper'd luxury, flatt'ry by her side. 
The parasite empoisoning- her ear. 
With all the servile wretches in the rear. 
Looks o'er proud property, extended wide: 
And eyes the simple rustic hind, 

Whose toil upholds the giitt'ring show, 
A creature of another kind. 



* streams 
^ vomited 



^ shivering ^ scramble 

' noisy onset ° cliff 



Some coarser substance unrefin'd, 
Plac'd for her lordly use thus far, thus vile, 
below. 

"Where, where is love's fond, tender 

throe, 
With lordly honor's lofty brow. 
The powers you proudly own ? 
Is there, beneath love's noble name. 
Can harbor, dark, the selfish aim. 

To bless himself alone? 
Mark maiden-innocence a prey 

To love-pretending snares; 
This boasted honor turns away, 
Shunning soft pity's rising sway. 
Regardless of the tears and unavaiUng 
pray'rs ! 
Perhaps, this hour, in luis'ry's squalid 

nest. 
She strains your infant to her joyless 
breast,-? - 
And with a mother's fears shrinks at the 
rocking blast ! 

"Oh ye ! who, sunk in beds of down. 
Peel n"t)t a want but what yourselves 

creiate, 
Think, for a moment, on his wretched 
fate, 
Whom friends and fortune quite dis- 
own ! 
Ill-satisfied keen nature's elam'rous call, 
Stretch'd on his straw he lays himself 
to sleep. 
While thro' the ragged roof and chinky 
wall. 
Chill o'er his slumbers piles the drifty 
heap ! 
Think on the dungeon's grim confine. 
Where guilt and poor misfortune puie ! 

Guilt, errmg man, relenting view! 
But shall thy legal rage pursue 
The wretch, already crushed low 
By cruel fortune's undeserved blow? 
Affliction's sons are brothers in distress, 
A brother to relieve, how exquisite the bliss !" 

I heard nae mair, for chanticleer 
Shook off the pouthery snaw. 

And hail'd the morning with a cheer — 
A cottage-rousing craw. 

But deep this truth impress'd my mind — - 
Through all His works abroad. 

The heart benevolent and kind 
The most resembles God. 



258 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



A Man's a Man for A' That 

ROBERT BURNS 

Is there, for honest poverty, 

That hmgs his head, an' a' that? 
The coward slave, we pass him by, 
We dare be poor for a' that ! 
For a' that, an' a' that, 

Our toils obscure, an' a' that; 
The rank is but the guinea's stamp ; 
The man's the gowd ^ for a' that. 

What tho' on hamely fare we dine, 

Wear hodden-gray,^ an' a' that; 
Gie fools their silks, and knaves their wine, 
A man's a man for a' that. 
For a' that, an' a' that. 

Their tinsel show, an' a' that; 
The honest man, tho' e'er sae poor, 
Is king o' men for a' that. 

Ye see yon birkie,^ ca'd a lord, 

Wha struts, an' stares, an' a' that; 
Tho' hundreds worship at his word, 
He's but a eoof * for a' that : 
For a' that, an' a' that, 

His riband, star, an' a' that, 
The man o' independent mind. 
He looks and laughs at a' that. 

A prince can mak a belted knight, 

A marquis, duke, an' a' that ; 
But an honest man's aboon ^ his might, 
Guid faith he mauna fa' ^ that ! 
For a' that, an' a' that. 

Their dignities, an' a' that, 
The pith o' sense, an' pride o' worth. 
Are higher rank than a' that. 

Then let us pray that come it may. 

As come it will for a' that. 
That sense and worth, o'er a' the earth, 
May bear the gree,''' an' a' that. 
For a' that, an' a' that, 

It's coming yet, for a' that. 
That man to man, the warld o'er, 
Shall brothers be for a' that. 



The Twa Dogs 

robert burns 

'Twas in that place o' Scotland's isle, 
That bears the name o' Auld King Coil, 
Upon a bonnie day in June, 

^ gold . ^ young fellow ^ cannot accom- 

2 coarse gray * fool plish 

cloth 6 above ' prize 



When wearing thro' the afternoon, 
Twa dogs, that were na thrang at hame, 
Forgather'd ance upon a time. 

The first I'll name, they ca'd him Caesar, 
Was keepit for his Honor's pleasure; 
His hair, his size, his mouth, his lugs,^ 
Shew'd he was nane o' Scotland's dogs; 
But whalpit - some place far abroad, 
Whare sailors gang to fish for cod. 

His locked, letter'd, braw^ brass collar 
Shew'd him the gentleman and scholar; 
But tho' he was o' high degree, 
The fient * a pride — nae pride had he. 
But wad hae spent an hour earessin', 
Even wi' a tinkler-gypsey's messan.^ 
At kirk or market, mill or smiddie,^ 
Nae tawted''' tyke,^ tho' e'er sae duddie,^ 
But he wad stan't, as glad to see him, 
And stroan't on stanes an' hillocks wi' him. 

The tither was a plowman's collie, 

A rhyming, ranting, raving billie, 

Wha for his friend an' comrade had him, 

And in his freaks had Luath ca'd him. 

After some dog in Highland sang, 

Was made lang-syne — Lord knows how lang. 

He was a gash ^° an' faithfu' tyke, 
As ever lap a sheugh ^^ or dyke. 
His honest, sonsie, baws'nt ^- face. 
Aye gat him friends in ilka place. 
His breast was white, his towzie back 
Weel clad wi' coat o' glossy black; 
His gaucie ^^ tail, Avi' upward curl, 
Hung owre his hurdles ^"^ wi' a swirl. 

Nae doubt but they were fain' o' ither. 
An' unco pack an' thick thegither; 
Wi' social nose whyles snutf'd and snowkit; 
Whyles mice an' moudieworts ^^ they how- 
kit; i« 
Whyles scour'd awa' in lang excursion. 
An' worry'd ither in diversion ; 
Until wi' daffln ^'^ weary grown, 
Upon a knowe^s they sat them down 
And there began a lang digression 
About the lords o' the creation. 

Caesar 
I've aften wonder'd, honest Luath, 
What sort o' life poor dogs like you have; 



^ ear 


■^ with m 


atted 


*- white-streaked 


- whelped 


hair 




" big and joyous 


= fine 


' cur 




" haunches 


4 devil 


" ragged 




1^ moles 


^ cur 


^^ wise 




^^ digged 


" smithy 


" ditch 




" larking 
18 knoll 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



259 



An' when the gentry's life I saw, 
What way poor bodies liv'd ava. 

Our Laird gets in his racked rents. 

His coals, his kain,^^ an' a' his stents; 

He rises when he likes himsel; 

His flunkies answer at the bell ; 

He ca's his coach, he ca's his horse; 

He draws a bonnie silken purse 

As lang's my tail, whare, thro' the steeks,^*' 

The yellow-letter'd Geordie keeks,^^ 

Frae morn to e'en it's nought but toiling, 
At baking, roasting, frying, boiling; 
An' tho' the gentry first are stechin,-- 
Yet ev'n the ha' folk fill their pechan -^ 
Wi' sauce, ragouts, an' sic-like trashtrie, 
That's little short o' downright wastrie. 

Our whii^per-in, wee blastit wonner,^* 

Poor worthless elf, it eats a dinner 

Better than ony tenant man 

His Honor has in a' the Ian'; 

An' what poor cot-folk pit their paineh in, 

I own it's past my comprehension. 

Luath 
Trowth, Caesar, whiles they're fasht^^ 

eneugh ; 
A cotter howkin in a sheugh, 
Wi' dirty stanes biggin a dyke. 
Baring a quarry, an' sie like ; 
Himsel, a wife, he thus sustains, 
A smytrie -^ o' wee duddie weans. 
An' nought but his han' darg,-'' to keep 
Them right an' tight in thack an' rape.-^ 

An' when they meet wi' sair disasters, 
Like loss o' health or want o' masters, 
Ye maist wad think, a wee touch langer. 
An' they maun starve o' cauld an' hunger : 
But, how it comes, I never kenn'd yet, 
They're maistly wonderf u' contented : 
And buirdly chiels,-'' an' clever hizzies, 
Are bred in sic a way as this is. 

Caesar 
But, then, to see how ye're negleekit, 
How hutf'd, and cuff' d, and disrespekit ! 
L — d, man, our gentiy care as little 
For delvers, ditchers, an' sic cattle; 
They gang as saucy by poor folk 
As I wad by a stinkin' brock.^" 
I've notic'd, on our Laird's court-day, 



'* rents 


^ stomach 


" labor 


=» stitches 


-* wonder 


=s roof 


2^ peeps 


2^ worried 


2» stalwart folks 


=» stuffing 


^ litter 


'» badger 



An' mony a time my heart's been wae, 
Poor tenant bodies, scant o' cash. 
How they maun thole a factor's snash,=*i 
He'll stamp and threaten, curse an' swear. 
He'll apprehend them, poind their gear; 
While they maun stan', wi' aspect humble, 
And hear it a', an' fear an' tremble I 

I see how folk live that hae riches : 
But surely poor folk maun be wretches? 

Luath 
They're no sae wretched's ane wad think 
Tho' constantly on poortith's brink; 
They're sae accustom'd wi' the sight. 
The view o't gies them little fright. 

Then chance an' fortune are sae guided. 
They're aye in less or mair provided; 
An' tho' fatigued wi' close employment, 
A blink o' rest's a sweet enjoyment". 

The dearest comfort o' their lives. 
Their grushie weans ^" an' f aithf u' wives ; 
The prattling things are just their pride 
That sweetens a' their fire-side; 
An' whyles twalpennie worth o' nappy ^^ 
Can mak the bodies unco happy; 
They lay aside their private cares. 
To mind the Kirk and State affairs: 
They'll talk o' patronage an' priests, 
Wi' kindling fury in their breasts; 
Or tell what new taxation's comin', 
An' f erlie ^^ at the folk in Lon'on. 

As bleak-fae'd Hallowmass returns 
They get the jovial, ranting kirns,^^ 
When rural life, o' ev'ry station. 
Unite in common recreation; 
Love blinks. Wit slaps, an' social Mirth 
Forgets there's Care upo' the earth. 
That merry day the year begins 
They bar the door on frosty win's; 
The nappy reeks wi' mantling ream. 
And sheds a heart-inspirmg steam; 
The luntin ^^ pipe, an' sneeshin mill,^^ 
Are handed round wi' right guid will; 
The cantie auld folks craekin' crouse,^^ 
The young anes rantin thro' the house, — 
My heart has been sae fain to see them. 
That I for joy hae barkit wi' them. 

Still it's owre true that ye hae said, 
Sic game is now owre aften play'd. 
There's mony a creditable stock 

^^ abuse ** wonder " snuff-box 

=2 growing chil- ^= harvest-homes '* talking In a 

dren ^ smoking lively manner 

^ale 



260 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



0' decent, honest, fawsont^^ folk 
Are riven out baitli root and branch, 
Some rascal's pridefu' greed to quench, 
Wha thuiks to knit himsel the faster 
In favor wi' some gentle master, 
Wha aiblms,*° thrang a parliamentin'. 
For Britain's guid his saul indentin' — 

Caesar 
Haith, lad, ye little ken about it; 
For Britain's guid! guid faith! I doubt it. 
Say, rather, gaun as Premiers lead him, 
An' saying ay or no's they bid him 
At operas an' plays parading. 
Mortgaging, gambling, masquerading; 
Or maybe, in a frolic daft. 
To Hague or Calais taks a waft. 
To mak a tour, an' tak a whirl. 
To learn hon ton, an' see the worl'. 

There, at Vienna or Versailles, 

He rives his father's auld entails; 

Or by Madrid he taices the route. 

To thrum guitars, an' fecht wi'.nowte;*^ 

Or down Italian vista startles. 

Whore-hunting amang gi'oves o' myrtles; 

Then bouses drumly*- German water. 

To mak himsel look fair and fatter, 

And clear the consequential sorrows, 

Love gifts of Carnival signoras. 

For Britain's guid ! — for her destruction ! 

Wi' dissipation, feud, an' faction! 

Liiatli 
Heeh man ! dear sirs ! is that the gate 
They waste sae mony a braw estate! 
Are we sae foughten an' harass'd 
For gear*2 to gang that gate** at last! 

would they stay aback frae Courts, 
An' please themsels wi' countra sports, 
It wad for ev'iy ane be better. 
The Laird, the Tenant, and the Cotter! 
For thae frank, rantin' ramblin' billies, 
Fient haet*^ o' them 's ill-hearted fellows; 
Except for breakin' o' their timmer. 
Or speakin' lightly o' their limmer,*® 
Or shootin' o' a hare or" moorcock, 
The ne'er a bit they're ill to poor folk. 

But will you tell me, Master Caesar, 
Sure great folk's life's a life o' pleasure? 
Nae eauld nor hunger e'er can steer them, 
The vera thought o't needna fear them. 

Caesar 
Lord, man, were ye but whyles whare I 



'* decent 

*" perhaps 

" fight with bulls 



*^ muddy 
'-^ goods 
M way 



<»Fiend have It, 

none 
" mistress 



The gentles, ye wad ne'er envy 'em. 
It's true they needna starve nor sweat, 
Thro' winter's cauld, or simmer's heat; 
They've nae sair wark to craze their banes, 
An' fill auld age wi' g-rips an' granes: 
But human bodies are sic fools. 
For a' their colleges and schools. 
That when nae real ills perplex them, 
They mak enow themsels to vex them; 
An' aye the less they hae to sturt them, 
In like proportion, less will hurt them. 

A countra fellow at the pleugh. 

His acres till'd, he's right eneugh; 

A countra girl at her wheel, 

Her dizzens *^ done, she's unco weel : 

But gentlemen, an' ladies warst, 

Wi' ev'ndown want o' wark are curst. 

They loiter, lounging, lank, an' lazy; 

Tho' deil-haet ails them, yet uneasy ; 

Their days insipid, dull, an' tasteless; 

Their nights unquiet, lang, an' restless; 

An' e'en their sports, their balls an' races, 

Their galloping thro' public places. 

There's sic parade, sic pomp, an' art. 

The joy can scarcely reach the heart. 

The men cast out in party-matches, 
Then sowther*^ a' in deep debauches; 
Ae night, they're mad wi' drink and 

whoring, 
Niest day their life is past enduring. 

The ladies arm-in-arm in clusters. 
As great an' gracious a' as sisters; 
But hear their absent thoughts o' ither. 
They're a' run deils an' jads thegither. 
Whyles, owre the wee bit cup an' platie. 
They sip the scandal potion pretty : 
Or lee-lang nights,* wi' crabbit leuks 
Pore owre the devil's pictur'd beuks; 
Stake on a chance a farmei''s stackyard. 
An' cheat like ony unhang'd blackguard, 
There's some exception, man an' woman; 
But this is gentry's life in common. 

By this, the sun was out o' sight, 
An' darker gloaming brought the night : 
The bum-clock*^ humm'd wi' lazy drone ; 
The kye^° stood rowtin i' the loan^^ : 
When up they gat, and shook their lugs, 
Rejoic'd they were na men, but dogs; 
An' each took aff his several way, 
Resolv'd to meet some ither day. 

(1786) 



•^^ dozens 
^^ solder 



•''' humming beetle °^ lane 
=0 cattle 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



261 



To A Mouse 

On Turning Up Her Nest with the Plow, 
November^ 1785 

ROBERT BURNS 



Wee, sleekit,^ eowrin, tim'rous beastie, 
Oh, what a panic's in thy breastie! 
Thou need na start awa sae hasty 

Wi' bickerin ^ brattle ! ^ 
I wad be laith * to rin an' chase thee 

Wi' murd'rin pattle ! ^ 



I'm truly sorry man's dominion 
Has broken nature's social union, 
An' justifies that ill opinion 

Which makes thee startle 
At me, thy poor earth-born companion, 

An' fellow-mortal! 



I doubt na, whyles,^ but thou may thieve : 
What then? poor beastie, thou maun live! 
A dahnen ^ icker ^ in a thrave ^ 

'S a sma' request; 
I'll get a blessin wi' the lave,^° 

An' never miss 't! 



Thy wee bit housie, too, in ruin ! 
Its silly wa's the win's are strewin ! 
An' naething, now, to big^^ a new ane, 

0' f oggage ■^- green ! 
An' bleak December's winds ensuin 

Baith snell ^^ an' keen ! 



Thou saw the fields laid bare and waste. 
An' weary winter comin fast,. 
An' cozie here beneath the blast 

Thou thought to dwell, 
Till crash ! the cruel coulter past 

Out thro' thy cell. 

G 

That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble 
Has cost thee mony a weary nibble! 
Now thou's turn'd out for a' thy trouble. 

But ^* house or hald. 
To thole ^^ the winter's sleety dribble 

An' cranreuch ^^ cauld ! 



* sleek 
^ hurrying 
' scamper 
Moth 
" paddle 
' sometimes 



' occasional 
' ear of grain 
' twenty-four 

sheaves 
" rest 
n build 



'2 rank grass 
^^ piercing 
" without 
^' endure 
^^ hoar-frost 



But, Mousie, thou art no thy lane^^ 
In proving foresight may be vain : 
The best laid schemes o' mice an' men 

Gang aft a-gley,^^ 
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain 

For promis'd joy. 

8 

Still thou art blest, compar'd wi' me! 
The present only toucheth thee: 
But, oeh! I backward cast my ee 

On prospects drear! 
An' forward, tho' I canna see, 

I guess an' fear! 

Macpherson's Farewell 
robert burns 



Farewell, ye dungeons dark and strong, 

The wretch's destinie ! 
Macpherson's time will not be long 
On yonder gallows-tree. 

Sae rantingly, sae wantonly, 

Sae dauntingly gaed he; 
He play'd a spring,^ and danc'd it 
round. 
Below the gallows-tree. 



Oh ! what is death but parting breath ? — 

On mony a bloody plain 
I've dar'd his face, and in this place 

I scorn him yet again ! 



Untie these bands from oif my hands, 
And bring to me my sword ! 

And there's no a man in all Scotland 
But I'll brave him at a word. 



I've liv'd a life of sturt and strife; 

I die by treaeherie: 
It burns my heart I must depart, 

And not avenged be. 



Now farewell light — thou sunshine bright, 

And all beneath the sky ! 
May coward shame distain his name, 

The wretch that dare not die ! 



' lone 



dance tune 



262 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



A Dream 

ROBERT BURNS 

Thoughts, words, and deeds, the statute blames 
with reason ; 
But surely dreams were ne'er indicted treason. 

On reading, in the public papers, the Lau- 
reate's Ode, with the other parade of June 4, 
1786, the author was no sooner dropt asleep than 
he imagined himself transported to the birthday 
levee ; and in his dreaming fancy made the fol- 
lowing address. — Burns. 



Guid-mornin' to your Majesty! 

May Heav'n augment your blisses, 
On ev'ry new birthday ye see, 

A liumble poet wishes! 
My bardship here, at your levee. 

On sic a day as this is, 
Is sure an uncouth sight to see, 

Amang thae birthday dresses 
Sae fine this day. 



I see ye're complimented thrang,^ 

By mony a lord an' lady; 
"God save the king !" 's a cuckoo sang 

That's unco easy said aye; 
The poets, too, a venal gang, 

Wi' rhymes weel-turn'd and ready, 
Wad gar you trow ye ne'er do wrang. 

But aye unerring steady. 
On sic a day. 



For me, before a monarch's face, 

Ev'n there I winna flatter; 
For neither pension, post, nor place, 

Am I your humble debtor: 
So, nae reflection on your grace. 

Your kingship to bespatter; 
There's mony waur^ been o' the race, 

And aiblins ane been better 
Than you this day. 



'Tis very true, my sov'reign king. 

My skill may weel be doubted : 
But facts are chiels that winna ding,^ 

An downa* be disputed : 
Your royal nest, beneath your wing, 

Is e'en right reft an' clouted,^ 
And now the third part of the string, 

An' less, will gang about it 
Than did ae day. 



industriously 
' worse 



* be upset 

* cannot 



^ patched 



Far be't frae me that I aspire 

To blame your legislation. 
Or say, ye wisdom want, or fire, 

To rule this mighty nation ! 
But faith ! I muckle doubt, my Sire, 

Ye've trusted ministration 
To chaps, wha, in a barn or byre,^ 

Wad better fill'd their station 
Than courts yon day. 



And now ye've gien auld Britain peace. 

Her broken shins to plaister; 
Your sair taxation does her fleece. 

Till she has scarce a tester; 
For me, thank God, my life's a lease, 

Nae bargain wearing faster. 
Or, faith ! I fear, that wi' the geese, 

I shortly boost to pasture 

I' the craft some day. 



I'm no mistrusting Willie Pitt, 

When taxes he enlarges 
(An' Will's a true guid fallow's get, 

A name not envy spairges),''^ 
That he intends to pay your debt, 

An' lessen a' your charges; 
But, Gudesake ! let nae saving fit 

Abridge your bonnie barges 
An' boats this day. 



Adieu, my Liege! may freedom geck^ 

Beneath your high protection; 
An' may ye rax ^ Corruption's neck. 

And gie her for dissection! 
But since I'm here, I'll no neglect. 

In loyal, true affection, 
To pay your Queen, with due respect, 

My fealty an' subjection 

This great birthday. 

9 

Hail, Majesty most Excellent ! 

While nobles strive to please ye. 
Will ye accept a compliment 

A simple poet gies ye? 
Thae bonnie bairntime,i° Heav'n has lent. 

Still higher may they heeze^'^ ye 
In bliss, till fate some day is sent. 

For ever to release ye 

Frae care that day. 



* cow-shed 
' stains 



* sport 
® stretch 



^•^ issue 
" hoist 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



263 



10 

For you, young potentate o' Wales, 

I tell your Highness fairly, 
Down pleasure's stream, wi' swelling sails, 

I'm tauld ye're driving rarely; 
But some day ye may gnaw your nails, 

An' curse your folly sairly, ^ 

That e'er ye brak Diana's pales, 

Or rattl'd dice wi' Charlie, 
By night or day. 

11 

Yet aft a ragged eowte's ^^ been known 

To mak a noble aiver;^^ 
So, ye may doucely ^* fill a throne, 

For a' their clish-ma-claver : ^' 
There, him at Agincourt wha shone, 

Few better were or braver; 
And yet, wi' funny, queer Sir John, 

He was an uneo shaver 

For mony a day. 

12 

For you, right rev'rend Osnaburg, 

Nane sets the lawn-sleeve sweeter, 
Altho' a ribbon at your lug ^^ 

Wad been a dress completer: 
As ye disown yon paughty^^ dog 

That bears the keys o' Peter, 
Then, swith ! an' get a wife to hug. 

Or, trouth ! ye'll stain the mitre 
Some luckless day. 

13 

Young, royal Tarry Breeks, I learn, 

Ye've lately come athwart her; 
A glorious galley, stem an' stern, 

Weel rigg'd for Venus' barter; 
But first hang out, that she'll discern 

Your hymeneal charter. 
Then heave aboard your grapple airn, 

An' large upon her quarter 

Come full that day. 

14 

Ye, lastly, bonnie blossoms a', 

Ye royal lasses dainty, 
Heav'n mak you guid as weel as braw,^* 

An' gie you lads a-plenty: 
But sneer na British boys awa. 

For kings are uneo scant aye; 
An' German gentles are but sma', 

They're better just than want aye 
On ony day. 



"colt 


^^ nonsense 


»s haste 


^^ horse 


16 ear 


"fine 


** soberly 


" haughty 





15 

God bless you a'! consider now, 

Ye're unco muckle dautit ; -** 
But ere the course o' life be thro'. 

It may be bitter sautit : ^^ 
An' I hae seen their coggie 2- f u', 

That yet hae tarrow't at it; 
But or the day was done, I trow. 

The laggen -* they hae clautit ^^ 
Fu' clean that day. 

The Tree of Liberty 
robert burns 

Heard ye o' the tree 0' France? 

I watna what's the name o't; 
Around it a' the patriots dance, 

Weel Europe kens the fame o't. 
It stands where ance the Bastile stood, 

A prison built by kings, man, 
When Superstition's hellish brood 

Kept France in leading-strings, man. 

Upo' this tree there grows sic fruit. 

Its virtues a' can tell, man; 
It raises man aboon the brute, 

It makes him ken himsel, man. 
Gif ance the peasant taste a bit. 

He's greater than a lord, man. 
And wi' the beggar shares a mite 

Of a' he can afford, man. 

This fruit is worth a' Afric's wealth. 

To comfort us 'twas sent, man : 
To gie the sweetest blush o' health. 

And mak us a' content, man. 
It clears the een, it cheers the heart. 

Makes high and low guid friends, man ; 
And he wha acts the traitor's part 

It to perdition sends, man. 

My blessings aye attend the chiel 

Wha pitied Gallia's slaves, man. 
And stawl a branch, spite o' the deil, 

Frae yont the western waves, man. 
Fair Virtue water'd it wi' care, 

And now she sees wi' pride, man, 
How weel it buds and blossoms there. 

Its branches spreading wide, man. 

But vicious folk aye hate to see 
The works of Virtue thrive, man ; 

The courtly vermin's bann'd the tree. 
And grat ^ to see it thrive, man ; 

*° uncommonly ^ little dish "^ scraped 

much petted ^^ murmured 'stole 

^ salted ^* corner * grieved 



264 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



King Louis thought to cut it down, 
When it was unco sma', man; 

For this the watchman crack'd his crown, 
Cut aff his head and a', man : 

A wicked crew syne,^ on a time, 

Did tak a solemn aith, man, 
It ne'er should flourish to its prime, 

I wat they pledged their faith, man; 
Awa they gaed, wi' mock parade, 

Like beagles hunting game, man. 
But soon grew weary o' the trade, 

And wish'd they'd been at hame, man. 

For Freedom, standing by the tree. 

Her sons did loudly ca', man ; 
She sang a sang o' liberty. 

Which pleased them ane and a', man. 
By her inspired, the new-born race 

Soon drew the avenging steel, man ; 
The hirelings ran — her foes gied chase. 

And bang'd the despot weel, man. 

Let Britain boast her hardy oak. 

Her poplar and her pine, man, 
Auld Britain anee could crack her joke, 

And o'er her neighbors shine, man. 
But seek the forest round and round. 

And soon 'twill be agreed, man. 
That sic a tree cannot be. round 

'Twixt London and the Tweed, man. 

Without this tree, alake, this life 

Is but a vale o' woe, man; 
A scene o' sorrow mix'd wi' strife, 

Nae real joys we know, man. 
We labor soon, we labor late. 

To feed the titled knave, man ; 
And a' the comfort we're to get 

Is that ayont the grave, man. 

Wi' plenty o' sic trees, I trow. 

The warld would leeve in peace, man; 
The sword would help to mak a plow, 

The din o' war wad cease, man. 
Like brethren in a common cause, 

We'd on each other smile, man; 
And equal rights and equal laws 

Wad gladden every isle, man. 

Wae worth the loon ^ wha wadna eat 

Sic halesome dainty cheer, man ; 
I'd gie my shoon frae aff my feet. 

To taste sic fruit, I swear, man. 
Syne let us pray, auld England may 

Sure plant this far-famed tree, man; 
And blithe we'll sing, and hail the day 

That gives us liberty, man. 
• then * woe to the rogue 



The American War 



ROBERT BURNS 



When Guilford good our pilot stood, 

And did our helm thraw, man, 
Ae night, at tea, began a plea, 

Within America, man: 
Then up they gat the maskin-pat,^ 

And in the sea did jaw, man; 
An' did nae less, in full Congress, 

Than quite refuse our law, man. 



Then thro' the lakes Montgomery takes, 

I wat he was na slaw, man ! 
Down Lowrie's burn he took a turn, 

And Carleton did ca', man: 
But yet, what reck, he, at Quebec, 

Montgomery-like did fa', man: 
Wi' sword in hand, before his band, 

Amang his en'mies a', man. 



Poor Tammy Gage, within a cage, 

Was kept at Boston ha', man; 
Till Willie Howe took o'er the knowe 

For Philadelphia, man; 
Wi' sword an' gun he thought a sin 

Guid Christian bluid to draw, man; 
But at New York, wi' knife an' fork. 

Sir-loin he hacked sma', man. 



Burgoyne gaed up, like spur an' whip. 

Till Fraser brave did fa', man; 
Then lost his way, ae misty day, 

In Saratoga shaw,^ man. 
Cornwallis fought as long's he dought, 

An' did the buckskins claw, man; 
But Clinton's glaive ^ frae rust to save, 

He hung it to the wa', man. 



Then Montague, and Guildford too, 

Began to fear a fa', man: 
And Sackville doure,* wha stood the stoure,^ 

The German chief to thraw, man; 
For Paddy Burke, like ony Turk, 

Nae mercy had at a', man ; 
And Charlie Fox threw by the box," 

An' lows'd his tinkler jaw, man. 



^ tea-pot 
^ forest 



^ sword 
* stubborn 



^ storm 

the dice box 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOCEACY 



265 



6 

Then Rockingham took up the game, 

Till death did on him ea', man; 
When Shelburne meek held up his cheek, 

Conform to gospel law, man; 
Saint Stephen's boys, wi' jarring noise, 

They did his measures thi'aw, man, 
For North an' Tox united stocks, 

An' bore him to the wa', man. 



Then clubs an' hearts were Charlie's cartes. 

He swept the stakes awa, man, 
Till the diamond's ace, of Indian race. 

Led him a sair faux pas, man; 
The Saxon lads, wi' loud placads, 

On Chatham's boy did ca', man; 
An' Scotland drew her pipe, an' blew, 

'Up Willie,'' waur ® them a' man !' 

8 

Behind the throne then Granville's gone, 

A secret word or twa, man; 
While slee Dundas arous'd the class, 

Be-north the Roman wa', man: 
And Chatham's wraith, in heav'nly graith,^ 

(Inspired Bardies saw, man;) 
Wi' kindling" eyes cry'd 'Willie, rise ! 

Would I hae f ear'd them, a', man !' 

9 

But, word an' blow. North, Fox, and Co., 

Gowfe'd^o Willie like a ba', man, 
Till Suthron ^^ raise, an' coost their claise 

Behind him in a raw, man; 
An' Caledon threw by the drone,^^ 

An' did her whittle draw, man ; 
An' swoor fu' rude, thro' dirt and bluid. 

To make it guid in law, man. 

Scots Wha Hae 

robert burns 

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, 
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led; 
Welcome to your gory bed. 

Or to victory ! 
Now's the day, and now's the hour; 
See the front o' battle lour; 
See approach proud Edward's power — 

Chains and slavery! 



' William Pitt 
* worse 
" attire 

10 "golfed," i. c, 
struck 



" Southern, i. e., 
the Fnsclish 

Impart of a bag- 
pipe 



Wha will be a traitor knave? 
Wha can fill a coward's grave? 
Wha sae base as be a slave *? 

Let him turn and flee ! 
Wha for Scotland's king and law 
Freedom's sword will sti'ongly draw, 
Freeman stand, or Freeman fa', 

Let him follow me! 

By oppression's woes and pains 
By your sons in servile chains! 
We will drain our dearest veins. 

But they shall be free! 
Lay the "proud usurpers low! 
Tyrants fall in every foe! 
Liberty's in every blow ! — 

Let us do or die! 



A Vision- 
Robert BURNS 

As I stood by yon roofless tower. 

Where the wa'-flower scents the dewy air, 

Where the howlet mourns in her ivy bower, 
And tells the midnight moon her care; 

The winds were laid, the air was still. 
The stars they shot alang the sky; 

The fox was howling on the hill, 

And the distant-echoing glens reply. 

The stream, adown its hazelly path. 
Was rushing by the ruin'd wa's. 

Hasting to join the sweeping Nith, 
Whose distant roaring swells and fa's. 

The cauld blue north was streaming- forth 
Her lights, wi' hissing, eerie din : 

Athort the lift ^ they start and shift, 
Like fortune's favors, tint ^ as win. 

By heedless chance I turn'd mine eyes, 
And, by the moonbeam, shook to see 

A stern and stalwart ghaist arise, 
Attir'd as minstrels wont to be. 

Had I a statue been o' stane. 

His daring look had daunted 
And on his bonnet grav'd was 

The sacred posie — 'Liberty!' 

And frae his harp sic strains did flow, 
Might rous'd the slumb'ring dead to hear : 

But, oh ! it was a tale of woe, 
As ever met a Briton's ear ! 



sky 



■lost 



266 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



He sang wi' joy this former day, 
He, weeping, wail'd his latter times; 

But what he said it was nae play, — 
I winna venture 't in my rhymes. 

The Dumfries Volunteers 

Does haughty Gaul invasion threat"? 

Then let the louns ^ beware. Sir ; 
There's wooden walls upon our seas, 

And volunteers on shore. Sir. 
The Nith shall rin to Corsineon, 

And Criffel sink in Solway, 
Ere we permit a foreign foe 

On British ground to rally ! 

We'll ne'er permit a foreign foe 
On British ground to rally. 

let us not, like snarling curs, 

In wrangling be divided; 
Till, slap ! come in an unco loun, 

Ajid wi' a rung^ decide it. 
Be Britain still to Britain true, 

Amang oursels united; 
For never but by British hands 

Maun British wrangs be righted ! 

For never, etc. 

The kettle o' the Kirk and State, 

Perhaps a clout ^ may fail in 't ; 
But deil a foreign tinkler loun 

Shall ever ca' * a nail in 't. 
Our fathers' bluid the kettle bought; 

And wha wad dare to spoil if? 
By heavens ! the sacrilegious dog 

Shall fuel be to boil it ! 

By heavens, etc. 

The wretch that wad a tyrant own, 

And the wretch, his true-sworn brother, 
Wha would set the mob aboon the throne, 

May they be damn'd together! 
Wha will not sing, 'God save the King,' 

Shall hang as high 's the steeple; 
But while we sing, 'God save the King,' 

We'll ne'er forget the People. 

But while we sing, etc. 

The Toast 1 

robert burns 

Instead of a song, boys, I'll give you a 
toast — 



^ patch 



* drive 



1 rogues 
* cudgel 

^ At an annual celebration of the victory of 
Admiral Rodney over the Spanish fleet in the 
West Indies, April 12, 1782. 



Here's the memory of those on the twelfth 
that we lost — 

That we lost, did I say? nay, by Heav'n, 
that we found; 

For their fame it shall last while the world 
goes round. 

The next in succession, I'll give you — the 
King ! 

Whoe'er would betray him, on high may he 
swing ! 

And here's the grand fabric, our free Con- 
stitution, 

As built on the base of the great Revolution ; 

And longer with politics not to be cramm'd, 

Be Anarchy curs'd, and be Tyranny damn'd ; 

And who would to Liberty e'er prove dis- 
loyal, 

May his son be a hangman, and he his first 
trial ! 



Address to the Deil 



ROBERT BURNS 

O Prince ! O Chief of many thronfed pow'rs ! 
That led th'embattled seraphim to war. 

— Milton. 



thou ! whatever title suit thee, — 
Auld Hornie, Satan, Nick, or Clootie! 
Wha in yon cavern, grim an' sootie, 

Clos'd under hatches, 
Spairges ^ about the brunstane cootie ^ 

To scaud ^ poor wretches ! 



Hear me, auld Hangie, for a wee. 
An' let poor damned bodies be; 
I'm sure sma' pleasure it can gie. 

E'en to a deil. 
To skelp * an' scaud poor dogs like me, 

An' hear us squeel ! 



Great is thy pow'r, an' great thy fame ; 
Far ken'd ^ an' noted is thy name ; 
An' tho' yon lowin heugh's ^ thy hame,'^ 

Thou travels far ; 
An' faith ! thou's neither lag ^ nor lame. 

Nor blate ^ nor scaur.^° 



Whyles,^^ rangin like a roarin lion. 
For prey a' holes an' corners tryin ; 

' splashes ^ known ^ shy 

- brimstone tub ^ flaming ravine ^^ timid 

^ scald ' home " sometimes 

* slap ' sluggish 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



267 



Whyles, on the strong-wing'd tempest flyin, 

Tirlin' ^^ the kirks ; ^^ 
Whyles, in the human bosom pryin. 

Unseen thou lurks. 



I've heard my rev'rend grannie say, 
In lanely ^* glens ye like to stray ; 
Or whare auld ruin'd castles gray 

Nod to the moon, 
Ye fright the nightly wand'rer's way 

Wi' eldritch ^^ croon. 



When twilight did my grannie summon 
To say her pray'rs, douce ^^ honest woman ! 
Aft yont ^'^ the dike she's heard you bummin, 

Wi' eerit drone ; 
Or, rustlin, thro' the boortrees ^^ comin, 

Wi' heavy groan. 



Ae 1^ dreary, windy, winter night. 

The stars shot down wi' sklentin ^'^ light, 

Wi' you mysel I gat a fright 

Ayont 2^ the lough ; ^^ 
Ye like a rash-buss ^^ stood in sight 

Wi' waving sough. 



The cudgel in my nieve -* did shake. 
Each bristl'd hair stood like a stake, 
When wi' an eldritch, stoor ^^ "Quaick, 
quaiek," 

Amang the springs, 
Awa ye squatter'd like a drake. 

On whistlin wings. 



Let warlocks -^ grim an' wither'd hags 
Tell how wi' you on ragweed nags 
They skim the muirs an' drizzy crags 

Wi' wicked speed ; 
And in kirk-yards ^"^ renew their leagues, 

Owre howket ^^ dead. 

10 

Thence, countra wives wi' toil an' pain 
May plunge an' plunge the kirn -^ in vain ; 
For oh ! the yellow treasure's taen 
By witchin skill; 



•* unroofing 

•' churches 

" lonely 

*5 unearthly 

16 grave 

" often beyond 



'' elders 

» one 

^ slanting 

^ beyond 

" lake 

^ rush-bush 



Mflst 

^ harsh 
2^ wizards 
2' churchyards 
2^ dug up 
^^ churn 



An' dawtet,^° twal-pint hawkie's ^^ gaen 
As yell's ^- the bilL^s 

11 

Thence, mystic knots mak great abuse. 

On young guidmen, fond, keen, an' crouse ; ^* 

When the best wark-lume ^^ i' the house. 

By cantrip ^^ wit. 
Is instant made no worth a louse. 

Just at the bit. 

12 

When thowes ^'^ dissolve the snawy hoord,^^ 

An' float the jinglin icy-boord. 

Then water-kelpies ^^ haunt the foord 

By your direction. 
An' nighted trav'lers are allur'd 

To their destruction. 

13 

And aft *° your moss-traversing spunkies *^ 
Decoy the wight that date and drunk is : 
The bleezin^*^ curst, mischievous monkeys 

Delude his eyes. 
Till in some miry slough he sunk is. 

Ne'er mair to rise. 

14 

When masons' mystic word and grip 
In storms an' tempests raise you up. 
Some cock or eat your rage maun stop. 

Or, strange to tell. 
The youngest brither "^^ ye wad whip 

Aff ** straught to hell ! 

15 

Lang syne, in Eden's bonie yard, 
When youthfu' lovers first were pair'd. 
And all the soul of love they shar'd, 

The raptur'd hour. 
Sweet on the fragrant flow'ry swaird,*^ 

In shady bow'r; 

16 

Then you, ye auld sneek-drawin *" dog ! 

Ye cam to Paradise incog. 

And play'd on man a cursed brogue,*'^ 

(Black be your fa' !) 
And gied the infant warld a shog,*^ 

Maist *" ruin'd a'. 

8° petted 5^ thaws •* brother 

•^ twelve-pint cow'* snowy hoard " off 

'- dry as ^ water-spirits ^^ sward 

S3 bull •» often ■" latch-lifting 

»* bold ^1 will-o'-the- " trick 

'" work-loom wisps '-* shock 

°* mischievous *- blazing '" almost 



268 



THE GREAT TEADITION 



17 

D'ye mind that day, when in a bizz,50 
Wi' reeket ^^ duds and reestet gizz,^^ 
Ye did present your smoutie phiz 

Mang better folk, 
An' sklented ^^ on the man of Uz 

Your spitefu' joke? 

18 

An' how ye gat him i' your thrall. 
An' brak him out o' house and hal', 
While scabs and blotches did him gall, 

Wi' bitter claw, 
An' lows'd 5* his ill-tongued, wicked scaul,^ 

Was warst ava?^^ 

19 

But a' your doings to rehearse, 
Your wily snares an' fetchin fierce. 
Sin' that day Michael did you pierce, 

Down to this time. 
Wad ding ^'^ a Lallan tongue, or Erse, 

In prose or rhyme, 

20 

An' now, auld Cloots, I ken ye're thinkin, 
A certain Bardie's rantin, drinkin, 
Some luckless hour will send him linkin,^^ 

To your black pit ; 
But faith ! he'll turn a corner jinkin,^^ 

An' cheat you yet. 

21 

But fare you weel, auld Nickie-ben! 

wad ye tak a thought an' men' ! 

Ye aiblins''*' might — I dinna ken — 

Still hae a stake : 
I'm wae ''^ to think upo' yon den, 

Ev'n for your sake ! 

The Sincerity of Burns 

thomas carlyle 

[From An Essay on Burns, 1828,] 

The excellence of Burns is, indeed, among 
the rarest, whether in poetry or prose ; but, 
at the same time, it is plain and easily recog- 
nized, — his Sincerity, his indisputable air 
of Truth, Here are no fabulous woes or 
joys; no hollow fantastic sentimentalities; 
no wire-drawn refinings, either in thought or 



^^ flurry 
^^ smoked 
"= singed face 
^^ directed 



^^ loosed 

^^ scold 

''" worst of all 

=■ baffle 



'8 tripping 
''^ darting 
<'° possibly 
" sad 



feeling : the passion that is traced before us 
has glowed in a living heart ; the oiDinion he 
utters has risen in his own understanding, 
and been a light to his own steps. He does 
not write from hearsay, but from sight and 
experience ; it is the scenes that he has lived 
and labored amidst, that he describes; those 
scenes, rude and humble as they are, have 
kindled beautiful emotions in his soul, noble 
thoughts, and definite resolves; and he 
speaks forth what is in him, not from any 
outward call of vanity or interest, but be- 
cause his heart is too full to be silent. He 
speaks it with such melody and modulation 
as he can; "in homely rustic jingle"; but it 
is his own, and genuine. This is the grand 
secret for finding readers and retaining 
them: let him who would move and con- 
vince others, be first moved and convinced 
himself, Horace's rule, Si vis me flere, is 
applicable in a wider sense than the literal 
one. To every poet, to every wi'iter, we 
might say: Be true, if you would be be- 
lieved. Let a man but speak forth with 
genuine earnestness the thought, the emo- 
tion, the actual condition of his own heart; 
and other men, so strangely are we all knit 
together by the tie of sympathy, must and 
will give heed to him. In culture, in extent 
of view, we may stand above the speaker, or 
below him; but in either case, his words, if 
they are earnest and sincere, will find some 
response within us ; for in spite of all casual 
varieties in outward rank or inward, as face 
answers to face, so does the heart of man 
to man. . . . 

Byron and Burns were sent forth as mis- 
sionaries to their generation, to teach it a 
higher Doctrine, a purer Truth ; they had a 
message to deliver, which left them no rest 
till it was accomplished; in dim throes of 
pain, this divine behest lay smouldering 
within them, for they knew not what it 
meant, and felt it only in mysterious antici- 
pation, and they had to die without articu- 
lately uttering it. They are in the camp of 
the Unconverted; yet not as high messen- 
gers of rigorous though benignant Truth, 
but as soft flattering singers, and in pleas- 
ant fellowship will they live there ; they are 
first adulated, then persecuted; they ac- 
complish little for others ; they find no peace 
for themselves, but only death and the peace 
of the grave. We confess it is not without a 
certain mournful awe that we view the fate 
of these noble souls, so richly gifted, yet 
ruined to so little purpose with all their 



THE RISE OF MODEEN DEMOCRACY 



269 



gifts. It seems to us there is a stern moral 
taught in this piece of liistory, — twice told 
us in our own time ! Surely to men of like 
genius, if there be any such, it carries with 
it a lesson of deep, impressive significance. 
Surely it would become such a man, fur- 
nished for the highest of all enterprises, — 
that of being the Poet of his Age, — to con- 
sider well what it is that he attempts, and in 
what spirit he attempts it. For the words 
of Milton are true in all times, and were 
never truer than in this: "He who Avould 
write heroic poems must make his whole life 
a heroic poem." If he cannot first so make 
his life, then let him hasten from this arena ; 
for neither its lofty glories nor its fearful 
perils are fit for him. Let him dwindle into 
a modish balladmonger ; let him worship and 
be-sing the idols of the time, and the time 
will not fail to reward him, — if, indeed, he 
can endure to live in that capacity ! Byron 
and Burns could not live as idol-priests, but 
the fire of their own hearts consumed them, 



and better it was for them that they could 
not. For it is not in the favor of the great 
or of the small, but in a life of truth, and in 
the inexpugnable citadel of his own soul, 
that a Byron's or a Burns's strength must 
lie. Let the great stand aloof from him, or 
know how to reverence him. Beautiful is the 
union of wealth with favor and furtherance 
for literature, like the costliest flower- jar en- 
closing the loveliest amaranth. Yet let not 
the relation be mistaken. A true poet is not 
one whom they can hire by money or flattery 
to be a minister of their pleasures, their 
writer of occasional verses, their purveyor 
of table-wit; he cannot be their menial, he 
cannot even be their partisan. At the peril 
of both parties, let no such union be at- 
tempted! Will a Courser of the Sun work 
softly in the harness of a Dray-horse ? His 
hoofs are of fire, and his path is through the 
heavens, bringing light to all lands; will he 
lumber on mud highways, dragging ale for 
earthly appetites from door to door? 



2. THE STKUGGLE AGAINST TYRANNY IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 



The Character of Pitt 

john richard green 

[From A Short History of the English 
People, 1877] 

But the nation of which Chesterfield 
despaired was really on the eve of its great- 
est triumphs, and the miserable incapacity 
of the Duke of Newcastle only called to the 
front the genius of William Pitt. Pitt was 
the grandson of a wealthy governor of 
Madras, who had entered Parliament in 
1735 as member for one of his father's 
pocket boroughs, and had headed the 
younger "patriots" in their attack on Wal- 
pole. The dismissal from the army by 
which Walpole met his attacks turned his 
energy wholly to politics. His fiery spirit 
was hushed in office during the "broad- 
bottom administration" which followed Wal- 
pole's fall, but after the death of Henry 
Pelham, Newcastle's jealousy of power 
threw him into an attitude of opposition 
and he was deprived of his place. When 
the disasters of the war however drove New- 
castle from office in November 1756, Pitt 
became Secretary of State; but in four 
months the enmity of the King and of New- 



castle's party drove him to resign. In July 
1757, however, it was necessary to recall 
him. The failure of Newcastle to construct 
an administration forced the Duke to a 
junction with his rival ; and fortunately for 
their country, the character of the two 
statesmen made the compromise an easy one. 
For all that Pitt coveted, for the general 
direction of public affairs, the control of 
foreign policy, the administration of the 
war, Newcastle had neither capacity nor in- 
clination. On the other hand, his skill in 
parliamentary management was unrivalled. 
If he knew little else, he knew better than 
any living man the price of every member 
and the intrigues of every borough. What 
he cared for was not the control of affairs, 
but the distribution of patronage and the 
work of corruption, and from this Pitt 
turned disdainfully away. "Mr. Pitt does 
everything," wrote Horace Walpole, "and 
the Duke gives everything. So long as they 
agree in this partition they may do what 
they please." Out of the union of these two 
strangely-contrasted leaders, in fact, rose 
the greatest, as it was the last, of the j^urely 
Whig administrations. But its real power 
lay from beginning to end in Pitt himself. 
Poor as he was, for his income was little 



270 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



more than two hundred a year, and spring- 
ing as he did from a family of no political 
importance, it was by sheer dint of genius 
that the young eoi-net of horse, at whose 
youth and inexperience Walpole had 
sneered, seized a power which the Whig 
houses had ever since the Revolution kept 
jealously in their grasp. His ambition had 
no petty aim. "I want to call England," 
he said as he took office, "out of that ener- 
vate state in which twenty thousand men 
from France can shake her." His call was 
soon answered. He at once breathed his 
own lofty spirit into the country he served, 
'as he communicated something of his own 
grandeur to the men who served him. "No 
man," said a soldier of the time, "ever en- 
tered Mr. Pitt's closet who did not feel him- 
self braver when he came out than when he 
went in." Ill-combined as were his earlier 
expeditions, many as were his failures, he 
roused a temper in the nation at large which 
made ultimate defeat impossible. "England 
has been a long time in labor," exclaimed 
Frederick of Prussia as he recognized a 
greatness like his own, "but she has at last 
brought forth a man." 

It is this personal and solitary grandeur 
which strikes us most as we look back to 
William Pitt. The tone of his speech and 
action stands out in utter contrast with the 
tone of his time. In the midst of a society 
critical, polite, indifferent, simple even to 
the affectation of simplicity, witty and 
amusing but absolutely prosaic, cool of 
heart and of head, skeptical of virtue and 
enthusiasm, skeptical above all of itself, 
Pitt stood absolutely alone. The depth of 
his conviction, his passionate love for all 
that he deemed lofty and true, his fiery en- 
ergy, his poetic imaginativeness, his theat- 
rical airs and rhetoric, his haughty self- 
assumption, his pomjDousness and extrava- 
gance, were not more puzzling to his eon- 
temiDoraries than the confidence with which 
he appealed to the higher sentiments of man- 
kind, the scorn with which he turned from 
a corruption which had till then been the 
great engine of politics, the undoubting 
faith which he felt in himself, in the gran- 
deur of his aims, and in his power to carry 
them out. "I know that I can save the 
country," he said to the Duke of Devonshire 
on his entry into the Ministiy, "and I know 
no other man can." The groundwork of 
Pitt's character was an intense and passion- 
ate pride ; but it was a pride which kept him 
from stooping to the level of the men who 



had so long held England in their hands. 
He was the first statesman since the Resto- 
ration who set the example of a purely pub- 
lic spirit. Keen as was his love of power, 
no man ever refused office so often, or ac- 
cepted it with so strict a regard to the prin- 
ciples he professed. "I will not go to 
Court," he replied to an offer which was 
made him, "if I may not bring the Consti- 
tution with me." For the corruption about 
him he had nothing but disdain. He left to 
Newcastle the buying of seats and the pur- 
chase of members. At the outset of his ca- 
reer Pelham appointed him to the most 
lucrative office in his administration, that of 
Paymaster of the Forces; but its profits 
were of an illicit kind, and poor as he was 
Pitt refused to accept one farthing beyond 
his salary. His pride never appeared in 
loftier and nobler form than in his attitude 
towards the people at large. No leader had 
ever a wider popularity than "the great 
commoner," as Pitt was styled, but his air 
was always that of a man who commands 
popularity, not that of one who seeks it. 
He never bent to flatter popular prejudice. 
When mobs were roarmg themselves hoarse 
for "Wilkes and liberty," he denounced 
Wilkes as a worthless profligate; and when 
all England went mad in its hatred of the 
Scots, Pitt haughtily declared his esteem for 
a people whose courage he had been the first 
to enlist on the side of loyalty. His noble 
figure, the hawk-like eye which flashed from 
the small thin face, his majestic voice, the 
fire and grandeur of his eloquence, gave 
him a sway over the House of Commons far 
greater than any other minister has pos- 
sessed. He could silence an opponent with 
a look of scorn, or hush the whole House 
with a single word. But he never stooped 
to the arts by which men form a political 
party, and at the height of his power his 
personal following hardly numbered half 
a dozen members. 

His real strength indeed lay not in Par- 
liament but in the people at large. His 
significant title of "the great commoner" 
marks a political revolution. "It is the peo- 
ple who have sent me here," Pitt boasted 
with a haughty pride when the nobles of 
the Cabinet opposed his will. He was the 
first to see that the long political inactivity 
of the public mind had ceased, and that the 
progress of commerce and industry had pro- 
duced a great middle class, which no longer 
found its representatives in the legislature. 
"You have taught me," said George the Sec- 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



i271 



ond when Pitt sought to save Byng by ap- 
pealing to the sentiment of Parliament, "to 
look for the voice of my people in other 
places than within the House of Commons." 
It was this unrepresented class which had 
forced him into power. During his strug- 
gle with Newcastle the greater towns backed 
him with the gift of their freedom and ad- 
dresses of confidence. "For weeks," laughs 
Horace Walpole, *'it rained gold boxes." 
London stood by him through good report 
and evil report, and the wealthiest of Eng- 
lish merchants, Alderman Beckford, was 
proud to figure as his political lieutenant. 
The temper of Pitt indeed harmonized ad- 
mirably with the temper of the commercial 
England which rallied round him, with its 
energy, its self-confidence, its pride, its pa- 
triotism, its honesty, its moral earnestness. 
The merchant and the trader were drawn by 
a natural attraction to the one statesman of 
their time whose aims were unselfish, whose 
hands were clean, whose life was pure and 
full of tender affection for wife and child. 
But there was a far deeper ground for their 
enthusiastic reverence and for the reverence 
which his country has borne Pitt ever since. 
He loved England with an intense and per- 
sonal love. He believed in her power, her 
glory, her public virtue, till England learned 
to believe in herself. Her triumphs were 
his triumphs, her defeats his defeats. Her 
dangers lifted him high above all thought of 
self or party-spirit. "Be one people," he 
cried to the factions who rose to bring about 
his fall : "forget everything but the public ! 
I set you the example!" His glowing pa- 
triotism was the real spell by which he held 
England. But even the faults which cheq- 
uered his character told for him with the 
middle classes. The Whig statesmen who 
preceded him had been men whose pride ex- 
pressed itself in a marked simplicity and 
absence of pretence. Pitt was essentially an 
actor, dramatic in the cabinet, in the House, 
in his very office. He transacted business 
with his clerks in full dress. His letters to 
his family, genuine as his love for them 
was, are stilted and unnatural in tone. It 
was easy for the wits of his day to jest at 
his affectation, his pompous gait, the dra- 
matic appearance which he made on great 
debates with his limbs swathed in flannel and 
his crutch by his side. Early in life Wal- 
pole sneered at him for bringing into the 
House of Commons "the gestures and emo- 
tions of the stage." But the classes to whom 
Pitt appealed were classes not easily of- 



fended by faults of taste, and saw nothing 
to laugh at in the statesman who was borne 
into the lobby amidst the tortures of the 
gout, or carried into the House of Lords 
to breathe his last in a protest against na- 
tional dishonor. 

Above all Pitt wielded the strength of a 
resistless eloquence. The power of political 
speech had been revealed in the stormy de- 
bates of the Long Parliament, but it was 
cramped in its utterance by the legal and 
theological pedantry of the time. Pedantry 
was flung off by the age of the Revolution, 
but in the eloquence of Somers and his 
rivals we see ability i-ather than genius, 
knowledge, clearness of expression, preci- 
sion of thought, the lucidity of the pleader 
or the man of business, rather than the pas- 
sion of the orator. Of this clearness of 
statement Pitt had little or none. He was 
no ready debater like Walpole, no speaker 
of set speeches like Chesterfield. His set 
speeches were always his worst, for in these 
his want of taste, his love of effect, his trite 
quotations and extravagant metaphors came 
at once to the front. That with defects like 
these he stood far above every orator of his 
time was due 'above all to his profound 
conviction, to the earnestness and sincerity 
with which he spoke. "I must sit still," he 
whispered once to a friend, "for when once 
I am up everything that is in my mind 
comes out." But the reality of his eloquence 
was transfig-ured by a large and poetic imag- 
ination, and by a glow of passion which 
not only raised him high above the men of 
his own day but set him in the front rank 
among the orators of the world. The cool 
reasoning, the wit, the common sense of his 
age made way for a splendid audacity, a 
sympathy with popular emotion, a sustained 
grandeur, a lofty vehemence, a command 
over the whole range of human feeling. He 
passed without an effort from the most sol- 
emn appeal to the gayest raillery, from the 
keenest sarcasm to the tenderest pathos. 
Every word was driven home by the grand 
self -consciousness of the speaker. He spoke 
always as one having authority. He was 
in fact the first English orator whose words 
were a power, a power not over Parliament 
only but over the nation at large. Parlia- 
mentaiy reporting was as yet unknown, and 
it was only in detached phrases and half- 
remembered outbursts that the voice of Pitt 
reached beyond the walls of St. Stephen's. 
But it was especially in these sudden out- 
bursts of inspiration, in these brief passion- 



272 



THE GREAT TEADITION 



ate appeals, that the power of his eloquence 
lay. The few broken words we have of hun 
stir the same thrill in men of our day which 
they stirred in the men of his own. But pas- 
sionate as was Pitt's eloquence, it was the 
eloquence of a statesman, not of a rhetori- 
cian. Time has approved almost all his 
greater struggles, his defense of the liberty 
of the subject against arbitrary imprison- 
ment under "general warrants," of the lib- 
erty of the press aga,inst Lord Mansfield, of 
the rights of constituencies against the 
House of Commons, of the constitutional 
rights of America against England itself. 



Cabinet Government Under 
George III^ 

"JUNIUS"'' 

[From A Letter to the Duke of Grafton, 
July 8, 1769.] 

Since the accession of our most gracious 
sovereign to the throne we have seen a sys- 
tem of government which may well be called 
a reign of experiments. Parties of all de- 
nominations have been employed and dis- 
missed. The advice of the ablest men in 
this country has been repeatedly called for 
and rejected; and when the royal displeasure 
has been signified to a minister, the marks 
of it have usually been proportioned to his 
abilities and integrity. Tlie spirit of the 
favorite had some apj^arent influence upon 
every administration: and every set of 
ministers preserved an appearance of dura- 
tion, as long as they submitted to that in- 
fluence. But there were certain services to 
be performed for the favorite's security, or 
to gratify his resentments, which your 
predecessors in office had the wisdom or the 
virtue not to undertake. The moment this 
refractory spirit was discovered their dis- 
grace was determined. Lord Chatham, Mr. 
Grenville, and Lord Rockingham have suc- 
cessively had the honor to be dismissed for 
preferring their duty as servants of the pub- 
lie to those compliances which were expected 
from their station. A submissive adminis- 
tration was at last gradually collected from 

^Junius' eloquent attack on the Duke of 
Grafton, left in power by the withdrawal of the 
Earl of Chatham in 1767, was prompted by the 
subservience of the ministry to the tyrannical will 
of George III, who opposed the liberties of his sub- 
jects by pressing the expulsion of the popular 
John Wilkes from Parliament and by continuing 
bis oppressive policy toward the American colonies. 



the deserters of all parties, interests, and 
connections; and nothing remained but to 
find a leader for these gallant well-disci- 
plined troops. Stand forth, my Lord, for 
thou art the man. Lord Bute found no re- 
source of dependence or security in the 
proud, imposing superiority of Lord 
Chatham's abilities, the shrewd, inflexible 
judgment of Mr. Grenville, nor in the mild 
but determined integrity of Lord Rocking- 
ham. His views and situation required a 
creature void of all these projDerties ; and he 
was forced to go through every division, 
resolution, composition, and refinement of 
political chemistry, before he happily ar- 
rived at the caput mortuum of vitriol in 
your Grace. Flat and insipid in your re- 
tired state, but, brought into action, you be- 
come vitriol again. Such are the extremes 
of alternate indolence or fury which have 
governed your whole administration. Your 
circumstances with regard to the people 
soon becoming desperate, like other honest 
servants you determined to involve the best 
of masters in the same difficulties with your- 
self. We owe it to your Grace's well-di- 
rected labors, that your sovereign has been 
persuaded to doubt of the affections of his 
subjects, and the people to susjject the vir- 
tues of their sovereign, at a time when both 
were unquestionable. You have degraded 
the royal dignity into a base, dishonorable 
competition with Mr. Wilkes, nor had you 
abilities to carry even this last contemptible 
triumph over a private man, without the 
grossest violation of the fundamental laws 
of the constitution and rights of the people. 
But these are rights, my Lord, which you 
can no more annihilate than you can the 
soil to which they are annexed. The ques- 
tion no longer turns upon points of national 
honor and security abroad, or on the de- 
grees of expedience and propriety of meas- 
ures at home. It was not inconsistent that 
you should abandon the cause of liberty in 
another country, which you had persecuted 
in your own; and in the common arts of 
domestic corruption, we miss no part of Sir 
Robert Walpole's system except his abili- 
ties. In this humble imitative line you 
might long have proceeded, safe and con- 
temptible. You might, probably, never have 
risen to the dignity of being hated, and even 
have been despised with moderation. But 
it seems you meant to be distinguished, and, 
to a mind like yours, there was no other 
road to fame but by the destruction of a 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



273 



noble fabric, which you thought had been too 
long the admiration of mankind. The use 
you have "made of the military force intro- 
duced an alarming change in the mode of 
executing the laws. The arbitrary appoint- 
ment of Mr. Luttrell invades the founda- 
tion of the laws themselves, as it manifestly 
transfers the right of legislation from those 
whom the people have chosen to those whom 
they have rejected. With a succession of 
such appointments we may soon see a House 
of Commons collected, in the choice of which 
the other towns and counties of England 
will have as little share as the devoted 
county of Middlesex. 

An Address to the King^ 

'^JUNIUS" 

December 19, 1769. 
When the complaints of a brave and 
powerful peojDle are observed to increase 
in proportion to the wrongs they have suf- 
fered ; when, instead of sinking into submis- 
sion, they are roused to resistance, the time 
will soon arrive at which every inferior con- 
sideration must yield to the security of the 
sovereign, and to the general safety of the 
state. There is a moment of difficulty and 
danger at which flattery and falsehood can 
no longer deceive, and simplicity itself can 
no longer be misled. Let us suppose it ar- 
rived. Let us suppose a gracious, well-inten- 
tioned prince, made sensible at last of the 
great duty he owes to his people, and of 
his own disgraceful situation — that he looks 
round him for assistance, and asks for no 
advice but how to gratify the wishes and se- 
cure the happiness of his subjects. In these 
circumstances, it may be matter of curious 
speculation to consider if an honest man 
were permitted to approach a king, in what 
terms he would address himself to his sov- 
ereign. Let it be imagined, no matter how 
improbable, that the first prejudice against 
his character is removed, that the ceremoni- 
ous difficulties of an audience are sur- 
mounted, that he feels himself animated by 
the purest and most honorable affections to 
his king and country, and that the great 
person whom he addresses has spirit enough 
to bid him speak freely, and understanding 
enough to listen to him with attention. Un- 
acquainted with the vain impertinence of 

1 The most daring and sensational of the public 
utterances of the mysterious "Junius," rivalling 
in boldness the inflammatory speeches of men like 
Patrick Henry in America. 



forms, he would deliver his sentiments with 
dignity and firmness, but not without re- 
spect. 

Sir, — It is the misfortune of your life, 
and originally the cause of every reproach 
and distress which has attended your gov- 
ernment, that you should never have been 
acquainted with the language of truth un- 
til you heard it in the complaints of your 
people. It is not, however, too late to cor- 
rect the error of your education. We are 
still inclined to make an indulgent allow- 
ance for the pernicious lessons you received 
in your youth, and to form the most san- 
guine hopes from the natural benevolence 
of your disposition. We are far from think- 
ing you capable of a direct, deliberate pur- 
pose to invade those original rights of your 
subjects on which all their civil and political 
liberties depend. Had it been possible for 
us to entertain a suspicion so dishonorable 
to your character, we should long since 
have adopted a style of remonstrance very 
distant from the humility of complaint. The 
doctrine inculcated by our laws. That the 
king can do no wrong, is admitted without 
reluctance. We separate the amiable, good-., 
natured prince from the folly and treachery 
of his servants, and the private virtues of 
the man from the vices of his government. , 
Were it not for this just distinction, I know;- 
not whether your Majesty's condition or that, 
of the English nation would deserve most to£ 
be lamented. I would prepare your mindrf 
for a favorable reception of truth by re- i 
moving every painful, offensive idea of per- 
sonal reproach. Your subjects, Sir, wish 
for nothing but that, as they are reasonable 
and affectionate enough to separate your 
person from your government, so you, in 
your turn, should distinguish between the 
conduct which becomes the permanent dig- 
nity of a king and that which serves only 
to iDromote the temporary interest and mis- 
erable ambition of a minister. 

Taking it for granted, as I do very sin- 
cerely, that you have personally no design 
against the constitution, nor any views in- 
consistent with the good of your subjects, I 
think you cannot hesitate long upon the 
choice, which it equally concerns your in- 
terest and your honor to adopt. On one 
side you hazard the affections of all your 
English subjects — you relinquish every hope 
of repose to yourself, and you endanger the 
establishment of your family forever. All 
this you venture for no object whatsoever, 



274 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



or for such an object as it would be an af- 
front to you to name. Men of sense will 
examine your conduct with suspicion, while 
those who are incapable of comprehending 
to what degree they are injured, afflict you 
with clamors equally insolent and unmean- 
ing. Supioosing it possible that no fatal 
struggle should ensue, you determine at 
once to be unhappy, without the hope of a 
compensation either from interest or am- 
bition. If an English king be hated or de- 
spised, he must be unhappy; and this, per- 
haps, is the only political truth which he 
ought to be convinced of without experi- 
ment. But if the English people should no 
longer confine their resentment to a submis- 
sive representation of their wrongs — if, fol- 
lowing the glorious example of their an- 
cestors, they should no longer appeal to the 
creature of the constitution, but to that high 
Being who gave them the rights of human- 
ity, whose gifts it were sacrilege to surren- 
der — let me ask you, Sir, upon what part 
of your subjects would you rely for as- 
sistance ? 

The people of Ireland have been uni- 
formly plundered and oppressed. In return 
they give you every day fresh marks of their 
resentment. They despise the miserable gov- 
ernor you have sent them, because he is the 
creature of Lord Bute; nor is it from any 
natural confusion in their ideas that they 
are so ready to confound the original of a 
king with the disgraceful representation of 
him. 

The distance of the colonies would make 
it impossible for them to take an active con- 
cern in your affairs if they were as well af- 
fected to your government as they once 
pretended to be to your person. They were 
ready enough to distinguish between you 
and your ministers. They complained of an 
act of the legislature, but traced the origin 
of it no higher than the servants of the 
crown; they pleased themselves with the 
hope that their sovereign, if not favorable 
to their cause, at least was impartial. The 
decisive, personal part you took against 
them has effectually banished that first dis- 
tinction from their minds. They consider 
you as united with your servants against 
America, and know how to distinguish the 
sovereign and a venal parliament on one 
side from the real sentiments of the English 
people on the other. Looking forward to 
independence, they might possibly receive 
you for their king; but, if you retire to 



America, be assured they will give you such 
a covenant to digest as the presbytery of 
Scotland would have been ashamed to offer 
to Charles the Second. They left their na- 
tive land in search of freedom, and found 
it in a desert. Divided as they are into a 
thousand forms of policy and religion, there 
is one point in which they all agree — they 
equally detest the pageantry of a king and 
the supercilious hypocrisy of a bishop. 

These sentiments. Sir, and the style they 
are conveyed in, may be offensive, perhaps, 
because they are new to you. Accustomed 
to the language of courtiers, you measure 
their affections by the vehemence of their 
expressions ; and, when they only praise you 
indirectly, you admire their sincerity. But 
this is not a time to trifle with your fortune. 
They deceive you. Sir, who tell you that you 
have many friends whose affections are 
founded upon a principle of personal at- 
tachment. The first foundation of friend- 
ship is not the power of conferring bene- 
fits, but the equality with which they are 
received and may be returned. The fortune 
which made you a king forbade you to have 
a friend. It is a law of nature which can- 
not be violated with impunity. The mis- 
taken prince who looks for friendship will 
find a favorite, and in that favorite the ruin 
of his affairs. 

The people of England are loyal to the 
house of Hanover, not from a vain prefer- 
ence of one family to another, but from a 
conviction that the establishment of that 
family was necessary to the support of their 
civil and religious liberties. This, Sir, is a 
principle of allegiance equally solid and ra- 
tional; fit for Englishmen to adopt, and well 
worthy of your majesty's encouragement. 
We cannot long be deluded by nominal 
distinctions. The name of Stuart, of itself, 
is only contemptible; armed with the sov- 
ereign authority, their principles are for- 
midable. The prince who imitates their 
conduct should be warned by example ; and, 
while he plumes himself upon the security 
of his title to the crown, should remember 
that, as it was acquired by one revolution, 
it may be lost by another. 

An Imperial Britain 

edmund burke 

[From American Taxation^ 1774] 

Let us. Sir, embrace some system or other 
before we end this session. Do you mean 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



275 



to tax America and to draw a productive 
revenue from thence? If you do, speak out; 
name, fix, ascertain this revenue; settle its 
quantity; define its objects; provide for its 
collection; and then fight when you have 
something to fight for. If you murder, rob ; 
if you kill, take possession: and do not 
appear in the character of madmen as well 
as assassins, violent, vindictive, bloody, and 
tyrannical, without an object. But may bet- 
ter counsels guide you! 

Again and again revert to your own prin- 
ciples — seek peace and ensue it — leave 
America, if she has taxable matter in her, 
to tax herself. I am not here going into 
the distinctions of rights, not attempting to 
mark their boundaries. I do not enter into 
these metaphysical distinctions; I hate the 
very sound of them. Leave the Americans 
as they anciently stood, and these distinc- 
tions, born of our unhappy content, will die 
along with it. They and we, and their and 
our ancestors, have been happy under that 
system. Let the memory of all actions in 
contradiction to that good old mode, on 
both sides, be extinguished for ever. Be 
content to bind America by laws of trade; 
You have always done it. Let this be your 
reason for binding their trade. Do not 
burden them by taxes; you were not used 
to do so from the beginning. Let this be 
your reason for not taxing. These are the 
arguments of states and kingdoms. Leave 
the rest to the schools, for there only they 
may be discussed with safety. But if, in- 
temperately, unwisely, fatally, you sophisti- 
cate and poison the very source of govern- 
ment, by urging subtle deductions and con- 
sequences odious to those you govern, from 
the unlimited and illimitable nature of su- 
preme sovereignty, you will teach them by 
these means to call that sovereignty itself 
in question. When you drive him hard, the 
boar will surely turn upon the hunters. If 
that sovereignty and their freedom cannot 
be reconciled, which will they take? They 
will cast your sovereignty in your face. No- 
body will be argued into slavery. Sir, let 
the gentlemen on the other side call forth 
all their ability, let the best of them get up 
and tell me, what one character of liberty 
the Americans have, and what one brand of 
slavery they are free from, if they are 
bound in their property and industry by 
all the restraints you can imagine on com- 
merce, and at the same time are made pack- 
horses of every tax you choose to impose, 



without the least share in granting them. 
When they bear the burdens of unlimited 
monopoly, will you bring them to bear the 
burdens of unlimited revenue too? The 
Englishman in America will feel that this is 
slavery — ^that it is legal slavery will be no 
compensation either to his feelings or his 
understanding. 

A noble lord, who spoke some time ago, 
is full of the fire of ingenuous youth; and 
when he has modelled the ideas of a lively 
imagination by further experience he will 
be an ornament to his country in either 
House. He has said that the Americans 
are our children, and how can they revolt 
against their parent ? He says that if they 
are not free in their present state, England 
is not free, because Manchester and other 
considerable places are not represented. So 
then, because some towns in England are 
not represented, America is to have no rep- 
resentative at all. They are "our chil- 
dren"; but when children ask for bread we 
are not to give a stone. Is it because the 
natural resistance of things and the vari- 
ous mutations of time hinder our Govern- 
ment, or any scheme of government, from 
being any more than a sort of approxima- 
tion to the right, is it therefore that the 
colonies are to recede from it infinitely? 
When this child of ours wishes to assimilate 
to its parent and to reflect with a true filial 
resemblance the beauteous countenance of 
British liberty, are we to turn to them the 
shameful parts of our constitution? are we 
to give them our weakness for their 
strength? our opprobrium for their glory ? 
and the slough of slavei'y, which we are not 
able to work off, to serve them for their 
freedom ? 

If this be the case, ask yourselves this 
question. Will they be content in such a 
state of slavery? If not, look to the conse- 
quences. Reflect how you are to govern 
a people who think they ought to 
be free and think they are not. Your 
scheme yields no revenue, it yields noth- 
ing but discontent, disorder, disobedience; 
and such is the state of America, that 
after wading up to your eyes in blood, 
you could only end just where you be- 
gun ; that is, to tax where no revenue is to 
be found, to — ;my voice fails me; my in- 
clination indeed carries me no further — all 
is confusion beyond it. 

Well, Sir, I have recovered a little, and 
before I sit down I must say something to 



276 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



another point with which gentlemen urge 
us. What is to become of the Declaratory 
Act asserting the entireness of British legis- 
lative authority if we abandon the practice 
of taxation? 

For my part I look upon the rights stated 
in that Act exactly in the manner in which 
I viewed them on its very first proposition, 
and which I have often taken the liberty, 
with great humility, to lay before you. I 
look, I say, on the imperial rights of Great 
Britain and the privileges which the colon- 
ists ought to enjoy under these rights to be 
just the most reconcilable things in the 
world. The Parliament of Great Britain 
sits at the head of her extensive empire in 
two capacities: one as the local legislature 
of this island, providing for all things at 
home, immediately, and by no other instru- 
ment than the executive power; the other 
and I think her nobler capacity, is what I 
call her imperial character, in which, as from 
the throne of heaven, she superintends all 
the several inferior legislatures, and guides 
and controls them all, without annihilating 
any. As all these provincial legislatures are 
only co-ordinate to each other, they ought 
all to be subordinate to her; else they can 
neither preserve mutual peace, nor hope for 
mutual justice, nor effectually afford mutual 
assistance. It is necessary to coerce the 
negligent, to restrain the violent, and to 
aid the weak and deficient by the overruling 
plentitude of her power. She is never to 
intrude into the place of the others, whilst 
they are equal to the common ends of their 
institution. But in order to enable Parlia- 
ment to answer all. these ends of provident 
and beneficent superintendence, her powers 
must be boundless. The gentlemen who 
think the powers of Parliament limited, may 
please themselves to talk of requisitions. 
But suppose the requisitions are not obeyed? 
What! Shall there be no reserved power 
in the empire, to supply a deficiency which 
may weaken, divide, and dissipate the whole ? 
We are engaged in war — the Secretary of 
State calls upon the colonies to contribute 
— some would do it, I think most would 
cheerfully furnish whatever is demanded — 
one or two, suppose, hang back, and, easing 
themselves, let the stress of the draft lie on 
the others — surely it is proper, that some 
authority might legally say — "Tax your- 
selves for the common supply, or Parlia- 
ment will do it for you." This backward- 
ness was, as I am told, actually the case of 



Pennsylvania for some short time towards 
the beginning of the last war, owing to 
some internal dissensions in the colony. But 
whether the fact were so, or otherwise, the 
case is equally to be provided for by a com- 
petent sovereign power. But then this ought 
to be no ordinary power, nor ever used in 
the first instance. This is what I meant, 
when I have said at various times that I 
consider the power of taxing in Parliament 
as an instrument of empire and not as a 
means of supply. 

Such, Sir, is my idea of the constitution 
of the British empire, as distinguished from 
the constitution of Britain; and on these 
grounds I think subordination and liberty 
may be sufficiently reconciled through the 
whole, whether to serve a refining speculatist 
or a factious demagogue, I know not, but 
enough surely for the ease and happiness of 
man. 

Sir, whilst we held this happy course, we 
drew more from the colonies than all the im- 
portant violence of despotism ever could 
extort from them. We did this abundantly 
in the last war. It has never been once 
denied — and what reason have we to imagine 
that the colonies would not have jiroceeded 
in supplying government as liberally, if 
you had not stepped in and hindered them 
from contributing, by interrupting the chan- 
nel in which their liberality flowed with so 
strong a course, by attempting to take, in- 
stead of being satisfied to receive? Sir 
William Temple says that Holland has 
loaded itself with ten times the impositions 
which it revolted from Spain rather than 
submit to. He says true. Tyranny is a 
poor provider. It knows neither how to 
accumulate nor how to extract. 

I charge therefore to this new and unfor- 
tunate system the loss not only of peace, 
of union, and of commerce, but even of 
revenue, which its friends are contending 
for. It is morally certain that we have lost 
at least a million of free grants since the 
peace. I think we have lost a great deal 
more, and that those who look for a revenue 
from the provinces never could have pur- 
sued, even in that light, a course more di- 
rectly repugnant to their purposes. 

Now, Sir, I trust I have shown, first on 
that narrow ground which the honorable 
gentleman measured, that you are likely to 
lose nothing by complying with the mo- 
tion, except what you have lost already. I 
have shown afterwards, that in time of 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



277 



peace you flourished in commerce, and, when 
war required it, had sufficient aid from the 
colonies while you pursued your ancient 
policy ; that you threw everything into con- 
fusion when you made the Stamp Act ; and 
that you restored everything to peace and 
order when you repealed it. I have shown 
that the revival of the system of taxation 
has produced the very worst effects, and that 
the partial repeal has produced, not partial 
good, but universal evil. Let these consid- 
erations, founded on facts not one of which 
can be denied, bring us back to our reason 
by the road of our experience. 

I cannot, as I have said, answer for mixed 
measures; but surely this mixture of lenity 
would give the whole a better chance of 
success. When you once regain confidence, 
the way will be clear before you. Then you 
inay enforce the Act of Navigation when 
it ought to be enforced. You will your- 
selves open it where it ought still further 
to be opened. Proceed in what you do, 
whatever you do, from policy and not from 
rancour. Let us act like men, let us act 
like statesmen. Let us hold some sort of 
consistent conduct — it is agreed that a 
revenue is not to be had in America. If 
we lose the profit, let us get rid of the 
odium. 

On this business of America I confess I 
am serious even to sadness. I have had but 
one opinion concerning it since I sat, and 
before I sat, in Parliament. The noble 
lord ^ will, as usual, probably attribute the 
part taken by me and my friends in this 
business to a desire of getting his places. 
Let him enjoy this happy and original idea. 
. If I deprived him of it, I should take away 
most of his wit and all .his argument. But 
I had rather bear the brunt of all his wit, 
and indeed blows much heavier, than stand 
answerable to God for embracing a system 
that tends to the destruction of some of the 
very best and fairest of his works. But I 
know the map of England as well as the 
noble lord,^ or as any other person, and I 
know that the way I take is not the road 
to preferment. My excellent and honor- 
able friend under me on the floor ^ has trod 
that road with great toil for upwards of 
tAventy years together. He is not yet ar- 
rived at the noble lord's destination. How- 
ever, the tracks of my worthy friend are 
those I have ever wished to follow, be- 

1 Lord North. 
*Mr. Dowdeswell. 



cause I know they will lead to honor. Long 
may we tread the same road together, 
whoever may accompany us, or who- 
ever may laugh at us on our journey! 
I honestly and solemnly declare, I have in 
all seasons adhered to the systems of 1766, 
for no other reason than that I think it laid 
deep in your truest interest — and that, by 
limiting the exercise, it fixes on the firmest 
foundations a real, consistent, well-grounded 
authority in Parliament. Until you come 
back to that system there will be no peace 
for England. 

On Conciliating the Colonies 

edmund burke 

[From a Speech Delivered March 22, 1775] 

The proposition is peace. Not peace 
through the medium of war ; not peace to be 
hunted through the labyrinth of intricate 
and endless negotiations ; not peace to arise 
out of universal discord fomented, from 
principle, in all parts of the Empire; not 
peace to depend on the juridical determina- 
tion of perplexing questions, or the precise 
marking the shadowy boundaries of a com- 
plex government. It is simple peace ; sought 
in its natural course, and in its ordinary 
haunts. It is peace sought in the spirit of 
peace, and laid in principles purely pacific. 
I propose, by removing the ground of the 
difference, and by restoring the former un- 
suspecting confidence of the Colonies in ihe 
Mother Countiy, to give permanent satis- 
faction to your people; and (far from a 
scheme of ruling by discord) to reconcile 
them to each other in the same act and by 
the bond of the very same interest which 
reconciles them to British government. 

My idea is nothing more. Refined policy 
ever has been the parent of confusion ; and 
ever will be so, as long as the woi-ld endures. 
Plain good intention, which is as easily dis- 
covered at the first view as fraud is surely 
detected at last, is, let me say, of no mean 
force in the government of mankind. Gen- 
uine simplicity of heart is an healing and 
cementing principle. My plan, therefore, 
being formed ujDon the most simple grounds 
imaginable, may disappoint some people 
when they hear it. It has nothing to rec- 
ommend it to the pruriency of curious ears. 
There is nothing at all new and captivating 
in it. It has nothing of the splendor of the 
project which has been lately laid upon your 
table by the noble lord in the blue ribbon. 



278 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



It does not propose to fill your lobby with 
squabbling Colony agents, who will require 
the interposition of your maee, at every in- 
stant, to keep the peace amongst them. It 
does not institute a magnificent auction of 
finance, where captivated provinces come to 
general ransom by bidding against each 
other, until you knock down the hammer, 
and determine a proportion of payments 
beyond all the powers of algebra to equalize 
ai>d settle. 

The House has gone farther; it has de- 
clared conciliation admissible, previous to 
any submission on the part of America. It 
has even shot a good deal beyond that mark, 
and has admitted that the complaints of our 
former mode of exerting the right of taxa- 
tion were not wholly unfounded. That right 
thus exerted is allowed to have something 
reprehensible in it, something unwise, or 
something grievous; since, in the midst of 
our heat and resentment, we, of ourselves, 
have proposed a capital alteration ; and in 
order to get rid of what seemed so very 
exceptionable, have instituted a mode that 
is altogether new ; one that is, indeed, wholly 
alien from all the ancient methods and 
forms of Parliament. 

The iDrinciple of this proceeding is large 
enough for my purpose. The means pro- 
posed by the noble lord for carrying his 
ideas into execution, I think, indeed, are 
very indifferently suited to the end; and 
this I shall endeavor to show you before 
I sit down. But, for the present, I take 
my gi'ound on the admitted principle. I 
mean to give peace. Peace implies recon- 
ciliation; and where there has been a mate- 
rial dispute, reconciliation does in a man- 
ner always imply concession on the one part 
or on the other. In this state of things, I 
make no difficulty in affirming that the 
proposal ought to originate from us. Great 
and acknowledged force is not impaired, 
either in effect or in opinion, by an im- 
willingness to exert itself. The superior 
power may offer peace with honor and with 
safety. Such an offer from such a power 
will be attributed to magnanimity. But 
the concessions of the weak are the eon- 
cessions of fear. When such a one is dis- 
armed, he is wholly at the mercy of his 
superior; and he loses forever that time 
and those chances, which, as they hajapen to 
all men, are the strength and resources of 
all inferior poAver. 

The capital leading questions on which 
you must this day decide are these two : 



First, whether you ought to concede; and 
secondly, what your concession ought to be. 
On the first of these questions we have 
gained, as I have just taken the liberty of 
observing to you, some gTound. But I am 
sensible that a good deal inore is still to be 
done. Indeed, Sir, to enable us to deter- 
mine both on the one and the other of these 
great questions with a firm and precise 
judgTiient, I think it may be necessary to 
consider distinctly the true nature and the 
peculiar circumstances of the object which 
we have before us ; because after all our 
struggle, whether we will or not, we must 
govern America according to that nature 
and to those circumstances, and not accord- 
ing to our own imaginations, nor according 
to abstract ideas of right — -by no means 
according to mere general theories of gov- 
ernment, the resort to which appears to me, 
in our present situation, no better than ar- 
rant trifling. I shall therefore endeavor, 
with your leave, to lay before you some 
of the most material of these circumstances 
in as full and as clear a manner as I am 
able to state them. . . . 

In this character of the Americans, a love 
of freedom is the predominating feature 
which marks and distinguishes the whole; 
and as an ardent is always a jealous affec- 
tion, your Colonies become suspicious, rest- 
ive, and untractable whenever they see the 
least attempt to wrest from them by force, 
or shuffle from them by chicane, what they 
think the only advantage worth living for. 
This fierce spirit of liberty is stronger in 
the English Colonies probably than in any 
other people of the earth, and this from a 
great variety of powerful causes; which, to 
understand the true temper of their minds 
and the direction which this spirit takes, it 
will not be amiss to lay open somewhat 
more largely. 

First, the people of the Colonies are de- 
scendants of Englishmen, England, Sir, is 
a nation which still, I hope, respects, and 
formerly adored, her freedom. The Colo- 
nists emigrated from you when this part of 
your character was most predominant; and 
they took this bias and direction the moment 
they parted from your hands. They are 
therefore not only devoted to liberty, but to 
liberty according to English ideas, and on 
English principles. Abstract liberty, like 
other mere abstractions, is not to be found. 
Liberty inheres in some sensible object ; and 
eveiy nation has formed to itself some fa- 
vorite point, which by way of eminence be- 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCRACY 



279 



comes the criterion of their happiness. It 
happened, you know, Sir, that the great 
contests for freedom in this country were 
from the earliest times chiefly upon the 
question of taxing. Most of the contests 
in the ancient commonwealths turned pri- 
marily on the right of election of magis- 
trates; or on the balance among the several 
orders of the state. The question of money 
was not with them so immediate. But in 
England it was otherwise. On this point of 
taxes the ablest pens, and most eloquent 
tongues, have been exercised; the greatest 
spirits have acted and suffered. In order 
to give the fullest satisfaction concerning 
the importance of this point, it was not only 
necessary for those who in argument de- 
fended the excellence of the English Con- 
stitution to insist on this privilege of grant- 
ing money as a dry point of fact, and to 
prove that the right had been acknowledged 
in 'ancient parchments and blind usages to 
reside in a certain body called a House of 
Commons. They went much farther; they 
attempted to prove, and they succeeded, 
that in theory it ought to be so, from the 
particular nature of a House of Commons 
as an immediate representative of the peo- 
ple, whether the old records had delivered 
this oracle or not. They took infinite pains 
to inculcate, as a fundamental principle, 
that in all monarchies the people must in 
effect themselves, mediately or immediately, 
possess the power of granting their own 
money, or no shadow of liberty can subsist. 
The Colonies draw from you, as with their 
life-blood, these ideas and principles. Their 
love of liberty, as with you, fixed and at- 
tached on this specific point of taxing. Lib- 
erty might be safe, or might be endangered, 
in twenty other particulars, without their 
being much pleased or alarmed. Here they 
felt its pulse; and as they found that beat, 
they thought themselves sick or sound. I do 
not say whether they were right or wrong in 
applying your general arguments to their 
own case. It is not easy, indeed, to make a 
monopoly of theorems and corollaries. The 
fact is, that they did thus apply those gen- 
eral arguments; and your mode of govern- 
ing them, whether through lenity or indo- 
lence, through wisdom or mistake, confirmed 
them in the imagination that they, as well 
as you, had an interest in these common 
principles. 

They were further confirmed in this pleas- 
ing error by the form of their provincial 
legislative assemblies. Their governments 



are popular in an high degree; some are 
merely popular; in all, the popular repre- 
sentative is the most weighty ; and this share 
of the people in their ordinary government 
never fails to inspire them with lofty senti- 
ments, and with a strong aversion from 
whatever tends to deprive them of their 
chief importance. . . . 

Then, Sir, from these six capital sources 
— of descent, of form of government, of re- 
ligion in the Northern Provinces, of man- 
ners in the Southern, of education, of the 
remoteness of situation from the first mover 
of government — from all these causes a 
fierce spirit of liberty has grown up. It has 
grown with the growth of the people in 
your Colonies, and increased with the in- 
crease of their wealth; a spirit that un- 
happily meeting with an exercise of power 
in England which, however lawful, is not 
reconcilable to any ideas of liberty, much 
less with theirs, has kindled this flame that 
is ready to consume us, 

I do not mean to commend either the 
spirit in this excess, or the moral causes 
which produce it. Perhaps a more smooth 
and accommodating spirit of freedom in 
them would be more acceptable to us. Per- 
haps ideas of liberty might be desired more 
reconcilable with an arbitrary and boundless 
authority. Perhaps we might wish the Colo- 
nists to be persuaded that their liberty is 
more secure when held in trust for them by 
us, as their guardians during a perpetual 
minority, than with, any part of it in their 
own hands. The question is, not whether 
their spirit deserves praise or blame, but — 
what, in the name of God, shall we do with 
if? You have before you the object, such 
as it is, with all its glories, with all its im- 
perfections on its head. You see the mag- 
nitude, the importance, the temper, the 
habits, the disorders. By all these consid- 
erations we are strongly urged to determine 
something concerning it. We are called 
upon to fix some rule and line for our fu- 
ture conduct which may give a little stability* 
to our politics, and prevent the return of 
such unhappy deliberations as the present. 
Every such return will bring the matter 
before us in a still more untractable form. 
For, what astonishing and incredible things 
have we not seen already ! What monsters 
have not been generated from this unnatural 
contention ! Whilst every principle of au- 
thority and resistance has been pushed, upon 
both sides, as far as it would go, there is 
nothing so solid and certain, either in rea- 



280 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



soning or in practice, that has not been 
shaken. Until very lately all authority in 
America seemed to be nothing but an ema- 
nation from yours. Even the popular part 
of the Colony Constitution derived all its 
activity and its first vital movement from 
the pleasure of the Crown. We thought, 
Sir, that the utmost which the discontented 
Colonies could do was to disturb authority; 
we never dreamt they could of themselves 
supply it — knowing in general what an 
operose business it is to establish a govern- 
ment absolutely new. But having, for our 
purposes in this contention, resolved that 
none but an obedient Assembly should sit, 
the humors of the people there, finding all 
passage through the legal channel stopped, 
with great violence broke out another way. 
Some provinces have tried their experiment, 
as we have tried ours; and theirs has suc- 
ceeded. They have formed a government 
sufficient for its pux^^^oses, without the bustle 
of a revolution or the formality of an elec- 
tion. Evident necessity and tacit consent 
have done the business in an instant. So 
well they have done it, that Lord Dunmore 
— the account is among the fragments on 
your table — tells yoa that the new institu- 
tion is infinitely better obeyed than the an- 
cient government ever was in its most for- 
tunate periods. Obedience is what makes 
government, and not the names by which it 
is called ; not the name of Governor, as for- 
merly, or Committee, as at present. This 
new government has originated directly 
from the people, and was not transmitted 
through any of the ordinary artificial media 
of a positive constitution. It was not a 
manufacture ready formed, and transmitted 
to them in that condition from England. 
The evil arising from hence is this ; that the 
Colonists having once found the possibility 
of enjoying the advantages of order in the 
midst of a struggle for liberty, such strug- 
gles will not henceforward seem so terrible 
to the settled and sober part of mankind as 
they had appeared before the trial. . . . 

If then, Sir, it seems almost desperate to 
think of any alterative course for changing 
the moral causes, and not quite easy to re- 
move the natural, which produce prejudices 
irreconcilable to the late exercise of our au- 
thority — but that the spirit infallibly will 
continue, and, continuing, will produce such 
effects as now embarrass us — the second 
mode tinder consideration is to prosecute 
that spirit in its overt acts as crimmal. 

At this proposition I must pause a mo- 



ment. The thing seems a great deal too big 
for my ideas of jurisprudence. It should 
seem to my way of conceiving such matters 
that there is a very wide difference, in rea- 
son and policy, between the mode of pro- 
ceeding on the irregular conduct of scat- 
tered individuals, or even of bands of men 
who disturb order within the state, and the 
civil dissensions which may, from time to 
time, on great questions, agitate the several 
communities which compose a great empire. 
It looks to me to be narrow and pedantic to 
apply the ordinary ideas of criminal jus- 
tice to this great public contest. I do not 
know the method of drawing up an indict- 
ment against a whole people. I cannot in- 
sult and ridicule the feelings of millions of 
my fellow-creatures as Sir Edward Coke 
insulted one excellent individual (Sir Wal- 
ter Raleigh) at the bar. I hope I am not 
ripe to pass sentence on the gravest public 
bodies, intrusted with magistracies of great 
authority and dignity, and charged with the 
safety of their fellow-citizens, upon the very 
same title that I am. I really think that, 
for wise men, this is not judicious; . for 
sober men, not decent; for minds tinctured 
with humanity, not mild and merciful. 

Perhaps, Sir, I am mistaken in my idea 
of an empire, as distinguished from a single 
state or kingdom. But my idea of it is this ; 
that an empire is the aggregate of many 
states under one common head, whether this 
head be a monarch or a presiding republic. 
It does, in such constitutions, frequently 
happen — and nothing but the dismal, cold, 
dead uniformity of servitude can prevent 
its happening — that the subordinate parts 
have many local privileges and immunities. 
Between these privileges and the supreme 
common authority the line may be extremely 
nice. Of course disputes, often, too, very 
bitter disputes, and much ill blood, will arise. 
But though every privilege is an exemp- 
tion, in the case, from the ordinary exercise 
of the supreme authority, it is no denial of 
it. The claim of a privilege seems rather, 
ex vi termini, to imply a superior power; 
for to talk of the privileges of a state or of 
a person who has no superior is hardly any 
better than speaking nonsense. Now, in 
such unfortunate quarrels among the com- 
ponent parts of a great political union of 
communities, I can scarcely conceive any- 
thing more completely imprudent than for 
the head of the empire to insist that, if any 
privilege is pleaded against his will or his 
acts, his whole authority is denied ; instantly 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



281 



to proclaim rebellion, to -beat to arms, and 
to put the offending provinces under the 
ban. Will not this. Sir, very soon teach 
the provinces to make no distinctions on 
their part 1 Will it not teach them that the 
government, against which a claim of lib- 
erty is tantamount to high treason, is a gov- 
ernment to which submission is equivalent 
to slavery 1 It may not always be quite con- 
venient to impress dependent communities 
with such an idea. 

We are, indeed, in all disputes with the 
Colonies, by the necessity of things, the 
judge. It is true. Sir. But I confess that 
the character of judge in my own cause is a 
thing that frightens me. Instead of filling 
me with pride, I am exceedingly humbled 
by it. I cannot proceed with a stern, as- 
sured, judicial confidence, until I find my- 
self in something more like a judicial char- 
acter. I must have these hesitations as long 
as I am compelled to recollect that, in my 
little reading upon such contests as these, 
the sense of mankind has at least as often 
decided against the superior as the subordi- 
nate power. Sir, let me add, too, that the 
opinion of my having some abstract right 
in my favor would not put me much at my 
ease in passing sentence, unless I could be 
sure that there were no rights which, in their 
exercise under certain circumstances, were 
not the most odious of all wrongs and the 
most vexatious of all injustice. Sir, these 
considerations have great weight with me 
when I find things so circumstanced, that I 
see the same party at once a civil litigant 
against me in point of right and a culprit 
before me, while I sit as a criminal judge 
on acts of his whose moral quality is to be 
decided upon the merits of that very liti- 
gation. Men are every now and then put, 
by the complexity of human affairs, into 
strange situations; but justice is the same, 
let the judge be in what situation he will. 

There is. Sir, also a circumstance which 
convinces me that this mode of criminal 
proceeding is not, at least, in the present 
stage of our contest, altogether expedient; 
which is nothing less than the conduct of 
those very persons who have seemed to 
adopt that mode by lately declaring a re- 
bellion in Massachusetts Bay, as they had 
formerly addressed to have traitors brought 
hither, under an Act of Henry the Eighth, 
for trial. For though rebellion is declared, 
it is not proceeded against as such, nor have 
any steps been taken towards the apprehen- 
sion or conviction of any individual of- 



fender, either on our late or our former Ad- 
dress; but modes of public coercion have 
been adopted, and such as have much more 
resemblance to a sort of qualified hostility 
towards an independent power than the 
punishment of rebellious subjects. All this 
seems rather inconsistent ; but it shows how 
difficult it is to apply these juridical ideas 
to our present case. 

In this situation, let us seriously and 
coolly ponder. What is it we have got by 
all our menaces, which have been many and 
ferocious? What advantage have we de- 
rived from the penal laws we have passed, 
and which, for the time, have been severe 
and numerous? What advances have we 
made towards our object by the sending of 
a force which, by land and sea, is no con- 
temptible strength? Has the disorder 
abated? Nothing less. When I see things 
in this situation after such confident hopes, 
bold promises, and active exertions, I can- 
not, for my life, avoid a suspicion that the 
plan itself is not correctly right. 

If, then, the removal of the causes of this 
spirit of American liberty be for the greater 
part, or rather entirely, impracticable; if 
the ideas of criminal process be inapplicable 
— or, if applicable, are in the highest de- 
gree inexpedient; what way yet remains? 
No way is open but the third and last, — to 
comply with the American spirit as neces- 
sary ; or, if you please, to submit to it as a 
necessary evil. 

If we adopt this mode, — if we mean to 
conciliate and concede, — let us see of what 
nature the concession ought to be. To as- 
certain the nature of our concession, we 
must look at their complaint. The Colonies 
complain that they have not the character- 
istic mark and seal of British freedom. They 
complain that they are taxed in a Parlia- 
ment in which they are not represented. If 
you mean to satisfy them at all, you must 
satisfy them with regard to this complaint. 
If you mean to please any people you must 
give them the boon which they ask; not 
what you may think better for them, but 
of a kuid totally different. Such an act 
may be a wise regulation, but it is no con- 
cession; whereas our present theme is the 
mode of giving satisfaction. 

Sir, I think you must perceive that I am 
resolved this day to have nothing at all to 
do with the question of the right of taxa- 
tion. Some gentlemen start — but it is true ; 
I put it totally out of the question. It is 
less than nothing in my consideration. I do 



282 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



not indeed wonder, nor will you, Sir, that 
gentlemen of profound learning are fond of 
displaying it on this profound subject. But 
my consideration is narrow, confined, and 
wholly limited to the policy of the question. 
I do not examine whether the giving away a 
man's money be a power excepted and re- 
served out of the general trust of govern- 
ment, and how far all mankind, in all forms 
of polity, are entitled to an exercise of that 
right by the charter of nature; or whether, 
on the contrary, a right of taxation is nec- 
essarily involved in the general principle of 
legislation, and inseparable from the ordi- 
nary supreme power. These are deep ques- 
tions, where great names militate against 
each other, where reason is perplexed, and 
an appeal to authorities only thickens the 
confusion; for high and reverend authori- 
ties lift up their heads on both sides, and 
there is no sure footing in the middle. This 
point is the great 

"Serbonian bog. 
Betwixt Damiata and Mount Casius old, 
Where armies whole have sunk." 

I do not intend to be overwhelmed in that 
bog, though in such respectable company. 
The question with me is, not whether you 
have a right to render your people miser- 
able, but whether it is not your interest to 
make them happy. It is not what a lawyer 
tells me I m^ay do, but what humanity, rea- 
son, and justice tell me I ought to do. Is a 
politic act the worse for being a generous 
one ? Is no concession proper but that which 
is made from your want of right to keep 
what you grant ? Or does it lessen the grace 
or dignity of relaxing in the exercise of an 
odious claim because you have your evi- 
dence-room full of titles, and your maga- 
zines stuffed with arms to enforce them? 
What signify all those titles, and all those 
arms? Of what avail are they, when the 
reason of the thing tells me that the asser- 
tion of my title is the loss of my suit, and 
that I could do nothing but wound myself 
by the use of my own weapons'? 

Such is steadfastly my opinion of the ab- 
solute necessity of keeping up the concord 
of this Empire by an unity of spirit, though 
in a diversity of operations, that, if I were 
sure the Colonists had, at their leaving this 
country, sealed a regular compact of servi- 
tude; that they had solemnly abjured all 
the rights of citizens ; that they had made a 
vow to renounce all ideas of liberty for them 
and their posterity to all generations ; yet I 



should hold myself obliged to conform to 
the temper I found universally prevalent 
in my own day, and to govern two million 
of men, impatient of servitude, on the prin- 
ciples of freedom. I am not determining a 
point of law, I am restoring tranquillity; 
and the general character and situation of a 
people must determine what sort of govern- 
ment is fitted for them. That point nothing 
else can or ought to determine. 

My idea, therefore, without considering 
whether we yield as matter of right, or grant 
as matter of favor, is to admit the people of 
our Colonies into an interest in the Consti- 
tution ; and, by recording that admission in 
the journals of Parliament, to give them as 
strong an assurance as the nature of the 
thing will admit, that we mean forever to 
adhere to that solemn declaration of sys- 
tematic indulgence. . . . 

For that service — for all service, whether 
of revenue, trade, or empire — my trust is in 
her interest in the British Constitution. My 
hold of the Colonies is in the close affection 
which grows from common names, from 
kindred blood, from similar privileges, and 
equal protection. These are ties which, 
though light as air, are as strong as links 
of iron. Let the Colonists always keep the 
idea of their civil rights associated with your 
government,- — they will cling and grapple 
to you, and no force under heaven will be 
of power to tear them from their allegiance. 
But let it be once understood that your gov- 
ernment may be one thing, and their privi- 
leges another, that these two things may 
exist without any mutual relation, the ce- 
ment is gone — the cohesion is loosened — 
and everything hastens to decay and disso- 
lution. As long as you have the wisdom to 
keep the sovereign authority of this country 
as the sanctuary of liberty, the sacred tem- 
ple consecrated to our common faith, wher- 
ever the chosen race and sons of England 
worship freedom, they will turn their faces 
towards you. The more they multiply, the 
more friends you will have; the more ar- 
dently they love liberty, the more perfect 
will be their obedience. Slavery they can 
have anywhere — it is a weed that grows in 
every soil. They may have it from Spain ; 
they may have it from Prussia. But, until 
you become lost to all feeling of your true 
interest and your natural dignity, freedom 
they can have from none but you. This is 
the commodity of price of which you have 
the monopoly. This is the true Act of Navi- 
gation which binds to you the commerce of 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCRACY 



283 



the Colonies, and through them secures to 
you the wealth of the world. Deny them 
this participation of freedom, and you break 
that sole bond which originally made, and 
must still preserve, the unity of the Empire. 
Do not entertain so weak an imagination as 
that your registers and your bonds, your af- 
fidavits and your sufferances, your cockets 
and your clearances, are what form the great 
securities of your commerce. Do not dream 
that your letters of office, and your instruc- 
tions, and your suspending clauses, are the 
things that hold together the great contex- 
ture of the mysterious whole. These things 
do not make your government. Dead in- 
struments, passive tools as they are, it is the 
spirit of the English communion that gives 
all their life and efficacy to them. It is the 
spirit of the English Constitution which, in- 
fused through the mighty mass, pervades, 
feeds, unites, invigorates, vivifies every part 
of the Empire, even down to the minutest 
member. 

Is it not the same virtue which does every- 
thing for us here in England? Do you 
imagine, then, that it is the Land Tax Act 
which raises your revenue ? that it is the an- 
nual vote in the Committee of Supply which 
gives you your army? or that it is the Mu- 
tiny Bill which inspires it with braveiy and 
discipline ? No ! surely no ! It is the love 
of the people ; it is their attachment to their 
government, from the sense of the deep 
stake they have in such a glorious institu- 
tion, which gives you your army and your 
navy, and infuses into both that liberal obe- 
dience without which your army would be a 
base rabble, and your navy nothing but rot- 
ten timber. 

All this, I know well enough, will sound 
wild and chimerical to the profane herd of 
those vulgar and mechanical politicians who 
have no place among us; a sort of people 
who think that nothing exists but what is 
gross and material, and who, therefore, far 
from being qualified to be directors of the 
great movement of empire, are not fit to 
turn a wheel in the machine. But to men 
truly initiated and rightly taught, these rul- 
ing and master principles which, in the opin- 
ion of such men as I have mentioned, have 
no substantial existence, are in truth every- 
thing, and all in all. Magnanimity in poli- 
ties is not seldom the truest wisdom ; and a 
great empire and little minds go ill together. 
If we are conscious of our station, and glow 
with zeal to fill our places as becomes our 
situation and ourselves, we ought to auspi- 



cate all our public proceedings on America 
with the old warning of the church, Sursum 
cor da I We ought to elevate our minds to 
the greatness of that trust to which the 
order of providence has called us. By ad- 
verting to the dignity of this high calling 
our ancestors have turned a savage wilder- 
ness into a glorious empire, and have made 
the most extensive and the only honorable 
conquests — not by destroying, but by pro- 
moting the wealth, the number, the happi- 
ness, of the human race. Let us get an 
American revenue as we have got an Ameri- 
can empire. English privileges have made 
it all that it is ; English privileges alone will 
make it all it can be. 

In full confidence of this unalterable 
truth, I now, quod felix faustumque sit, lay 
the first stone of the TemjDle of Peace; and 
I move you — 

''That the Colonies and Plantations of 
Great Britain in North America, consisting 
of fourteen separate governments, and con- 
taming two millions and upwards of free 
inhabitants, have not had the liberty and 
privilege of electing and sending any 
Knights and Burgesses, or others, to repre- 
sent them in the High Court of Parliament," 

On the Affairs of America 
edmund burke 

[From a letter addressed to John Farr 
and John Harris, sheriffs of the City of 
Bristol, 1777] 

The Act! of which I speak is among the 
fruits of the American war; a war in my 
humble opinion productive of many mis- 
chiefs of a kind which distinguish it from 
all others. Not only our policy is deranged, 
and our empire distracted, but our laws and 
our legislative spirit api^ear to have been 
totally perverted by it. We have made war 
on our colonies, not by arms only, but by 
laws. As hostility and law are not very 
concordant ideas, every step we have taken 
in this business has been made by trampling 
on some maxim of justice, or some capital 
principle of wise government. What prece- 
dents were established, and what jDrinciples 
overturned (I will not say of English privi- 
lege, but of general justice), in the Boston 
Port, the Massachusetts Charter, the Mili- 
tary Bill, and all that long array of hostile 
Acts of Parliament by which the war with 

1 An act for the suspension 'of Haheas Corpus 
in the Colonies and on the high seas. 



284 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



America has been begun and supported! 
Had the principles of any of these Acts been 
first exerted on English ground they would 
probably have expired as soon as they 
touched it. But by being removed from our 
persons they have rooted in our laws, and 
the latest posterity will taste the fruits of 
them. 

Nor is it the worst effect of this unnatural 
contention, that our laws are corrupted. 
Whilst manners remain entire, they will cor- 
rect the vices of law, and soften it at length 
to their own temper. But we have to lament 
that in most of the late proceedings we see 
very few traces of that generosity, humanity, 
and dignity of mind which formerly charac- 
terized this nation. War suspends the rules 
of moral obligation, and what is long sus- 
pended is in danger of being totally abro- 
gated. Civil wars strike deepest of all into 
the manners of the people. They vitiate 
their polities, they corrupt their morals, 
they pervert even the natural taste and relish 
of equity and justice. By teaching us to 
consider our fellow-citizens in a hostile 
light, the whole body of our nation becomes 
gradually less dear to us. The very names 
of affection and kindred, which were the 
bond of charity whilst we agreed, become 
new incentives to hatred and rage, when the 
communion of our country is dissolved. We 
may flatter ourselves that we shall not fall 
into this misfortune. But we have no char- 
ter of exemption that I know of from the 
ordinary frailties of our nature. 

What but that blindness of heart which 
arises from the phrensy of civil contention 
could have made any jaersons conceive the 
present situation of the British affairs as an 
object of triumph to themselves, or of con- 
gratulation to their sovereign? Nothing 
surely could be more lamentable to those 
who remember the flourishing days of this 
kingdom than to see the insane joy of sev- 
eral unhappy people, amidst the sad spec- 
tacle which our affairs and conduct exhibit 
to the scorn of Europe. We behold (and it 
seems some peojDle rejoice in beholding) our 
native land, which used to sit the envied 
arbiter of all her neighbors, reduced to a 
servile dependence on their mercy, ac- 
quiescing in assurances of friendshijD which 
she does not trust, complaining of hostili- 
ties which she dares not resent, deficient to 
her allies, lofty to her subjects, and sub- 
missive to her enemies; whilst the liberal 
Government of this free nation is supported 



by the hireling sword of German boors and 
vassals; and three millions of the subjects of 
Great Britain are seeking for protection to 
English privileges in the arms of France? 

These circumstances apjDear to me more 
like shocking i3rodigies than natural changes 
in human affairs. Men of firmer minds may 
see them without staggering or astonish- 
ment. Some may think them matters of con- 
gratulation and complimentary addresses; 
but I trust your candor will be so indulgent 
to my weakness, as not to have the worse 
opinion of me for my declining to partici- 
pate in this joy, and my rejecting all share 
whatsoever in such a triumph. I am too old, 
too stiff in my inveterate partialities, to be 
ready at all the fashionable evolutions of 
opinion. I scarcely know hoAV to adapt my 
mind to the feelings with which the court 
gazettes mean to impress the people. It is 
not instantly that I can be brought to re- 
joice, when I hear of the slaughter and cap- 
tivity of long lists of those names which have 
been familiar to my ears from my infancy, 
and to rejoice that they have fallen under 
the sword of strangers, whose barbarous ap- 
pellations I scarcely know how to pro- 
nounce. The glory acquired at the White 
Plains by Colonel Kaille has no charms for 
me; and I fairly acknowledge that I have 
not yet learned to delight in finding Fort 
Kniphausen in the heart of the British 
dominions. 

It might be some consolation for the loss 
of our old regards if our reason weje en- 
lightened in proportion as our honest preju- 
dices are removed. Wanting feelings for 
the honor of our country, we might then in 
cold blood be brought to think a little of our 
interests as individual citizens, and our pri- 
vate conscience as moral agents. 

Indeed our affairs are in a bad condition. 
I do assure those gentlemen who have prayed 
for war, and have obtained the blessing they 
have sought, that they are at this instant in 
very great straits. The abused wealth of 
this country continues a little longer to feel 
its distemper. As yet they, and their Ger- 
man allies of twenty hireling states, have 
contended only with the unprepared strength 
of our own infant colonies. But America is 
not subdued. Not one unattached village 
which was originally adverse throughout that 
vast continent has yet submitted from love 
or terror. You have the ground you encamp 
on, and you have no more. The cantonments 
of your troops and your dominions are ex- 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



285 



aetly of the same extent. You spread de- 
vastation, but you do not enlarge the sphere 
of authority. 

The events of this war are of so much 
greater magnitude than those who either 
wished or feared it ever looked for, that this 
alone ought to fill every considerate mind 
with anxiety and diffidence. Wise men often 
tremble at the very things which fill the 
thoughtless with security. For many reasons 
I do not choose to expose to public view 
all the particulars of the state in which you 
stood with regard to foreign powers during 
the whole course of the last year. Whether 
you are yet wholly out of danger from them 
is more than 1 know or than your rulers can 
divine. But even if I were certain of my 
safety, I could not easily forgive those who 
had brought me into the most dreadful 
perils, because by accidents, unforeseen by 
them or me, I have escaped. 

Believe me, gentlemen, the way still before 
you is intricate, dark, and full of perplexed 
and treacherous mazes. Those who think 
they have the clue may lead us out of this 
labyrinth. We may trust them as amply as 
we think proper ; but as they have most cer- 
tainly a call for all the reason which their 
stock can furnish, why should we think it 
proper to disturb its operation by inflaming 
their passions? I may be unable to lend an 
helping hand to those who direct the state, 
but I should be ashamed to make myself one 
of a noisy multitude to halloo and hearten 
them into doubtful and dangerous courses. 
A conscientious man would be cautious how 
he dealt in blood. He would feel some ap- 
prehension at being called to a tremendous 
account for engaging in so deep a play with- 
out any sort of knowledge of the game. It 
is no excuse for presumptuous ignorance 
that it is directed by insolent passion. The 
poorest being that crawls on earth, contend- 
ing to save itself from injustice and oppres- 
sion, is an object respectable in the eyes of 
God and man. But I cannot conceive any 
existence under heaven (which, in the depths 
of its wisdom, tolerates all sorts of things), 
that is more truly odious and disgusting than 
an impotent, helpless creature, without civil 
wisdom or military skill, without a con- 
sciousness of any other qualification for 
power but his servility to it, bloated with 
pride and arrogance, calling for battles 
which he is not to fight, contending for a 
violent dominion which he can never ex- 
ercise, and satisfied to be himself mean and 



miserable in order to render others con- 
temptible and wretched. 

If you and I find our talents not of the 
great and ruling kind, our conduct, at least, 
is conformable to our faculties. No man's 
life pays the forfeit of our rashness. No 
desolate widow weeps tears of blood over our 
ignorance. Scrupulous and sober in our 
well-grounded distrust of ourselves, we 
would keep in the port of peace and se- 
curity ; and perhaps, in recommending to 
others something of the same diffidence, we 
should show ourselves more charitable in 
their welfare than injurious to their abili- 
ties. 

There are many circumstances in the zeal 
shown for civil war which seem to discover 
but little of real magnanimity. The address- 
ers offer their own persons, and they are 
satisfied with hiring Germans. They promise 
their private fortunes, and they mortgage 
their country. They have all the merit of 
volunteers, without risk of person or charge 
of contribution ; and when the unfeeling arm 
of a foreign soldiery pours out their kindred 
blood like water, they exult and triumph as 
if they themselves had performed some nota- 
ble exploit. I am really ashamed of the 
fashionable language which has been held 
for some time past, which, to say the best 
of it, is full of levity. You know that I 
allude to the general cry against the coward- 
ice of the Americans, as if we despised them 
for not making the king's soldiery purchase 
the advantage they have obtained at a dearer 
rate. It is not, gentlemen, it is not to re- 
spect the dispensations of Providence, nor 
to provide any decent retreat in the muta- 
bility of human affairs. It leaves no medium 
between insolent victory and infamous de- 
feat. It tends to alienate our minds farther 
and farther from our natural regards, and to 
make an eternal rent and schism in the 
British nation. Those who do not wish for 
such a separation would not dissolve that 
cement of reciprocal esteem and regard 
which can alone bind together the parts of 
this great fabric. It ought to be our wish, 
as it is our duty, not only to forbear this 
style of outrage ourselves, but to make 
every one as sensible as we can of the im- 
propriety and unworthiness of the tempers 
which give rise to it, and which designing 
men are laboring with such malignant in- 
dustry to diffuse amongst us. It is our 
business to counteract them if possible; if 
possible to awake our natural regards, and 



286 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



to revive the old partiality to the English 
name. Without something of this kind I do 
not see how it is ever practicable really to 
reconcile with those whose affection, after 
all, must be the surest hold of our govern- 
ment; and which is a thousand times more 
worth to us than the mercenary zeal of all 
the circles of Germany. 

I can well conceive a country completely 
overrun, and miserably wasted, without ap- 
proaching in the least to settlement. In my 
apprehension, as long as English govern- 
ment is attempted to be supported over 
Englishmen by the sword alone, things will 
thus continue. I anticipate in my mind the 
moment of the final triumph of foreign mili- 
tary force. When that hour arrives (for it 
may arrive), then it is that all this mass of 
weakness and violence will appear in its full 
lighto If we should be expelled from 
America, the delusion of the partisans of 
military government might still continue. 
They might still feed their imaginations with 
the possible good consequences which might 
have attended success. Nobody could prove 
the contrary by facts. But in case the sword 
should do all that the sword can do, the 
success of their arms and the defeat of their 
policy will be one and the same thing. You 
will never see any revenue from America. 
Some increase of the means of corruption, 
.without ease of the public burthens, is the 
very best that can happen. Is it for this 
that we are at war — and in such a war? 

As to the difficulties of laying once more 
the foundations of that government which, 
for the sake of conquering what was our 
own, has been voluntarily and wantonly 
pulled down by a court faction here, I 
tremble to look at them. Has any of these 
gentlemen, who are so eager to govern all 
mankind, showed himself possessed of the 
first qualification towards government, some 
knowledge of the object and of the diffi- 
culties which occur in the task they have 
undertaken ? 

I assure you that, on the most prosperous 
issue of your arms, you will not be where 
you stood, when you called in war to supply 
the defects of your political establishment. 
Nor would any disorder or disobedience to 
government which could arise from the most 
abject concession on our part ever equal 
those which will be felt after the most 
triumphant violence. You have got all the 
intermediate evils of war into the bargain. 

I think I know America. If I do not, my 



ignorance is incurable, for I have spared no 
pains to understand it; and I do most 
solemnly assure those of my constituents 
who put any sort of confidence in my in- 
dustry and integrity, that everything that 
has been done there has arisen from a total 
misconception of the object; that our means 
of originally holding America, that our 
means of reconciling with it after quarrel, 
of recovering it after separation, of keeping 
it after victory, did depend and must depend 
in their several stages and periods, upon a 
total renunciation of that unconditional sub- 
mission, which has taken such possession of 
the minds of violent men. The whole of 
those maxims upon which we have made 
and continued this war must be abandoned. 
Nothing indeed (for I would not deceive 
you) can place us in our former situation. 
That hope must be laid aside. But there is 
a difference between bad and the worst of 
all. Terms relative to the cause of the war 
ought to be offered by the authority of 
Parliament. An arrangement at home 
promising some security for them ought to 
be made. By doing this, without the least 
impairing of our strength, we add to the 
credit of our moderation, which in itself is 
always strength more or less. 

I know many have been taught to think 
that moderation in a ease like this is a sort 
of treason, and that all arguments for it are 
sufficiently answered by railing at rebels and 
rebellion and by charging all the present or 
future miseries which we may suffer on the 
resistance of our brethren. But I would wish 
them in this grave matter, and if peace is 
not wholly removed from their hearts, to 
consider seriously, first, that to criminate 
and recriminate never yet was the road to 
reconciliation in any difference amongst 
men. In the next place, it would be right to 
reflect that the American English (whom 
they may abuse if they think it honorable 
to revile the absent) can, as things now 
stand, neither be provoked at our railing 
nor bettered by our instruction. All com- 
munication is cut off between us, but this 
we know with certainty that, though we can- 
not reclaim them, we may reform ourselves. 
If measures of peace are necessary, they 
must begin somewhere, and a conciliatory 
temper must precede and prepare every plan 
of reconciliation. Nor do I conceive that we 
suffer anything by thus regulating our own 
minds. We are not disarmed by being dis- 
encumbered of our passions. Declaiming on 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



287 



rebellion never added a bayonet or a charge 
of powder to your military force, but I am 
afraid that it has been the means of taking 
up many muskets against you. 

This outrageous language, which has been 
encouraged and kept alive by every art, has 
already done incredible mischief. For a long 
time, even amidst the desolations of war and 
the insults of hostile laws daily accumulated 
on one another, the American leaders seem 
to have had the greatest dif&eulty in bringing 
up their people to a declaration of total in- 
dependence. But the court gazette ac- 
complished what the abettors of independ- 
ence had attempted in vain. When that dis- 
ingenuous compilation and strange medley 
of railing and flattery was adduced as a 
proof of the united sentiments of the people 
of Great Britain, there was a great change 
throughout all America. The tide of popu- 
lar affection, which had still set towards the 
parent country, began immediately to turn, 
and to flow with great rapidity in a contrary 
course. Far from concealing these wild 
declarations of enmity, the author of the 
celebrated pamphlet,^ which prepared the 
minds of the people for independence, in- 
sists largely on the multitude and the spirit 
of these addresses; and he draws an argu- 
ment from them which (if the fact was as he 
supposes) must be irresistible. For I never 
knew a writer on the theory of government 
so partial to authority as not to allow that 
the hostile mind of the rulers to their people 
did fully justify a change of government; 
nor can any reason whatever be given why 
one people should voluntarily yield any de- 
gree of pre-eminence to another but on a 
supposition of great affection and benevo- 
lence towards them. Unfortunately your 
rulers, trusting to other things, took no 
notice of this great principle of connection. 
From the beginning of this affair they have 
done all they could to alienate your minds 
from your own kindred; and if they could 
excite hatred enough in one of the parties 
towards the other, they seemed to be of 
opinion that they had gone half the way 
towards reconciling the quarrel. 

I know it is said that your kindness is 
only alienated on account of their resist- 
ance ; and therefore, if the colonies surrender 
at discretion, all sorts of regard and even 
much indulgence is meant towards them in 
future. But can those who are partisans 
for continuing a war to enforce such a sur- 
* Paine's Common Sense, 



render be responsible (after all that has 
passed) for such a future use of a power 
that is bound by no compacts and restrained 
by no terror? Will they tell us what they 
call indulgences ? Do they not at this instant 
call the present war and all its horrors a 
lenient and merciful proceeding? .... 

If I had not lived long enough to be little 
surprised at anything, I should have been in 
some degree astonished at the continued 
rage of several gentlemen who, not satisfied 
with carrying fire and sword into America, 
are animated nearly with the same fury 
against those neighbors of theirs whose only 
crime it is that they have charitably and 
humanely wished them to entertain more 
reasonable sentiments, and not always to 
sacrifice their interest to their passion. All 
this rage against unresisting dissent con- 
vinces me that at bottom they are far from 
satisfied they are in the right. For what is 
it they would have? A war? They cer- 
tainly have at this moment the blessing of 
something that is very like one, and if the 
war they enjoy at present be not sufficiently 
hot and extensive, they may shortly have 
it as warm and as spreading as their hearts 
can desire. Is it the force of the kingdom 
they call for? They have it already; and 
if they choose to fight their battles in their 
own person, nobody prevents their setting 
sail to America in the next transports. Do 
they think that the service is stinted for 
want of liberal supplies ? Indeed they com- 
plain without reason. The table of the 
House of Commons will glut them, let their 
appetite for expense be never so keen. And 
I assure them further that those who think 
with them in the House of Commons are full 
as easy in the control as they are liberal in 
the vote of these expenses. If this be not 
supply or confidence sufficient, let them open 
their own private purse-strings and give 
from what is left to them as largely and 
Avith as little care as they think proper. 

Tolerated in their passions, let them learn 
not to persecute the moderation of their fel- 
low-citizens. If all the world joined them 
in a full cry against rebellion, and were as 
hotly inflamed against the whole theory and 
enjoyment of freedom as those who are the 
most factious for servitude, it could not in 
my opinion answer any one end whatsoever 
in this contest. The leaders of this war 
could not hire (to gratify their friends) one 
German more than they do, or inspire him 
with less feeling for the persons or less 



288 



THE GBEAT TRADITION 



value for the privileges of their revolted 
brethren. If we all adopted their sentiments 
to a man, their allies, the savage Indians, 
could not be more ferocious than they are; 
they could not murder one more helpless 
woman or child, or with more exquisite re- 
finements of cruelty torment to death one 
more of their English flesh and blood than 
they do already. The public money is given 
to purchase this alliance — and they have 
their bargain. 

They are continually boasting of unanim- 
ity, or calling for it. But before this una- 
nimity can be matter either of wish or con- 
gratulation we ought to be pretty sure that 
we, are engaged in a rational pursuit. 
Phrensy does not become a slighter dis- 
temper on account of the number of those 
who may be infected with it. Delusion and 
weakness produce not one mischief the less 
because they are universal. I declare that 
I cannot discern the least advantage which 
could accrue to us if we were able to per- 
suade our colonies that they had not a single 
friend in Great Britain. On the contrary, 
if the affections and opinions of mankind be 
not exploded as principles of connection, I 
conceive it would be happy for us if they 
were taught to believe that there was even 
a formed American party in England to 
whom they could always" look for support! 
Happy would it be for us if, in all tempers, 
they might turn their eyes to the parent 
state, so that their very turbulence and sedi- 
tion should find vent in no other place than 
this. I believe there is not a man (except 
those who prefer the interest of some paltry 
faction to the very being of their country) 
who would not wish that the Americans 
should from time to time carry many points, 
and even some of them not quite reasonable, 
by the aid of any denomination of men here 
rather than they should be driven to seek 
for protection against the fury of foreign 
mercenaries and the waste of savages in the 
arms of France. 

When any community is subordinately 
connected with another, the great danger of 
the connection is the extreme pride and self- 
complacency of the superior, which in all 
matters of controversy will probably decide 
in its own favor. It is a powerful corrective 
to such a very rational cause of fear if the 
inferior body can be made to believe that 
the party inclination, or political views, of 
several in the principal state will induce 
them in some degree to counteract this blind 



and tyrannical partiality. There is no danger 
that any one acquiring consideration or 
power in the presiding state should carry 
this leaning to the inferior too far. The fault 
of human nature is not of that sort. Power, 
in whatever hands, is rarely guilty of too 
strict limitations on itself. But one great 
advantage to the support of authority at- 
tends such an amicable and protecting con- 
nection, that those who have conferred 
favors obtain influence, and from the fore- 
sight of future events can persuade men who 
have received obligations sometimes to re- 
turn them. Thus, by the mediation of those 
healing principles (call them good or evil), 
troublesome discussions are brought to some 
sort of adjustment, and every hot contro- 
versy is not a civil war. 

But if the colonies (to bring the general 
matter home to us) could see that, in Great 
Britain, the mass of the people are melted 
into its Government, and that every dispute 
with the Ministry must of necessity be always 
a quarrel with the nation, they can stand no 
longer in the equal and friendly relations of 
fellow-citizens to the subjects of this king- 
dom. Humble as this relation may appear 
to some, when it is once broken a strong tie 
is dissolved. Other sort of connections will 
be sought. For there are very few in the 
world who will not prefer a useful ally to an 
insolent master. 

Such discord has been the effect of the 
unanimity into which so many have of late 
been seduced or bullied, or into the appear- 
ance of which they have sunk through mere 
despair. They have been told that their dis- 
sent from violent measures is an encourage- 
ment to rebellion. Men of gi'eat presump- 
tion and little knowledge will hold a language 
which is contradicted by the whole course of 
history. General rebellions and revolts of a 
whole people never were encouraged, now or 
at any time. They are always provoked. 
But if this unheard-of doctrine of the en- 
couragement of rebellion were true, if it 
were true that an assurance of the friend- 
ship of numbers in this country towards the 
colonies could become an encouragement to 
them to break off all connection with it, what 
is the inference? Does anybody seriously 
maintain that, charged with my share of the 
public councils, I am obliged not to resist 
projects which I think mischievous lest men 
who suffer should be encouraged to resist? 
The very tendency of such projects to pro- 
duce rebellion is one of the chief reasons 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



289 



against them. Shall that reason not be 
given ? Is it then a rule that no man in this 
nation shall open his mouth in favor of the 
colonies, shall defend their rights, or com- 
plain of their sufferings'? Or, when war 
finally breaks out, no man shall express his 
desires of peace? Has this been the law of 
our 4)ast, or is it to be the terms of our 
future connection 1 Even looking no further 
than ourselves, can it be true loyalty to any 
government, or true patriotism toAvards any 
country, to degrade their solemn councils 
into servile drawing-rooms, to flatter their 
pride and passions, rather than to enlighten 
their reason, and to prevent them from being 
cautioned against violence lest others should 
be encouraged to resistance'? By such ac- 
quiescence great kings and mighty nations 
have been undone ; and if any are at this day 
in a perilous situation from resisting truth 
and listening to flattery, it would rather be- 
come them to reform the errors under which 
they suffer than to reproach those who fore- 
warned them of their danger. 

But the rebels looked for assistance from 
this counti'y. They did so in the beginning 
of this controversy most certainly ; and they 
sought it by earnest supplications to Gov- 
ernment, which dignity rejected, and by a 
suspension of commerce, which the wealth 
of this nation enabled you to desi^ise. When 
they found that neither prayers nor menaces 
had any sort of weight, but that a firm reso- 
lution was taken to reduce them to uncon- 
ditional obedience by a military force, they 
came to the last extremity. Despairing of 
us, they trusted in themselves. Not strong 
enough themselves, they sought succor in 
France. In proportion as all encouragement 
here lessened, their distance from this coun- 
try increased. The encouragement is over; 
the alienation is complete. . . . 

I have always wished that, as the dispute 
had its apparent origin from things done in 
Parliament, and as the Acts passed there 
had provoked the war, that the foundations 
of peace should be laid in Parliament also. 
I have been astonished to find that those 
whose zeal for the dignity of our body was 
so hot as to light up the flames of civil war 
should even publicly declare that these deli- 
cate points ought to be wholly left to the 
crown. Poorly as I may be thought affected 
to the authority of Parliament, I shall never 
admit that our constitutional rights can 
ever become a matter of ministerial nego- 
tiation. 



I am charged with being an American. 
If warm affection towards those over whom 
I claim any share of authority be a crime, I 
am guilty of this charge. But I do assure 
you (and they who know me publicly and 
privately will bear witness to me), that if 
ever one man lived more zealous than 
another for the supremacy of Parliament 
and the rights of this imperial crown, it was 
myself. Many others, indeed, might be more 
knowing in the .extent of the foundation of 
these rights. I do not pretend to be an 
antiquary, a lawyer, or qualified for the 
chair of professor in metaphysics. I never 
ventured to put your solid interests upon 
speculative grounds. My having constantly 
declined to do so has been attributed to my 
incapacity for such disquisitions; and I am 
inclined to believe it is partly the cause. 
I never shall be ashamed to confess that 
where I am ignorant I am diffident. I am 
indeed not very solicitous to clear myself of 
this imputed incapacity, because men, even 
less conversant than I am in this kind of 
subtleties, and placed in stations. to which 
I ought not to aspire, have, by the mere 
force of civil discretion, often conducted the 
affairs of great nations with distinguished 
felicity and glory. 

When I first came into a public trust, I 
found your Parliament in possession of an 
unlimited legislative power over the colonies. 
I could not open the statute book without 
seeing the actual exercise of it, more or less, 
in all cases whatsoever. This possession 
passed with me for a title. It does so in 
all human affairs. No man examines into 
the defects of his title to his paternal estate, 
or to his established Government. Indeed 
common sense taught me that a legislative 
authority, not actually limited by the express 
terms of its foundation, or by its own sub- 
sequent acts, cannot have its powers par- 
celed out by argumentative distinctions, so 
as to enable us to say that here they can, 
and there they cannot, bind. Nobody was so 
obliging as to produce to me any record of 
such distinctions, by compact or otherwise, 
either at the successive formation of the sev- 
eral colonies, or during the existence of any 
of them. If any gentlemen were able to 
see how one power could be given up (mere- 
ly on abstract reasoning) without giving up 
the rest, I can only say that they saw farther 
than I could ; nor did I ever presume to con- 
demn any one for being clear-sighted when I 
was blind. I praise the penetration and 



290 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



learning, and hope that their practice has 
been correspondent to their theory. 

I had indeed very earnest wishes to keep 
the whole body of this authority perfect and 
entire as I found it; and to keep it so, not 
for our advantage solely, but principally 
for the sake of those on whose account all 
just authority exists — I mean the people to 
be governed. For I thought I saw that 
many eases might well happen in which the 
exercise of every power comprehended in the 
broadest idea of legislature might become, 
in its time and circumstances, not a little 
expedient for the peace and union of the 
colonies amongst themselves, as well as for 
their perfect harmony with Great Britain. 
Thinking so (perhaps erroneously), but 
being honestly of that opinion, I was at 
the same time very sure that the authority, 
of which I was so jealous, could not under 
the actual circumstances of our plantations 
be at all preserved in any of its members 
but by the greatest reserve in its applica- 
tion, particularly in those delicate points 
in which the feelings of mankind are the 
most irritable. They who thought other- 
wise have found a few more difficulties in 
their work than, I hope, they were thorough- 
ly aware of when they undertook the pres-. 
ent business. I must beg leave to observe 
that it is not only the invidious branch of 
taxation that will be resisted, but that no 
other given part of legislative rights can 
be exercised without regard to the general 
opinion of those who are to be governed. 
That general opinion is the vehicle and organ 
of legislative omnipotence. Without this it 
may be a theory to entertain the mind, but 
it is nothing in the direction of affairs. The 
completeness of the legislative authority of 
Parliament over this kingdom is not ques- 
tioned ; and yet many things indubitably in- 
eluded in the abstract idea of that power, 
and which carry no absolute injustice in 
themselves, yet being contrary to the 
opinions and feelings of the people, can as 
little be exercised as if Parliament in that 
ease had been possessed of no right at all. 
I see no abstract reason which can be given 
why the same power which made and re- 
pealed the high commission court and the 
star-chamber might not revive them again; 
and these courts, warned by their former 
fate, might possibly exercise their powers 
with some degree of justice. But the mad- 
ness would be as unquestionable as the eom- 
petenpe of that Parliament which should 



attempt such things. If anything can be 
supposed out of the power of human legis- 
lature it is religion : I admit, however, that 
the established religion of this country has 
been three or four times altered by Act of 
Parliament, and therefore that a statute 
binds even in that case. But we may very 
safely affirm that, notwithstanding thi« ap- 
parent omnipotence, it would be now found 
as impossible for king and Parliament to 
alter the established religion of this country 
as it was to King James alone, when he 
attempted to make such an alteration with- 
out a Parliament. In effect, to follow, not 
to force, the public inclination, to give a 
direction, a form, a technical dress, and a 
specific sanction to the general sense of the 
community, is the true end of legislature. 

It is so with regard to the exercise of all 
the powers which our constitution knows in 
any of its parts, and indeed to the substan- 
tial existence of any of the parts themselves. 
The king's negative to bills is one of the 
most indisputed of the royal prerogatives, 
and it extends to all eases whatsoever. I 
am far from certain that if several laws 
which I know had fallen under the stroke of 
that scepter that the public would have had 
a very heavy loss. But it is not the pro- 
priety of the exercise which is in question. 
The exercise itself is wisely forborne. Its 
repose may be the preservation of its ex- 
istence, and its existence may be the means 
of saving the constitution itself, on an occa- 
sion worthy of bringing it forth. As the dis- 
putants, whose accurate and logical reason- 
ings have brought us into our present condi- 
tion, think it absurd that powers or members 
of any constitution should exist rarely or 
never to be exercised, I hope I shall be ex- 
cused in mentioning another instance that is 
material. We knoAV that the convocation of 
the clergy had formerly been called, and sat 
with nearly as much regularity to business 
as Parliament itself. It is now called for 
form only. It sits for the purpose of mak- 
ing some polite ecclesiastical compliments to 
the king, and, when that grace is said, retires 
and is heard of no more. It is, however, a 
part of the constitution, and may be called 
out into act and energy whenever there is 
occasion, and whenever those who conjure 
up that spirit will choose to abide the con- 
sequences. It is wise to permit its legal 
existence; it is much wiser to continue it a 
legal existence only. So truly has prudence 
(constituted as the god of this lower world) 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



291 



the entire dominion over every exercise of 
power committed into its hands; and yet I 
have lived to see prudence and conformity 
to circumstances wholly set at nought in our 
late controversies, and treated as if they 
were the most contemptible and irrational of 
all things. I have heard it a hundred times 
very gravely alleged that, in order to keep 
power in mind, it was necessary, by prefer- 
ence, to exert it in those very points in 
which it was most likely to be resisted and 
the least likely to be productive of any ad- 
vantage. 

These were the considerations, gentlemen, 
which led me early to think that, in the com- 
prehensive dominion which the Divine 
Providence had put into our hand^, instead 
of troubling our understandings with specu- 
lations concerning the unity of empire, and 
the identity or distinction of legislative 
powers, and inflaming our passions with the 
heat and pride of controversy, it was our 
duty, in all soberness, to conform our gov- 
ernment to the character and circumstances 
of the several people who composed this 
mighty and strangely diversified mass. I 
never was wild enough to conceive that one 
method would serve for the whole ; that the 
natives of Hindostan and those of Virginia 
could be ordered in the same manner, or that 
the Cutchery court and the grand jury of 
Salem could be regulated on a similar plan. 
I was persuaded that government was a 
practical thing, made for the happiness of 
mankind, and not to furnish out a spectacle 
of uniformity to gratify the schemes of 
visionary politicians. Our business was to 
rule, not to wrangle ; and it would have been 
a poor compensation that we had triumphed 
in a dispute, whilst we lost an empire. 

If there be one fact in the world perfectly 
clear it is this : ''That the disposition of the 
people of America is wholly averse to any 
other than a free government"; and this is 
indication enough to any honest statesman 
how he ought to adapt whatever power he 
finds in his hands to their ease. If any ask 
me what a free government is, I answer that, 
for any practical purpose, it is what the 
people think so; and that they, and not I, 
are the natural, lawful, and coinpetent 
judges of this matter. If they practically 
allow me a greater degree of authority over 
them than is consistent with any correct 
ideas of perfect freedom, I ought to thank 
them for so great a trust and not to en- 
deavor to prove from thence that they have 



reasoned amiss, and that, having gone so 
far, by analogy, they must hereafter have no 
enjoyment but by my pleasure. 

If we had seen this done by any others, 
we should have concluded them far gone in 
madness. It is melancholy as well as ridicu- 
lous to observe the kind of reasoning with 
which the public has been amused, in order 
to divert our minds from the common sense 
of our American policy. There are people 
who have S23lit and anatomized the doctrine 
of free government as if it were an abstract 
question concerning metaphysical liberty 
and necessity, and not a matter of moral 
prudence and natural feeling. They have 
disputed whether liberty be a positive or a 
negative idea; whether it does not consist 
in being governed by laws without consid- 
ering what are the laws or who are the 
makers; whether man has any rights by 
nature ; and whether all the property he en- 
joys be not the alms of his government, and 
his life itself their favor and indulgence. 
Others, corrupting religion as these have 
perverted philosophy, contend that Chris- 
tians are redeemed into captivity, and the 
blood of the Saviour of mankind has been 
shed to make them the slaves of a few proud 
and insolent sinners. These shocking ex- 
tremes provoking to extremes of another 
kind, speculations are let loose as destruc- 
tive to all authority as the former are to all 
freedom; and every government is called 
tyranny and usurpation which is not formed 
on their fancies. In this manner the stirrers- 
up of this contention, not satisfied with dis- 
tracting our dependencies and filling them 
with blood and slaughter, are corrupting our 
understandings; they are endeavoring to 
tear up, along with practical liberty, all the 
foundations of human society, all equity and 
justice, religion, and order. 

Civil freedom, gentlemen, is not, as many 
have endeavored to persuade you, a thing 
that lies hid in the depth of abstruse science. 
It is a blessing and a benefit, not an abstract 
speculation ; and all the just reasoning that 
can be upon it is of so coarse a texture as 
perfectly to suit the ordinary capacities of 
those who are to enjoy, and of those who are 
to defend it. Far from any resemblance 
to those propositions in geometry and meta- 
physics, which admit no medium, but must 
be true or false in all their latitude, social 
and civil freedom, like all other things in 
common life, are variously mixed and modi- 
fied, enjoyed in very different degrees, and 



292 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



shaped into an infinite diversity of forms, 
according to the temper and circumstances 
of every community. The extreme of liberty 
(which is its abstract perfection, but its real 
fault) obtains nowhere, nor ought to obtain 
anywhere. Because extremes, as we all know, 
in every point which relates either to our 
duties or satisfactions in life, are destructive 
both to virtue and enjoyment. Liberty too 
must be limited in order to be possessed. 
The degree of restraint it is impossible in 
any ease to settle precisely. But it ought to 
be the constant aim of every wise public 
council to find out, by cautious experiments 
and rational, cool endeavors, with how little, 
not how much, of this restraint the com- 
munity can subsist. For liberty is a good 
to be improved, and not an evil to be 
lessened. It is not only a private blessing of 
the first order, but the vital spring and en- 
ergy of the state itself, which has just so 
much life and vigor as there is liberty in it. 
But whether liberty be advantageous or not 
(for I know it is a fashion to decry the very 
principle) none will dispute that peace is 
a blessing ; and peace must in the course of 
human affairs be frequently bought by some 
indulgence and toleration at least to liberty. 
For as the Sabbath (though of Divine in- 
stitution) was made for man, not man for 
the Sabbath, government, which can claim 
no higher origin or authority, in its exercise 
at least, ought to conform to the exigencies 
of the time and the temjoer and character 
of the people with whom it is concerned, 
and not always to attempt violently to bend 
the people to their theories of subjection. 
The bulk of mankind on their part are not 
excessively curious concerning any theories, 
whilst they are really happy; and one 
sure symptom of an ill-conducted state is 
the propensity of the people to resort to 
them. 

But when subjects, by a long course of 
such ill conduct, are once thoroughly in- 
flamed, and the state itself violently dis- 
tempered, the people must have some satis- 
faction to their feelings more solid than a 
sophistical speculation on law and govern- 
ment. Such was our situation, and such a 
satisfaction was necessary to prevent re- 
' course to arms; it was necessary towards 
laying them down : it will be necessary to 
prevent the taking them up again and again. 
Of what nature this satisfaction ought to be 
T wish it had beeai the disposition of Par- 
liament seriously to consider. It was cer- 



tainly a deliberation that called for the ex- 
ertion of all their wisdom. 

I am, and ever have been, deeply sensible 
of the difficulty of reconciling the strong 
presiding power, that is so useful towards 
the conservation of a vast, disconnected, in- 
finitely diversified empire, with that liberty 
and safety of the provinces, which they must 
enjoy (in opinion 'and practice at least) or 
they will not be provinces at all. I know, 
and have long felt, the difficulty of reconcil- 
ing the unwieldy haughtiness of a great 
ruling nation, habituated to command, pam- 
pered by enormous wealth, and confident 
from a long course of prosperity and vic- 
tory, to the high spirit of free dependencies, 
animated with the first glow and activity of 
juvenile heat, and assuming to themselves 
as their birthright some part of that very 
pride which oppresses them. They who per- 
ceive no difficulty in reconciling these tem- 
pers (which, however, to make peace must 
some way or other be reconciled), are much 
above my capacity or much below the mag- 
nitude of the business. Of one thing I am 
perfectly clear, that it is not by deciding the 
suit, but by compromising the difference that 
peace can be restored or kept. They who 
would put an end to such quarrels, by de- 
claring roundly in favor of the whole de- 
mands of either party, have mistaken, in 
my humble opinion, the office of a mediator. 
The war is now of full two years' stand- 
ing; the controversy, of many more. In 
different periods of the dispute, different 
methods of reconciliation were to be pur- 
sued. I mean to* trouble you with a short 
state of things at the most important of 
these periods, in order to give you a more 
distinct idea of our policy with regard to 
this most delicate of all objects. The colonies 
were from the beginning subject to the legis- 
lature of Great Britain, on principles which 
they never examined ; and we "permitted to 
them many local privileges, without asking 
how they agreed with that legislative author- 
ity. Modes of administration were formed 
in an insensible and very unsystematic man- 
ner. But they gradually adapted them- 
selves to the varying condition of things : 
what was first a single kingdom, stretched 
into an empire; and an imperial superin- 
tendency, of some kind or other, became 
necessary. Parliament, from a mere repre- 
sentative of the people, and a guardian of 
popular privileges for its OAvn immediate 
constituents, grew into a mighty sovereign. 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



293 



Instead of being a control on the crown on 
its own behalf, it communicated a sort of 
strength to the royal authority; which was 
wanted for the conservation of a new object, 
but which could not be safely trusted to the 
crown alone. On the other hand, the colonies, 
advancing by equal steps and governed by 
the same necessity, had formed within them- 
selves, either by royal instruction or royal 
charter, assemblies so exceedingly resem- 
bling a parliament in all their forms, func- 
tions, and powers, that it was impossible 
they should not imbibe some opinion of a 
similar authority. 

At the first designation of these assem- 
blies they were probably not intended for 
anything more (nor perhaps did they think 
themselves much higher) than the municipal 
corporations within this island, to wnich 
some at present love to compare them. But 
nothing in progression can rest on its 
original plan. We may as well think of 
rocking a grown man in the cradle of an 
infant. Therefore, as the colonies pros- 
pered and increased to a numerous and 
mighty people, s^Dreading over a very great 
tract of the globe, it was natural that they 
should attribute to assemblies, so respecta- 
ble in their formal constitution, some part 
of the dignity of the great nations which 
they represented. No longer tied to bye- 
laws these assemblies made Acts of all sorts 
and in all cases whatsoever. They levied 
money, not for parochial purposes, but upon 
regular gi'ants to the crown, following all 
the rules and principles of a parliament, to 
which they aj^proached every day more and 
more nearly. Those who think themselves 
wiser than Providence and stronger than 
the course of nature may complain of all this 
variation on the one side or the other, as 
their several humors and prejudices may 
lead them. But things could not be other- 
wise, and English colonies must be had on 
these terms or not had at all. In the mean- 
time neither party felt any inconvenience 
from this double legislature, to which they 
had been formed by imperceptible habits 
and old custom, the great support of all the 
governments in the world. Though these 
two legislatures were sometimes found per- 
haps performing the very same functions, 
they did not very grossly or systematically 
clash. In all likelihood this arose from mere 
neglect, possibly from the natural opera- 
tion of things which, left to themselves, gen- 
erally fall into their proper order. But 



whatever was the cause, it is certain that a 
regular revenue, by the authority of Parlia- 
ment, for the support of civil and military 
establishments, seems not to have been 
thought of until the colonies were too proud 
to submit, too strong to be forced, too en- 
lightened not to see all the consequences 
which must arise from such a system. 

If ever this scheme of taxation was to 
be pushed against the inclinations of the 
people, it was evident that discussions must 
arise which would let loose all the elements 
that composed this double constitution, 
would show how much each of their members 
had departed from its original principles, 
and would discover contradictions in each 
legislature, as well to its own first princi- 
ples as to its relation to the other, very dif- 
ficult, if not absolutely impossible, to be 
reconciled. 

Therefore at the first fatal opening of this 
contest, the wisest course seemed to be to 
put an end as soon as possible to the im- 
mediate causes of the dispute, and to quiet a 
discussion, not easily settled upon clear 
principles, and arising from claims which 
pride would permit neither party to aban- 
don, by resorting as nearly as possible to the 
old, successful course. A mere repeal of the 
obnoxious tax, with a declaration of the leg- 
islative authority of this kingdom, was then 
fully sufficient to procure peace to both 
sides. Man is a creature of habit, and the 
first breach being of very short continuance, 
the colonies fell back exactly into their 
ancient state. The congress has used an ex- 
pression with regard to this pacification 
which appears to me truly significant. After 
the repeal of the Stamp Act, "the colonies 
fell," says this assembly, "into their ancient 
state of unsuspecting confidence in the 
mother-country. '' This unsuspecting con- 
fidence is the true center of gravity amongst 
mankind, about which all the parts are at 
rest. It is this unsuspecting confidence that 
removes all difficulties and reconciles all the 
contradictions which occur in the complexity 
of all ancient, puzzled, political establish- 
ments. Happy are the rulers which have the 
secret of presei'ving it ! . . . 

It is impossible that we should remain 
long in a situation which breeds such no- 
tions and dispositions without some great 
alteration in the national character. Those 
ingenuous and feeling minds who are so 
fortified against all other things, and so un- 
armed to whatever approaches in the shape 



294 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



of disgrace, finding these principles, which 
they considered as sure means of honor, to 
be grown into disrepute, will retire dis- 
heartened and disgusted. Those of a more 
robust make, the bold, able, ambitious men 
who pay some of their court to power 
through the people, and substitute the voice 
of transient opinion in the place of true 
glory, will give in to the general mode ; and 
those superior understandings which ought 
to correct vulgar prejudice will confirm and 
aggravate its errors. Many things have 
been long operating towards a gradual 
change in our principles. But this Ameri- 
can war has done more in a very few years 
than all the other causes could have ef- 
fected in a century. It is therefore not on 
its own separate account, but because of its 
attendant circumstances that I consider its 
continuance or its ending in any way but 
that of an honorable and liberal accommo- 
dation as the greatest evils which can be- 
fall us. For that reason I have troubled 
you with this long letter. For that reason 
I entreat you again and again neither to be 
persuaded, shamed, or frighted out of the 
principles that have hitherto led so many 
of you to abhor the war, its cause, and its 
consequences. Let us not be among the 
first who renounce the maxims of our fore- 
fathers. 

Concord Hymn 
ralph waldo emerson 

By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 

Here once the embattled farmers stood 
And fired the shot heard round the world. 

The foe long since in silence slept; 

Alike the conqueror silent sleeps; 
And time the ruined bridge has swept 

Down the dark stream which seaward 
creeps. 

On this green bank, by this soft stream. 

We set today a votive stone; 
That memory may their deed redeem, 

When like our sires, our sons are gone. 

Spirit, that made those heroes dare 
To die, and leave their children free, 

Bid Time and Nature gently spare 
The shaft we raise to them and thee. 



Lexington 
john greenleaf whittier 

No Berserk thirst of blood had they. 
No battle- joy was theirs, who set 
Against the alien bayonet 

Their homespun breasts in that old day. 

Their feet had trodden peaceful ways; 

They loved not strife, they dreaded pain ; 

They saw not, what to us is plain. 
That God would make man's wrath his 
praise. 

No seers were they, but simple men; 
Its vast results the future hid: 
The meaning of the work they did 

Was strange and dark and doubtful then. 

Swift as their summons came they left 
The plow mid-furrow standing still. 
The half-ground corn grist in the mill. 

The spade in earth, the axe in cleft. 

They went where duty seemed to call. 
They scarcely asked the reason why; 
They only knew they could but die, 

And death was not the worst of all ! 

Of man for man the sacrifice, 

All that was theirs to give, they gave. 
The flowers that blossomed from their 
grave 

Have sown themselves beneath all skies. 

Their death-shot shook the feudal tower, 
And shattered slavery's chain as well; 
On the sky's dome, as on a bell. 

Its echo struck the world's great hour. 

That fateful echo is not dumb: 
The nations listening to its sound 
Wait, from a century's vantage-ground. 

The holier triumphs yet to come, — 

The bridal time of Law and Love, 
The gladness of the world's release, 
Wlien, war-sick, at the feet of Peace 

The hawk shall nestle with the dove ! 

The golden age of brotherhood 

Unknown to other rivalries 

Than of the mild humanities. 
And gracious interchange of good. 

When closer strand shall lean to strand. 
Till meet, beneath saluting flags. 

The lion of our Motherland ! 

The eagle of our mountain-crags. 



THE RISE OF MODEEN DEMOCRACY 



295 



Liberty or Death 



PATRICK HENRY 



[From a speech delivered at the Virginia 
Convention, March 28, 1775] 

Mr. President, no man thinks more highly 
than I do of the patriotism, as well as of 
the abilities, of the very worthy gentlemen 
who have just addressed the House. But 
different men often see the same subject in ^ 
different lights; and, therefore, I hope it 
will not bs thought disrespectful to those 
gentlemen, if, entertaining, as I do, opin- 
ions of a character very opposite from 
theirs, I shall speak forth my sentiments 
freely and without reserve. This is no time 
for ceremony. The question before the 
House is one of awful moment to this coun- 
try. For my own part, I consider it as noth- 
ing less than a question of freedom or sla- 
very; and in proportion to the magnitude 
of the subject ought to be the freedom of 
the debate. It is only in this way that we 
can hope to arrive at truth, and fulfill the 
great responsibility which we hold to God 
and our country. Should I keep back my 
opinions at such a time, through fear of 
giving offence, I should consider myself as 
guilty of treason towards my country, and 
of an act of disloyalty towards the Majesty 
of Heaven, which I revere above all earthly 
kings. 

Mr. President, it is natural to man to in- 
dulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt 
to shut our eyes against a painful truth, 
and listen to the song of that siren till she 
transforms us into beasts. Is this the part 
of wise men, engaged in a great and ardu- 
ous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed 
to be of the number of those who, having 
eyes, see not, and having ears, hear not, the 
things which so nearly concern their tem- 
poral salvation? For my part, whatever 
anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing 
to know the whole truth ; to know the worst, 
and to provide for it. 

I have but one lamp by which my feet 
are guided; and that is the lamp of experi- 
ence. I know of no way of judging of the 
future but by the past. And judging by 
the past, I wish to know what there has 
been in the conduct of the British Ministry 
for the last ten years to justify those hopes 
with which gentlemen have been pleased to 
solace themselves and the House ? Is it that 
insidious smile with which our petition has 
been lately received? Trust it not, sir; it 



will prove a snare to your feet. Suffer not 
yourselves to be betrayed with a kiss. Ask 
yourselves how this gracious reception of 
our petition comports with those warlike 
preparations which cover our waters and 
darken our land. Are fleets and armies nec- 
essary to a work of love and reconciliation ? 
Have we shown ourselves so unwilling to be 
reconciled that force must be called in to 
win back our love? Let us not deceive our- 
selves, sir. These are the implements of 
war and subjugation — the last arguments 
to which kings resort. I ask, sir, what 
means this martial array, if its purpose be 
not to force us to submission? Can gentle- 
men assign any other possible motive for it? 
Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quar- 
ter of the world, to call for all this accumu- 
lation of navies and armies? No, sir, she 
has none. They are meant for us ; they can 
be meant for no other. They are sent over 
to bind and rivet upon us those chains which 
the British Ministry have been so long forg- 
ing. And what have we to oppose them? 
Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been 
trying that for the last ten years. Have we 
anything new to offer upon the subject? 
Nothing. We have held the subject up in 
every light of which it is capable; but it 
has been all in vain. Shall we resort to en- 
treaty and humble supplication? What 
terms shall we find, which have not been al- 
ready exhausted? Let us not, I beseech 
you, sir, deceive ourselves longer. Sir, we 
have done eveiything that could be done to 
avert the storm which is now coming on. 
We have petitioned ; we have remonstrated ; 
we have supplicated; we have prostrated 
ourselves before the throne, and have im- 
plored its interposition to arrest the tyran- 
nical hands of the Ministry and Parliament. 
Our petitions have been slighted; our re- 
monstrances have produced additional vio- 
lence and insult; our supplications have 
been disregarded; and we have been 
spurned, with contempt, from the foot of 
the throne! In vain, after these things, 
may we indulge the fond hope of peace and 
reconciliation. There is no longer any room 
for hope. If we wish to be free — if we 
mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable 
privileges for which we have been so long 
contending — if we mean not basely to aban- 
don the noble struggle in which we have 
been so long engaged, and which we have 
pledged ourselves never to abandon, until 
the glorious object of our contest shall be 
obtained — ^we must fight! I repeat it, sir, 



296 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



we must fight! An appeal to arms and to 
the God of Hosts is all that is left us ! 

They tell us, sir, that we are weak ; unable 
to cope with so formidable an adversary. 
But when shall we be stronger? Will it be 
the next week, or the next year? Will it be 
when we are totally disai-med, and when a 
British guard shall be stationed in every 
house? Shall we gather strength by irreso- 
lution and inaction? Shall we acquire the 
means of effectual resistance by lying su- 
pinely on our backs and hugging the de- 
lusive phantom of hope until our enemies 
shall have bound us hand and foot? 

Sir, we are not weak, if we make a proper 
use of those means which the God of nature 
hath placed in our power. Three millions 
of people, armed in the holy cause of lib- 
erty, and in such a country as that which we 
possess, are invincible by any force which 
our enemy can send against us. Besides, 
sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. 
There is a just God who presides over the 
destinies of nations, and who will raise up 
friends to fight our battles for us. The 
battle, sir, is not to the strong alone ; it is to 
the vigilant, the active, the brave. Besides, 
sir, we have no election. If we were base 
enough to desire it, it is now too late to re- 
tire from the contest. There is no retreat 
but in submission and slavery ! Our chains 
are forged ! Their clanking may be heard 
on the plains of Boston ! The war is inevi- 
table — and let it come ! I repeat it, sir, let 
it come! 

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. 
Gentlemen may cry, Peace, peace ! — but 
there is no peace. The war is actually 
begun! The next gale that sweeps from 
the north will bring to our ears the clash of 
resounding arms ! Our brethren are already 
in the field ! Why stand we here idle ? What 
is it that gentlemen wish? What would 
they have? Is life so dear, or peace so 
sweet, as to be purchased at the price of 
chains and slavery? Torbid it. Almighty 
God! I know not what course others may 
take ; but as for me, give me liberty or give 
me death! 

Washington" Anticipates the Declara- 
tion 

george washington 
[From a letter written in February, 1776] 
With respect to myself, I have never en- 
tertained an idea of an accommodation, since 
I heard of the measures which were adopted 



in consequence of the Bunker Hill fight. 
The King's speech has confirmed the senti- 
ments I entertained upon the news of that 
affair; and, if every man was of my mind, 
the ministers of Great Britain should know, 
in a few words, upon what issue the cause 
should be put. I would not be deceived by 
artful declarations, nor specious pretenses; 
nor would I be amused by the unmeaning 
propositions; but in open, undisguised, and 
manly terms proclaim our wrongs, and our 
resolution to be redressed. I would tell 
them, that we had borne much, that we had 
long and ardently sought for reconciliation 
upon honorable terms, that it had been de- 
nied us, that all our attempts after peace 
had proved abortive, and had been grossly 
misrepresented, that we had done every- 
thing which could be expected from the 
best of subjects, that the spirit of freedom 
rises too high in us to submit to slavery, and 
that, if nothing else would satisfy a tyrant 
and his diabolical ministry, we are deter- 
mined to shake off all connections with a 
state so unjust and unnatural. This I 
would tell them, not under covert, but in 
words as clear as the sun in its meridian 
brightness. 

From the Declaration of Independence^ 

thomas jefferson 

When, in the course of human events, it 
becomes necessary for one people to dis- 
solve the political bands which have con- 
nected them with another, and to assume, 
among the powers of the earth, the separate 

1 The Declaration of Independence was pre- 
pared by a committee of whicli Thomas Jefferson 
was chairman, and the actual composition was 
done by Jefferson. It was reported to Congress 
on the second of July and on the fourth was 
adopted after a debate in which some portions of 
the original draft were cut out. John Adams, 
writing to his wife about it, used these words : 

"Yesterday the greatest question was decided 
which ever was debated in America, and a greater, 
perhaps, never was nor will be decided among 
men. A resolution was passed without one dis- 
senting colony, that these United Colonies are, 
and of right ought to be, free and independent 
states. . . . The second day of July, 1776, 
will be the most memorable epoch in the history 
of America. I am apt to believe that it will be 
celebrated by succeeding generations as the great 
anniversary festival. It ought to be commem- 
orated, as the day of deliverance, by solemn acts 
of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be 
solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, 
games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires, and illumina- 
tions, from one end of this continent to the other, 
from this time forward, forevermore. You will 
think me transported with enthusiasm, but I am 
not. I am aware of the toil, and blood, and treas- 
ure, that it will cost us to maintain this declara- 
tion and support and defend these states. Yet, 
through all the gloom, I can ^ee the rays of rav- 
ishing light and glory." 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



297 



and equal station to wbieli tlie laws of na- 
ture and of nature's God entitle them, a 
decent resj^ect to the opinions of mankind 
requires that they should declare the causes 
which impel them to the separation. 

We hold these truths to be self-evident: 
That all men are created equal; that they 
are endowed by their Creator with certain 
unalienable rights; that among these are 
life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 
That, to secure these rights, governments 
are instituted among men, deriving their 
just powers from the consent of the gov- 
erned; that, whenever any form of govern- 
ment becomes destructive of these ends, it 
is the right of the people to alter or to abol- 
ish it, and to institute a new government, 
laying its foundation on such principles, 
and organizing its powers in such form, as 
to them shall seem most likely .to effect their 
safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, 
will dictate that governments long estab- 
lished should not be changed for light and 
transient causes; and accordingly all expe- 
rience hath shown that mankind are more 
disposed to suffer while evils are sufferable, 
than to right themselves by abolishing the 
forms to which they are accustomed. But 
when a long train of abuses and usurpa- 
tions, pursuing invariably the same object, 
evinces a design to reduce them under abso- 
lute despotism, it is their right, it is their 
duty, to throw off such government, and to 
provide new guards for their future secur- 
ity. Such has been the patient sufferance 
of these colonies; and such is now the ne- 
cessity which constrains them to alter their 
former systems of government. The history 
of the present King of Great Britain is a 
history of repeated injuries and usuriDa- 
tions, all having in direct object the estab- 
lishment of an absolute tyranny over these 
states. To prove this, let facts be submitted 
to a candid world. 

[Here is given a list of the wrongs suf- 
fered by the colonies at the hands of the 
British Government.] 

We, therefore, the representatives of the 
United States of America, in General Con- 
gress assembled, appealing to the Supreme 
Judge of the world for the rectitude of our 
intentions, do, in the name and by the au- 
thority of the good people of these colonies, 
solemnly publish and declare. That these 
united colonies are, and of right ought to 
be, free and independent states ; that they 
are absolved from all allegiance to the Brit- 
ish croAvn, and that all political connection 



between them and the state of Great Britain. 
is, and ought to be, totally dissolved; and 
that, as free and independent states^ they 
have full power to levy war, conclude peace, 
contract alliances, establish commerce, and 
do all other acts and things which inde- 
pendent states may of right do. And, for 
the supiDort of this declaration, with a firm 
reliance on the protection of Divine Provi- 
dence, we mutually pledge to each other our 
lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. 

Times That Try Men's Souls 

thomas paine 

[From Tlie Crisis, 1776] 

These are the times that try men's wouls. 
The summer soldier and the sunshine pa- 
triot will, in this crisis, shrink from the 
service of his country; but he that stands 
it now, deserves the love and thanks of man 
and Avoman. Tyranny, like hell, is not eas- 
ily conquered; yet we have this consolation 
with us, that the harder the conflict, the 
more glorious the triumioh. What we ob- 
tain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; 'tis 
dearness only that gives everything its value. 
Heaven knows how to put a proper price 
upon its goods; it would be strange indeed, 
if so celestial an article as freedom should 
not be highly rated. Britain, with an army 
to enforce her tyranny, has declared .that 
she has a right (not only to tax) but to 
"bind us in all cases whatsoever," and if 
being bound in that manner is not slavery, 
then is there not such a thing as slavery 
upon earth. Even the expression is impi- 
ous, for so unlimited a power can belong 
only to God. 

I have as little superstition in me as any 
man living, but my secret opinion has been, 
and still is that God Almighty will -not give 
up a people to military destruction, or leave 
them unsupportedly to perish, who have so 
earnestly and so repeatedly sought to avoid 
the calamities of war, by every decent 
method which wisdom could invent. 

I once felt all that kind of anger, which 
a man ought to feel, against the mean prin- 
ciples that are held by the tories : a noted 
one, who kept a tavern at Amboy, was 
standing at his door, with as jDretty a child 
in his hand, about eight or nine years old, as 
I ever saw, and after speaking his mind as 
freely as he thought was prudent, finished 
with this unf atherly expression, "Well ! 
give me peace in my day." Not a man lives 



298 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



on the continent but fvilly believes that a 
separation must some time or other finally 
take place, and a generous parent should 
have said, "If there must be trouble, let it 
be in my day, that my child may have 
peace"; and his single reflection, well ap- 
plied, is sufficient to awaken every man to 
duty. Not a place upon earth might be so 
happy as Amei"ica. Her situation is remote 
from all the wrangling world, and she has 
nothing to do but to trade with them. A 
man can disting-uish in himself between tem- 
per and principle, and I am as confident, as 
I am that God governs the world, that Amer- 
ica will never be happy till she gets clear of 
foreign dominion. Wars, without ceasing, 
will break out till that period arrives, and 
the continent must in the end be conqueror; 
for though the flame of liberty may some- 
times cease to shine, the coal can never 
expire. 

The heart that feels not now, is dead ; the 
blood of his children will curse his coward- 
ice, who shrinks back at a time when a little 
might have saved the whole, and made them 
happy. I love the man that can smile in 
trouble, that can gather strength from dis- 
tress, and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis 
the business of little minds to shrink; but 
he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience 
approves his conduct, will pursue his prin- 
ciples unto death. My own line of reason- 
ing is to myself as straight and clear as a 
ray of light. Not all the treasures of the 
world, so far as I believe, could have in- 
duced me to support an offensive war, for I 
think it murder; but if a thief breaks into 
my house, burns and destroys my property, 
and kills or threatens to kill me, or those 
that are in it, and to "bind me in all eases 
whatsoever" to his absolute will, am I to 
suffer if? What signifies it to me, whether 
he who does it is a king or a common man ; 
my countryman or not my countryman; 
whether it be done by an individual villain, 
or an army of them"? If we reason to the 
root of things we shall find no difference; 
neither can any just cause be assigned why 
we should punish in the one case and par- 
don in the other. 

On the Americajst Revolution 

william cowper 

[A letter to the Rev. John Newton, Nov. 27, 
1781] 

My Dear Friend, — First Mr. Wilson, 
then Mr. Teedon, and lastly Mr. Whit- 



ford, each with a cloud of melancholy on 
his brow, and with a mouth wide open, have 
just announced to us this unwelcome intelli- 
gence from America.^ We are sorry to hear 
it, and should be more cast down than we 
are if we did not know that this catastrophe 
was ordained beforehand, and that, there- 
fore, neither conduct, nor courage, nor any 
means that can possibly be mentioned, could 
have prevented it. If the King and his 
ministry can be contented to close the busi- 
ness here, and, taking poor Dean Tucker's 
advice, resign the Americans into the hands 
of their new masters, it may be well for Old 
England. But if they will still persevere, 
they will find it, I doubt, an hopeless con- 
test to the last. Domestic murmurs will 
grow louder, and the hands of faction, being 
strengthened by this late miscarriage, will 
find it easy to set fire to the pile of combus- 
tibles they have been so long employed in 
building. These are my politics; and for 
aught I can see, you and we by our respect- 
ive firesides, though neither connected with 
men in power, nor professing to possess 
any share of that sagacity which thinks itself 
qualified to wield the affairs of kingdoms, 
can make as probable conjectures, and look 
forward into futurity witlr as clear a sight 
as the greatest man in the cabinet. 

The Destiny of England and America 
john richard green 

[From A History of the English People, 

1877] 

Whatever might be the importance of 
American independence in the history of 
England, it was of unequalled moment in 
the history of the world. If it crippled for 
a while the supremacy of the English na- 
tion, it founded the supremacy of the Eng- 
lish race. From the hour of American 
Independence the life of the English People 
has flowed not in one current, but in two; 
and while the older has shown little signs 
of lessenmg, the younger has fast risen to 
a greatness which has changed the face of 
the world. In 1783 America was a nation 
of three millions of inhabitants, scattered 
thinly along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean. 
It is now a nation of forty millions, stretch- 
ing over the whole continent from the At- 
lantic to the Pacific. In wealth and mate- 
rial energy, as in numbers, it far surpasses 
the mother-country from which it sprang. 

1 The "unwelcome intelliaieiice" was the news of 
Cornwallis' surrender at Yorktown. 



THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



299 



It is already the main branch of the English 
People; and in the days that are at hand 
the main euri'ent of that people's history 
must rmi along the channel not of the 
Thames or the Mersey, but of the Hudson 
and the Mississippi. But distinct as these 
currents are, every year proves more clearly 
that in spirit the English People is one. The 
distance that parted England from Amer- 
ica lessens every day. The ties that unite 
them grow every day stronger. The social 
and political differences that threatened a 
hundred years ago to • form an impassable 
barrier between them grow every day less. 
Against this silent and inevitable drift of 
things the spirit of narrow isolation on 
either side the Atlantic struggles in vain. It 
is possible that the two branches of the Eng- 
lish people will remain forever separate po- 
litical existences. It is likely enough that 
the older of them may again break in twain, 
and that the English People in the Pacific 
may assert as distinct a national life as the 
two English Peoples on either side the At- 
lantic. But the spirit, the influence, of all 
these branches will remain one. And in 
thus remaining one, before half a century 
is over it will change the face of the world. 
As two hundred millions of Englishmen fill 
the valley of the Mississippi, as fifty mil- 
lions of Englishmen assert their lordship 
over Australasia, this vast power will tell 
through Bi"itain on the old world of Europe, 
whose nations will have shrunk into insig- 
nificance before it. What the issues of such 
a world-wide change may be, not even the 
•wildest dreamer would dare to dream. But 



one issue is inevitable. In the centuries 
that lie before us, the primacy of the world 
will lie with the English People. English in- 
stitutions, English speech, English thought, 
will become the main features of the polit- 
ical, the social, and the intellectual life of 
mankind. 



England and America in 1782 
alfred tennyson 

O Thou, that sendest out the man 

To rule by land and sea, 
Strong mother of a Lion-line, 
Be proud of those strong sons of thine 

Who wrench'd their rights from thee! 

What wonder, if in noble heat 

Those men thme arms withstood, 
Retaught the lesson thou hadst taught. 
And in thy spirit with thee fought — 
^¥lio sprang from English blood ! 

But Thou rejoice with liberal joy, 

Lift up thy rocky face, 
And shatter, when the storms are black. 
In many a streaming torrent back, 

The seas that shock thy base! 

Whatever harmonies of law 

The growing world assume, 
Thy work is thine — the single note 
From that deep chord which Hampden smote 

Will vibrate to the doom. 

■ (1872) 



3. THE UPHEAVAL IN FRANCE 



Storm and Victory ^ 

THOMAS CARLYLE 

[From The French Revolution, 1837] 

But, to the living and the struggling, a 
new Fourteenth morning dawns. LTnder 
all roofs of the distracted City is the 
nodus of a drama, not untragieal, crowding 
towards solution. The bustlings and prep- 
arations, the tremors and menaces ; the tears 
that fell from old eyes ! This day, my sons, 
ye shall quit you like men. By the memory 
of your fathers' wrongs, by the hope of 
your children's rights ! Tyranny impends 

1 The Taking of the Bastile, July 14, 1789. 



in red wrath : help for you Is none, if not 
in your own right hands. This day you 
must do or die. 

From earliest light, a sleepless Permanent 
Committee has heard the old cry, now wax- 
ing almost frantic, mutinous : Arms ! Arms ! 
Provost Flesselles, or what traitors there are 
among you, may think of those Charleville 
Boxes. A hundred-and-fifty-thousand of 
us ; 'and but the third man furnished with so 
much as a pike! Arms are the one thing 
needful : with arms we are an unconquerable 
man-defying National Guard ; without arms, 
a rabble to be whiffed with grapeshot. 

Happily the word has arisen, for no one 
secret can be kept, — that there lie muskets 



300 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



at the Hotel-des-Invalides. Thither will we : 
King's Proeureur M. Ethys de Corny, and 
whatsoever of authority a Permanent Com- 
mittee can lend, shall go with us. Besen- 
val's Camp is there ; perhaps he will not fire 
on us; if he kill us, we shall but die. 

Alas, poor Besenval, with his troops melt- 
ing away in that manner, has not the small- 
est humor to fire ! At five o'clock this morn- 
ing, as he lay dreaming, oblivious, in the 
Ecole Militaire, a "figure" stood suddenly 
at his bedside ; "with face rather handsome ; 
eyes inflamed, speech rapid and curt, air 
audacious" : such a figure drew Priam's cur- 
tains ! The message ' and monition of the 
figure was, that resistance would be hope- 
less; that if blood fiowed, woe to him who 
shed it. Thus spoke the figure: and van- 
ished. "Withal there was a kind of elo- 
quence that struck one." Besenval admits 
that he should have arrested him but did 
not. Who this figure with inflamed eyes, 
with speech rapid and curt, might be? Be- 
senval knows, but mentions not. Camille 
Desmoulins'? Pythagorean Marquis Valadi, 
inflamed with "violent motions all night at 
the Palais Royal'"? Fame names him 
"Young M. Meillar"^ then shuts her lips 
about him forever. 

In any case, behold about nine in the 
morning, our National Volunteers rolling in 
long white flood, south-westward to the 
Hotel-des-Invalides; in search of the one 
thing needful. King's Proeureur M. Ethys 
de Corny and ofiieials are there; the Cure 
of Saint-Etienne du Mont marches unpa- 
cifie at the head of his militant Parish ; the 
clerks of the Basoche in red coats we see 
marching, now Volunteers of the Basoche; 
the volunteers of the Palais Royal: — Na- 
tional Volunteers, numerable by tens of 
thousands; of one heart and mind. The 
King's muskets are the Nation's ; think, old 
M. de Sombreuil, how, in this extremity, 
thou wilt refuse them! Old M. de Som- 
breuil would fain hold parley, send cour- 
iers ; but it skills not : the walls are scaled, 
no Invalide firing a shot ; the gates must be 
flung open. Patriotism rushes in, tumul- 
tuous, from grunsel up to ridge-tile, through 
all rooms and passages; rummaging dis- 
tractedly for arms. What cellar, or what 
cranny can escape it ? The arms found ; all 
safe there; lying packed in straw, — appar- 
ently with a view to being burnt! More 
ravenous than famishing lions over dead 
prey, the multitude, with clangor and vo- 
ciferation, pounces on them; struggling. 



dashing, clutching: — to the jamming-up, to 
the pressure, fracture, and probable extinc- 
tion of the weaker Patriot. And so, with 
such protracted crash of deafening, most 
discordant Orchestra-music, the scene is 
changed; and eight-and-twenty thousand 
sufficient firelocks are on the shoulders of as 
many National Guards, lifted thereby out of 
darkness into fiery light. 

Let Besenval look at the glitter of these 
muskets, as they flash by! Gardes Pran- 
gaises, it is said, have cannon levelled on 
him; ready to open, if need were, from the 
other side of the River. Motionless sits he ; 
"astonished," one may flatter one's self, "at 
the proud bearing {fiere contenance) of the 
Parisians." — And now, to the Bastille, ye 
intrepid Parisians! There grapeshot still 
threatens : thither all men's thoughts and 
steps are now tending. 

Old De Launay, as we hinted, withdrew 
"into his interior" soon after midnight of 
Sunday. He remains there ever since, ham- 
pered, as all military gentlemen are now, in 
the saddest conflict of uncertainties. The 
H6tel-de-Ville invites him to admit National 
Soldiers, which is a soft name for surren- 
dering. On the other hand, His Majesty's 
orders were precise. His garrison is but 
eighty-two old Invalides, reinforced by thir- 
ty-two young Swiss; his walls indeed are 
nine feet thick, he has cannon and powder; 
but, alas, only one day's provision of vic- 
tuals. The city too is French, the poor gar- 
rison mostly French. Rigorous old De Lau- 
nay, think what thou wilt do. 

All morning, since nine, there has been a 
cry everywhere: To the Bastille! Repeated 
"deputations of citizens" have been here, 
passionate for arms ; whom De Launay has 
got dismissed by soft speeches through port- 
holes. Toward noon. Elector Thuriot de la 
Rosiere gains admittance; finds De Launay 
indisposed for surrender; nay disposed for 
blowing up the place rather. Thuriot mounts 
with him to the battlements: heaps of pav- 
ing-stones, old 'iron, and missiles lie piled; 
cannon all duly levelled ; in every embrasure 
a cannon, — only drawn back a little! But 
outwards, behold, Thuriot, how the mul- 
titude flows on, welling through every street : 
tocsin furiously pealing, all drums beating 
the generale: the Suburb Saint- Antoine 
rolling hitherward wholly, as one man ! 
Such vision (spectral yet real) thou, 
Thuriot, as from thy Mount of Vision, be- 
holdest in this moment: prophetic of what 
other Phantasmagories, and loud-gibbering 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



301* 



Spectral Realities, which thou yet behold- 
est not, but shalt ! "Que voulez-vousf" said 
De Launay, tuniing pale at the sight, with 
an air of reproach, almost of menace. 
"Monsieur," said Thuriot, rising into the 
moral-sublime, "what mean you? Con- 
sider if I could not precipitate both of us 
from this height," — say only a hundred 
feet, exclusive of the walled ditch ! Where- 
upon De Launay fell silent. Thuriot shows 
himself from some pinnacle, to comfort 
the multitude becoming suspicious, fremes- 
cent : then descends ; departs with protests ; 
with warning addressed also to the Inval- 
ides, — on whom, however, it produces but a 
mixed indistinct impression. The old heads 
are none of the clearest; besides, it is said, 
De Launay has been profuse of beverages 
(prodigue de buissons). They think, they 
will not fire, — if not fired on, if they can 
help it; but must, on the whole, be ruled 
considerably by circumstances. 

Woe to thee, De Launay, in such an hour, 
if thou canst not, taking some one firm de- 
"cision, rule circumstances! Soft speeches 
will not serve; hard grapeshot is question- 
able; but hovering between the two is un- 
questionable. Ever wilder swells the tide of 
men ; their infinite hum Avaxing ever louder, 
into imprecations, perhaps into crackle of 
stray musketry, — which latter, on walls 
nine feet thick, cannot do execution. The 
Outer Drawbridge has been lowered for 
Thuriot; a new deputation of citizens (it is 
the third, and noisiest of all) penetrates 
that way into the Outer Court ; soft speeches 
producing no clearance of these, De Launay 
gives fire; pulls up his Drawbridge. A 
slight sputter; — ^whieh has kindled the too 
combustible chaos ; made it a roaring fire — 
chaos ! Bursts forth Insurrection, at sight 
of its own blood (for there were deaths 
by that sputter of fire), into endless rolling 
explosion of musketry, distraction, execra- 
tion ; — and over head, from the Fortress, let 
one great gun, with its grapeshot, go boom- 
ing, to show what we could do. The Bastille 
is besieged! 

On then, all Frenchmen, that have hearts 
in your bodies ! . Roar with all your throats, 
of cartilage and metal, ye Sons of Liberty ; 
stir spasmodically whatever of utmost fac^ 
ulty is in you, soul, body, or spirit; for it 
is the hour ! Smite, thou Louis Tournay, 
cartwright of the Marais, old-soldier of the 
Regiment Dauphine; smite at that Outer 
Drawbridge chain, though the fiery hail 
whistles round thee! Never, over nave or 



felloe, did thy axe strike such a stroke. 
Down with it, man; down with it to Orcus; 
let the whole accursed Edifice sink thither, 
and Tyranny be swallowed up forever! 
Mounted, some say, on the roof of the 
guard-room, some on bayonets stuck 'into 
joints of the wall, Louis Tournay smites, 
brave Aubin Bonnemere (also an old sol- 
dier) seconding him: the, chain yields, 
breaks; the huge Drawbridge slams down, 
thundering {avec fracas). Glorious: and 
yet, alas, it is still but the outworks. The 
eight grim Towers, with their Invalide mus- 
ketry, their paving stones and cannon- 
mouths, still soar aloft intact; — Ditch 
yawning- impassable, stone-faced; the inner 
Drawbridge with its back towards us: the 
Bastille is still to take. 

To describe this Siege of the Bastille 
(thought to be one of the most important in 
History) perhaps transcends the talent of 
mortals. Could one but, after infinite read- 
ing, get to understand so much as the plan 
of the building! But there is open Espla- 
nade, at the end of the Rue Saint-Antome ; 
there are such Forecourts, Cour Avance, 
Cour de VOrme, arched Gateway (where 
Louis Tournay now fights) ; then new draw- 
bridges, dormant-bridges, rampart-bastions, 
and the gxim Eight Towers: a labyrinthic 
Mass, high-frowning there, of all ages from 
twenty years to four hundred and twenty ; — 
beleaguered, in this its last hour, as we said, 
by mere Chaos come again! Ordnance of 
all calibers; throats of all capacities; men 
of all plans, every man his own engineer: 
seldom since the war of Pygmies and Cranes 
was there seen so anomalous a thing. Half- 
pay Elie is home for a suit of regimentals ; 
no one would heed him in colored clothes: 
Hialf-pay Hulin is haranguing Gardes 
Franeaises in the Place de Greve. Frantic ' 
Patriots pick up the grapeshots ; bear them, 
still hot (or seemingly so), to the H6tel-de- 
Ville. — Paris, you perceive, is to be burnt! 
Flesselles is pale to the very lijDs, for the 
roar of the multitude grows deep. Paris 
wholly has got to the acme of its frenzy; 
whirled, all ways, by panic madness. At 
every street-barricade there whirls simmer- 
ing a minor whirlpool strengthening the 
barricade — since God knows what is com- 
ing ; and all minor whirlpools play distract- 
edly into that grand Fire-Mahlstrom which 
is lashing round the Bastille. 

And so it lashes and it roars. Cholat the 
wine merchant has become an impromptu 
cannoneer. See Georget, of the Marine 



302 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



Service, fresh from Brest, ply the King of 
Siam's cannon. Singular (if we were not 
used to the like) : Georget lay, last night, 
taking his ease at his inn; the King of 
Siam's cannon also lay, knowing nothing of 
him, for a hundred years. Yet, now, at the 
right instant, they have got together, and 
discourse eloquent music. For, hearing 
what was toward, Georget sprang from the 
Brest Diligence, and ran. Gardes Fran- 
gaises also will be here, with real artillery : 
were not the walls so thick ! — Upwards from 
the Esplanade, horizontally from all the 
neighboring roofs and windows, flashes one 
irregular deluge of musketry, without ef- 
fect. The Invalides lie flat, firing com- 
paratively at their ease from behind stone; 
hardly through portholes, show the tip of 
a nose. We fall, shot; and make no im- 
pression. 

Let conflagration rage; of whatsoever is 
combustible ! Guard-rooms are burnt, In- 
valides mess-rooms. A distracted "Peruke- 
maker with two fiery torches" is for burn- 
ing the "saltpetres of the Arsenal"; — had 
not a woman run screaming; had not a 
Patriot, with some tincture of Natural Phil- 
osophy, instantly struck the wind out of 
him (butt of musket on pit of stomach), 
overturned barrels and stayed the devouring 
element. A young beautiful lady, seized 
escaping in these Outer Courts, and thought 
falsely to be De Launay's daughter, shall be 
burnt in De Launay's sight ; she lies swooned 
on a paillasse: but again a Patriot, it is 
brave Aubin Bonnemere the old soldier, 
dashes in, and rescues her. Straw is burnt ; 
three cartloads of it, hauled thither, go up 
in white smoke: almost to the choking of 
Patriotism itself; so that Elie had, with 
singed brows, to drag back one cart; and 
Reole the "gigantic haberdasher" another. 
Smoke as of Tophet; confusion as of 
Babel; noise as of the Crack of Doom! 

Blood flows ; the aliment of new madness. 
The wounded are carried into the houses 
of the Rue Cerisaie; the dying leave their 
last mandate not to yield till the accursed 
Stronghold fall. And yet, alas, how fall? 
The walls are so thick. Deputations, three 
in number, arrive from the H6tel-de-Ville ; 
Abbe Fauchet (who was of one) can say 
with what almost superhuman courage of 
benevolence. These wave their Town-flag in 
the arched Gateway ; and stand, rolling their 
drum; but to no purpose. In such Crack 
of Doom, De Launay cannot hear them, dare 



not believe them: they return, with justi- 
fied rage, the whew of lead still singing 
in their ears. What to do? The Firemen 
are here, squirting with their fire-pumps on 
the Invalides cannon, to wet the touchholes ; 
they unfortunately cannot squirt so high; 
but produce only clouds of spray. Individu- 
als of classical knowledge propose cata- 
pults. Santerre, the sonorous Brewer of 
the Suburb Saint- Antoine, advises rather 
that the place be fired, by a "mixture of 
phosphorus and oil-of-turi3entine spouted 
up through forcing pumps": Spinola- 
Santerre, hast thou the mixture ready? 
Every man his own engineer ! And still the 
fire-deluge abates not : even women are 
firing, and Turks; at least one woman (with 
her sweetheart), and one Turk; Gardes 
Frangaises have come; real cannon; real 
cannoneers. Usher Maillard is busy; half- 
pay Elie, half -pay Hulin rage in the midst 
of the thousands. 

How the great Bastille Clock ticks (in- 
audible) in its Inner Court there, at its 
ease, hour after hour ; as if nothing special, " 
for it or the world, were passing ! It tolled 
One when the firing began; and is now 
pointing towards Five, and still the firing 
slakes not. — Far down, in their vaults, the 
seven prisoners hear muffled din as of earth- 
quakes; their Turnkeys answer vaguely. 

Woe to thee, De Launay, with the poor 
hundred Invalides ! Broglie is distant, and 
his ears heavy : Besenval hears, but can send 
no help. One poor troop of the Hussars has 
crejjt, reconnoitering, cautiously along the 
Quais, as far as the Pont Neuf. "We are 
come to join you," said the Captain ; for the 
crowd seems shoreless. A large-headed 
dwarfish individual, of smoke-bleared aspect, 
shambles forward, opening his blue lips, for 
there is sense in him ; and croaks : "Alight 
then, and give up your arms !" The Hussar- 
Captain is too hap23y to be escorted to the 
Barriers, and dismissed on parole. Who the 
squat individual was? Men answer. It is 
M. Marat, author of the excellent pacific 
Avis au Peuple! Great truly, thou re- 
markable Dogieech, is this thy day of emer- 
gence and new-birth: and yet this same 
day come four years — ! — But let the cur- 
tains of the future hang. 

What shall De Launay do? One thing 
only De Launay could have done: what he 
said he would do. Fancy him sitting, from 
the first, with lighted taper, within arm's- 
length of the Powder-Magazine, motionless. 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



303 



like old Roman Senator, or Bronze Lamp- 
holder; coldly apprising Thuriot, and all 
men, by a slight motion of his eye, what 
his resolution was: — Harmless he sat there, 
while unharmed; but the King's Fortress, 
meanwhile, could, might, would or should, 
in nowise be surrendered, save to the King's 
Messenger : one old man's life is worthless, • 
so it be lost with honor; but think, ye 
brawling canaille, how will it be when a 
whole Bastille springs skyward! — In such 
statuesque, taper-holding attitude, one 
fancies De Launay might have left Thuriot, 
the red Clerks of the Basoche, Cure of 
Saint Stephen and all the tagrag-and-bob- 
tail of the world, to work their will. 

And yet, withal, he could not do it. Hast 
thou considered how each man's heart is so 
tremulously responsive to the hearts of all 
men; hast thou noted how omnipotent is 
the very sound of many menf How their 
shriek of indignation palsies the strong 
soul; their howl of contumely withers with 
unfelt pangs'? The Ritter Gluck confessed 
that the ground-tone of the noblest passage, 
in one of his noblest Operas, was the voice 
of the Populace he had heard at Vienna, 
crying to their Kaiser : Bread ! Bread ! 
Great is the combined voice of men ; the 
utterance of their instincts which are truer 
than their thoughts: It is the greatest a 
man encounters, among the sounds and 
shadows which make up this World of Time. 
He who can resist that, has his footing 
someAvhere beyond Time. De Launay could 
not do it. Distracted, he hovers between 
two; hopes in the middle of despair; sur- 
renders not his Fortress; declares that he 
will blow it up, seizes torches to blow it up, 
and does not blow it up. Unhappy old 
De Launay, it is the- death-agony of the 
Bastille and thee ! Jail, Jailering, and 
Jailer, all three, such as they may have been, 
must finish. 

For four hours now has the World- 
Bedlam roared: call it the World-Chimsera, 
blowing fire ! The poor Invalides have sunk 
under their battlements, or rise only with 
reversed muskets : they have made a white 
flag of napkins ; go beating the chamade, or 
seeming to beat, for one can hear nothing. 
The very Swiss at the Portcullis look weary 
of firing; disheartened in the fire-deluge; a 
porthole at the drawbridge is opened, as by 
one that would speak. See Huissier Mail- 
lard, the shifty man ! On his plank, swing- 
ing over the abyss of that stone Ditch ; plank 



resting on Parapet, balanced by weight of 
Patriots, — he hovers perilous : such a Dove 
towards such an Ark! Deftly, thou shifty 
Usher: one man already fell; and lies 
smashed, far down there, against the ma- 
sonry ! Usher Maillard falls not : deftly, un- 
erring he walks, Avith outspread palm. The 
Swiss holds a paper through the porthole; 
the shifty LTsher snatches it, and returns. 
Terms of surrender: Pardon, immunity to 
all! Are they accepted? — "Foi d'officier, on 
the word of an officer," answers half-pay 
Hulin, — or half-pay Elie, for men do not 
agree on it, — "they are !" Sinks the draw- 
bridge, — Usher Maillard bolting it when 
down ; rushes in the living deluge : the Bas- 
tille is fallen ! Victoire ! La Bastille est 
prise! . . . 

Wliy dwell on what follows? Hulin's foi 
d'officier should have been kept, but could 
not. The Swiss stand drawn up, disguised 
in white canvas smocks ; the Invalides with- 
out disguise ; their arms all piled against the 
wall. The first rush of victors, in ecstasy 
that the death-peril is passed, "leaps joy- 
fully on their necks ;" but new victors rush, 
and ever new, also in ecstasy not wholly of 
joy. As we said, it was a living deluge 
plunging headlong: had not the Gardes 
Frangaises, in their cool military way, 
"wheeled round with arms levelled," it would 
have plunged suicidally, by the hundred or 
the thousand, into the Bastille-ditch. 

And so it goes plunging through court 
and corridor; billowing uncontrollable, fir- 
ing from windows — on itself ; in hot frenzy 
of triumph, of grief and vengeance for its 
slain. The poor Invalides will fare ill ; one 
Swiss, running off in his white smock, is 
driven back with a death-thrust. Let all 
Prisoners be marched to the Townhall to be 
judged! — Alas, already one poor Invalide 
has his right hand slashed off; his maimed 
body dragged to the Place de Greve, and 
hanged there. This same right hand, it is 
said, turned back De Launay from the 
Powder-Magazine, and saved Paris, . . . 

In the Court all is mystery, not without 
whisperings of terror; though ye dream of 
lemonade and epaulettes, ye foolish women ! 
His Majesty, kept in happy ignorance, per- 
haps dreams of double-barrels and the 
Woods of Meudon. Late at night, the Duke 
de Lianeourt, having official right of en- 
trance, gains access to the Royal Apart- 
ments ; unfolds with earnest clearness, in his 



304 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



constitutional way, the Job's news. "Mais," 
said Poor Louis, "c'est une revolt e/' Why, 
that is a revolt ! — "Sire," answered Lian- 
court, "it is not a revolt, — it is a revolution." 



The Death-Birth of a World 

thomas carlyle 
[From The French Bevolution] 

Here perhaps is the place to fix, a little 
more precisely, what these two words, 
French Revolution, shall mean; for, strictly 
considered, they may have as many mean- 
ings as there are siDcakers of them. All 
thing's are in revolution; in change from 
moment to moment, which becomes sensible 
from epoch to epoch; in this Time- World 
of ours there is properly nothing else but 
revolution and mutation, and even nothing 
else conceivable. Revolution, you answer, 
means speedier change. Whereupon one 
has still to ask: How speedily"? At what 
degree of si3eed; in what particular points 
of this variable course, which varies in veloc- 
ity, but can never stop till Time itself stops, 
does Revolution begin and end; cease to be 
ordinary mutation, and again become such ? 
It is a thing that will depend on definition 
more or less arbitrary. 

For ourselves, we answer that French 
Revolution means here the ojDen violent Re- 
bellion, and Victory, of disemprisoned An- 
archy against corrupt worn-out Authority: 
how Anarchy breaks prison ; bursts up from 
the infinite Deep, and rages uncontrollable, 
immeasurable, enveloping a world ; in phasis 
after phasis of fever-frenzy ; — till the frenzy 
burning itself out, and what elements of 
new Order it held (since all Force holds 
such — developing themselves), the Uncon- 
trollable be got, if not reimprisoned, yet 
harnessed, and its mad forces made to work 
toward their object as sane regulated ones. 
For as Hierarchies and Dynasties of all 
kinds, Theocracies, Autocracies, Strumpet- 
ocracies, have ruled over the world; so it 
was appointed, in the decrees of Providence, 
that this same Victorious Anarchy, Jacobin- 
ism, Sansculottism, French Revolution, Hor- 
rors of French Revolution, or what else mor- 
tals name it, should have its turn. The 
"destructive wrath" of Sanscullotism : this 
is what we speak, having unhappily no voice 
for singing. 

Surely a great Phenomenon: nay it is a 
transcendental one, overstepping all rules 



and experience; the crowning Phenomenon 
of our Modern Time. For here again, most 
unexpectedly, comes antique Fanaticism in 
new and newest vesture; miraculous, as' all 
Fanaticism is. Call it the Fanaticism of 
"making away with formulas, de humer les 
formules." The world of formulas, the 
formed, regulated world, which all habitable 
world is, — must needs hate such Fanaticism 
like death ; and be at deadly variance with it. 
The world of formulas must conquer it ; or, 
failing that, must die execrating it, anathe- 
matizing it; — can nevertheless in no wise 
prevent its being and its having been. The 
Anathemas are there, and the miraculous 
thing is there. 

Whence it cometh? Whither it goeth? 
These are questions ! When the age of 
Miracles lay faded into the distance as an 
incredible tradition, and even the age of 
Conventionalities was now old; and Man's 
Existence had for long generations rested 
on mere formulas which were grown hollow 
by course of time; and it seemed as if no 
Reality any longer existed, but only Phan- 
tasms of realities, and God's Universe were 
the work of the Tailor and Upholsterer 
mainly, and men were buckram masks that 
went about becking and grimacing there, — 
on a sudden, the Earth yawns asunder, and 
amid Tartarean smoke, and glare of fierce 
brightness, rises Sansculottism, many- 
headed, fire-breathing, and asks : What 
think ye ©f mef Well niay the buckram 
masks start together, terror-struck; "into 
expressive well concerted groups !" It is 
indeed. Friends, a most singular, most fatal 
thing. Let whosoever is but buckram and 
a phantasm look to it : ill verily may it fare 
with him; here methinks he cannot much 
longer be. Woe also to many a one who is 
not altogether buckram, but partly real and 
human ! The age of Miracles has come 
back! "Behold the World-Phoenix, in fire- 
consummation and fire-creation : wide are 
her fanning wings ; loud is her death-melody, 
of battle-thunders and falling towns; sky- 
ward lashes the funeral flame, enveloping 
all things: it is the Death-Birth of a 
World!" 

The Storm 

matthew arnold 

[From Ohermann Once More, 1867] 

But slow that tide of common thought, 
Which bathed our life, retired; 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCKACY 



305 



Slow, slow the old world wore to nought, 
And pulse by pulse expired. 

Its frame yet stood without a breach 
When blood and warmth were fled; 
And still it spake its wonted speech — 
But every word was dead. 

And oh, we cried, that on this corse 
Might fall a freshening storm! 
Rive its dry bones, and with new force 
A new-sprung world inform ! 



— Down came the storm! 
pass'd 



O'er France it 



In sheets of scathing fire; 

All Europe felt that fiery blast, 

And shook as it rush'd by her. 

Down came the storm ! In ruins fell 
The worn-out world we knew. 
— It pass'd, that elemental swell ! 
Again appear'd the blue ; 

The sun shone in the new-wash'd sky, 
And what from heaven saw he? 
Blocks of the past, like icebergs high, 
Float on a rolling sea ! 



4. THE THEORY OF POLITICAL JUSTICE 



Burke 

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 

[From The Prelude, 1850] 

Genius of Burke! forgive the pen se- 
duced 
By specious wonders, and too slow to tell 
Of what the ingenuous, what bewildered 

men. 
Beginning to mistrust their boastful guides. 
And wise men, willing to grow wiser, caught. 
Rapt auditors! from thy most eloquent 

tongue — 
Now mute, for ever mute in the cold grave. 
I see him, — old, but vigorous in age, — 
Stand like an oak whose stag-horn branches 

start 
Out of its leafy brow, the more to awe 
The younger brethren of the grove. But 

some — 
While he forewarns, denounces, launches 

forth. 
Against all systems built on abstract rights. 
Keen ridicule; the majesty proclaims 
Of Institutes and Laws, hallowed by time; 
Declares the vital power of social ties 
Endeared by Custom; and with high dis- 
dain, 
Exploding upstart Theory, insists 
Upon the allegiance to which men are born — 
Some — say at once a froward multitude — 
Murmur (for truth is hated, where not 

loved) 
As the winds fret within the ^olian cave, 
Galled by their monarch's chain. The times 

were big 
With ominous change, which, night by night, 
provoked 



Keen struggles, and black clouds of passion 

raised ; 
But memorable moments intervened. 
When Wisdom, like the Goddess from Jove's 

brain, 
Broke forth in armor of resplendent words, 
Startling the Synod. Could a youth, and 

one 
In ancient story versed, whose breast had 

heaved 
Under the weight of classic eloquence. 
Sit, see, and hear, unthankful, uninspired? 

The Character of Burke 

JOHN morlet 

In every man there is a certain inevitable 
connection of opinion. We hold our views 
by sets and series. If we espouse one, we 
have unconsciously let in along with this 
a little, or it may be a long, train of others. 
A man comes to a certain conclusion upon 
some greatly controverted point of science. 
His eye has possibly never turned aside 
from the straitened bounds of scientific mat- 
ter, and yet his single conclusion here leads 
him insensibly to a whole parcel of con- 
clusions in religious matter or in ethical mat- 
ter. We ought to remember this in the case 
of Burke. Few men's opinions hang to- 
gether so closely and compactly as his did. 
The fiery glow of his nature fused all his 
ideas into a tenacious and homogeneous 
mass. What in more commonplace minds 
is effected by a process of bad logic, or by 
what seems to be hazard and caprice, in him 
was wrought by an inborn ardor of char- 
acter. His passionate enthusiasm for Order 



306 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



— and this is not a jot more strong in the 
"Reflections," in 1790 than it was in the 
"Thoughts on the Present Discontents" 
twenty years before — subjugated him as 
profoundly in one field as in another, in 
theology as in philosophy, in speculation as 
in practical politics. In that restless- 
ness to which the world is so deeply 
indebted in some respects, by which it 
has been so much injured in others, Burke 
could recognize but scanty merit, wher- 
ever it was exhibited. Himself the most 
industrious, the most active-minded of men, 
he was ever sober in fixing the limits, in 
cutting the channels of his activity, and he 
would fain have had others equally mod- 
erate. Abstract illimitable speculation had 
no attraction for him in any of its depart- 
ments. Perceiving that plain and righteous 
conduct is the end of life in this world, he 
prayed men not to be over-curious in search- 
ing for, and handling, and again handling, 
the theoretic base on which the prerogatives 
of virtue repose. Perceiving that the happi- 
ness of a people is the end of its govern- 
ment he abhorred equally the royal clique 
who took the end of government to be the 
gratification of the royal will, the old Whig 
clique who took it to be the enrichment of 
old Whigs, and the revolutionists, who, as 
Burke thought, supposed that the happiness 
of a people could never be secure save where 
there is no government, but only anarchy. 
Perceiving that the belief in a future life 
with changed conditions adds dignity to 
mortals in their hours of happiness, and 
brings comfort in their hours of anguish, 
and that the belief in a divine mediator may 
be in the same way a source of elevation 
and solace, he burned with a holy rage 
against men who seemed to him as thieves 
wantonly robbing humanity of its most 
precious treasures. Provided that there 
was peace, that is to say, general happi- 
ness and content, Burke felt that a 
too great inquisitiveness as to its founda- 
tions was not only idle, but mischievous and 
cruel. 

We have already seen how he considered 
the comparative strength of the claims upon 
us of truth and peace to be an open question. 
"As we have scarcely ever the same cer- 
tainty in the one as we have in the other, I 
would, unless the truth were evident indeed, 
hold fast to peace." In another place, he 
exclaims in precisely the same spirit, "The 
bulk of mankind, on their part, are not ex- 



ceedingly curious concerning any theories, 
whilst they are really happy; and one sure 
symptom of an ill-conducted state is the 
propensity of the people to resort to them." 
And Burke thought the bulk of mankind 
in the right. Even in a state of things 
which the most eager of optimists would 
have hesitated to look on as a state of peace, 
Burke was always careful to approach the 
ailing organ, whether ecclesiastical or politi- 
cal, with that awe and reverence, as he ex- 
pressed it, with which a young physician 
approaches to the cure of the disorders of 
his aged parent. Every institution or idea 
under which any mass of men found shelter 
or comfort, he regarded with this filial awe 
and affectionate reverence. I feel an in- 
superable reluctance, he said in one place, 
in giving my hand to destroy any established 
institution of Government upon a theory, 
however plausible it may be. Rightly con- 
ceiving that a stable equilibrium in society, 
or peace, as he always called it, is the aim 
and standard of all things, he was willing 
to believe in some mysterious finality of 
Nature, whom he supposed to have estab- 
lished once for all in 1688 the entire condi- 
tions of our national health. He habitually 
confounded existing usage and traditions, to 
be gently modified and tenderly repaired, if 
unfortunate occasion should require, with a 
moral and just equilibrium. The philo- 
sophic partisan of Order, who entreats men 
to be sure they get the best out of the sys- 
tems under which the time constrains them 
to live, before casting recklessly about for 
new things, commonly receives something 
less than justice from the anxious and ar- 
dent partisans of Progress. And this has 
perhaps been Burke's lot. Men constitu- 
tionally, or by habit, unable to realize the 
pleasures conferred by a reverent love of 
political, social, and moral order, have dealt 
little sympathy to one who threw himself so 
consistently and vehemently as Burke did 
athwart the revolutionary or critical move- 
ment of his time. But those of us who are 
not estopped by vain shibboleths from pro- 
testing that living, after all, must be the 
end of life, and that stable peace must be 
the end of society, may see that Burke's 
horror of the critical spirit in all its various 
manifestations, was the intelligible pain of 
one in the ghastly presence of dissolution, 
not knowing that the angel of a new life 

is already at his side 

He was always a lover of order in his 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



307 



most enlarged and liberal moods. He was 
never more than a lover of order when his 
deference to the wishes of the people was at 
its lowest. The institutions to which he 
was attached during the eight-and-twenty 
years of his life in the House of Commons, 
passed through two phases of peril. First, 
they were oppressed and undermined by the 
acts of the court, and the resurrection of 
prerogative in the guise of privilege. Then 
they were menaced by the democratic flood 
which overtook England after the furious 
rising of the jDopular tide in France. We 
at this distance of time may see that in 
neither case was the danger so serious and 
so real as it apjDeared in the eyes of con- 
temporaries. But in both cases Burke was 
filled with an alarm that may serve as a 
measure of the depth aiid sincerity of his 
reverence for the fabric whose overthrow, as 
he thought, was gravely threatened. In both 
cases he set his face resolutely against inno- 
vation ; in both cases he defied the enemies 
who came up from two diiferent quarters 
to assail the English constitution, and to 
destroy a system under which three genera- 
tions of Englishmen had been hapjDy and 
prosperous. He changed his front, but he 
never changed his ground. "I flatter my- 
self," he said, with justice, ''that I love a 
manly, moral, regulated liberty." And 
again : "The liberty, the only liberty I mean, 
is a liberty connected with order." The 
court tried to regulate liberty too severely. 
It found in him an inflexible opponent. 
Demagogues tried to remove the regulations 
of liberty. They encountered in him the 
bitterest and most unceasing of all remon- 
strants. The arbitrary majority in the ] 
House of Commons forgot for whose bene- 
fit they held power, from whom they de- 
rived their authority, and in what descrip- 
tion of government it was that they had a 
place. Burke was the most valiant and 
strenuous champion in the ranks of the in- 
dependent minority. He withstood to the 
face the King and the King's friends. He 
withstood to the face Charles Fox and the 
friends of the people. He may have been 
wrong in both, or in either, but let us not 
be told that he turned back in his course; 
that he was a revolutionist in 1770 and a 
reactionist in 1790 ; that he was in his sane 
mind when he opposed the supremacy of 
the Court, but that his reason was tottering 
before he opposed the supremacy of the 
rabble. 



"A Liberty Connected With Order^' 

EDMUND burke 

[Selections from Reflections on the French 
Revolution, 1790] 

1. Of the Nature of Liberty 

I flatter myself that I love a manly, moral, 
regulated liberty as well as any gentleman 
of that society, be he who he will; and per- 
haps I have given as good proofs of my at- 
tachment to that cause, in the whole course 
of my public conduct. I think 1 envy liberty 
as little as they, do, to any other nation. 
But I cannot stand forward, and give praise 
or blame to any thing which relates to hu- 
man actions, and human concerns, on a sim- 
ple view of the object as it stands stripped 
of every relation, in all the nakedness and 
solitude of metaphysical abstraction. Cir- 
cumstances (which with some gentlemen 
pass for nothing) give in reality to every 
IDolitical principle its distinguishing color, 
and discriminating effect. The circum- 
stances are what render every civil and 
jDolitical scheme beneficial or noxious to 
mankind. Abstractedly speaking, govern- 
ment, as well as liberty, is good; yet could 
I, in common sense, ten years ago, have 
felicitated France on her enjoyment of a 
government (for she then had a govern- 
ment) without enquiry what the nature of 
that government was, or how it was admin- 
istered? Can I now congratulate the same 
nation upon its freedom ? Is it because lib- 
erty in the abstract may be classed amongst 
the blessings of mankind, that I am seri- 
ously to felicitate a madman, who has 
escaped from the protecting restraint and 
wholesome darkness of his cell, on his 
restoration to the enjoyment of light and 
liberty? Am I to congratulate an highway- 
man and murderer, who has broke prison, 
upon the recovery of his natural rights? 
This would be to act over again the scene 
of the ciiminals condemned to the galleys, 
and their heroic deliverer, the metaphysic 
Knight of the Sorrowful Countenance. 

When I see the spirit of liberty in action, 
I see a strong principle at work; and this, 
for a while, is all I can possibly know of it. 
The wild gas, the fixed air, is j^lainly broke 
loose: but we ought to suspend our judg- 
ment until the first effervescence is a little 
subsided, till the liquor is cleared, and until 
we see something deeper than the agita- 



308 



THE GEEAT TKADITION 



tion of a troubled and frothy surface. I 
must be tolerably sure, before I venture pub- 
licly to congratulate men upon a blessing, 
that they have really received one. Flat- 
tery corrupts both the receiver and the 
giver; and adulation is not of more service 
to the people than to kings. I should there- 
fore suspend my congratulations on the new- 
liberty of France, until I was informed how 
it had been combined with government ; with 
public force; with the discipline and obedi- 
ence of armies; with the collection of an 
effective and well-distributed revenue; with 
morality and religion; with the solidity of 
property; with peace and order; with civil 
and social manners. All these (in their 
way) are good things too; and, without 
them, liberty is not a benefit whilst it lasts, 
and is not likely to continue long. The ef- 
fect of liberty to individuals is, that they 
may do what they please: we ought to see 
what it will -please them to do, before we 
risk congratulations, which may be soon 
turned into complaints. Prudence would 
dictate this in the case of separate insulated 
private men; but liberty, when men act in 
bodies, is power. Considerate people, be- 
fore they declare themselves, will observe the 
use which is made of power; and particu- 
larly of so trying a thing as new power in 
new persons, of Avhose i^rinciples, tempers, 
and dispositions they have little or no ex- 
perience, and in situations where those who 
appear the most stirring in the scene may 
possibly not be the real movers. 

All these considerations, however, were 
below the transcendental dignity of the 
Revolution Society. Whilst I continued in 
the country, from whence I had the honor 
of writing to you, I had but an imperfect 
idea of their transactions. On my coming to 
town, I sent for an account of their proceed- 
ings, which had been published by their 
authority, containing a sermon of Dr. Price, 
with the Duke de Kochefoueault's and the 
Archbishop of Aix's letter, and several other 
documents annexed. The whole of that pub- 
lication, with the manifest design of connect- 
ing the affairs of France with those of Eng- 
land, by draAving us into an imitation of the 
conduct of the National Assembly, gave me 
a considerable degree of uneasiness. The 
effect of that conduct upon the power, credit, 
prosperity, and tranquillity of France, be- 
came every day more evident. The form of 
constitution to be settled, for its future 
polity, became more clear. We are now in a 



condition to discern, with tolerable exact- 
ness, the true nature of the object held up to 
our imitation. If the prudence of reserve 
and decorum dictates silence in some circum- 
stances, in others prudence of an higher 
order may justify us in speaking our 
thoughts. The beginnings of confusion with 
us in England are at present feeble enough ; 
but with you, we have seen an infancy still 
more feeble, growing by moments into a 
strength to heap mountains upon mountains, 
and to wage war with Heaven itself. When- 
ever our neighbor's house is on fire, it can- 
not be amiss for the engines to play a little 
on our own. Better to be despised for too 
anxious apprehensions, than ruined by too 
confident a security. 

Solicitous chiefly for the peace of my own 
country, but by no means unconcerned for 
yours, I wish to communicate more largely, 
what was at first intended only for your pri- 
vate satisfaction. I shall still keep your 
affairs in my eye, and continue to address 
myself to you. Indulging myself in the 
freedom of epistolary intercourse, I beg 
leave to throw out my thoughts, and express 
my feelings, just as they arise in my mind, 
with very little attention to formal method. 
I set out with the proceedings of the Revo- 
lution Society; but I shall not confine my- 
self to them. Is it possible I should? It 
looks to me as if I were in a great crisis, not 
of the affairs of France alone, but of all 
Europe, perhaps of more than Europe. All 
circumstances taken together, the French 
revolution is the most astonishing that has 
hitherto hajDpened in the world. The most 
wonderful things are brought about in many 
instances by means the most absurd and 
ridiculous; in the most ridiculous modes; 
and apparently, by the most contemptible 
instruments. Everything seems out of na- 
ture in this strange chaos of levity and 
ferocity, and of all sorts of crimes jumbled 
together with all sorts of follies. In view- 
ing this monstrous tragi-comic scene, the 
most opposite jDassions necessarily succeed, 
and sometimes mix with each other in the 
mind : alternate laughter and tears ; alter- 
nate scoi'n and horror. 

This political Divine dogmatically asserts, 
that by the principles of the Revolution the 
people of England have acquired three 
fundamental rights, all which, with him, 
compose one system, and lie together in one 
short sentence; namely, that we have an 
acquired right 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



309 



1. "To choose our own governors." 

2. "To cashier them for misconduct." 

3. "To frame a government for our- 
selves." 

This new, and hitherto unheard-of bill of 
rights, though made in the name of the 
whole people, belongs to those gentlemen 
and their faction only. The body of the 
people of England have no share in it. They 
utterly disclaim it. They will resist the 
practical assertion of it with their lives and 
fortunes. They are bound to do so by the 
laws of their country, made at the time of 
that very Revolution, which is appealed to in 
favor of the fictitious rights claimed by the 
society which abuses its name. . . • 

2. The Nature of the British Constitution 

It is true that, aided with the powers de- 
rived from force and opportunity, 'the na- 
tion was at that time,^ in some sense, free 
to take what course it pleased for filling 
the throne; but only free to do so upon 
the same grounds on which they might 
have wholly abolished their monarchy, and 
every other part of their constitution. 
However, they did not think such bold 
changes within their commission. It is in- 
deed difficult, perhaps impossible, to give 
limits to the mere abstract competence of 
the supreme power, such as was exercised 
by parliament at that time; but the limits 
of a moral competence, subjecting, even in 
powers more indisputably sovereign, occa- 
sional will to permanent reason, and to the 
steady maxims of faith, justice, and fixed 
fundamental policy, are perfectly intelli- 
gible, and perfectly binding upon those 
who exercise any authority, under any 
name, or under any title, in the state. The 
house of lords, for instance, is not morally 
competent to dissolve the house of com- 
mons; no, nor even to dissolve itself, nor 
to , abdicate, if it would, its portion in the 
legislature of the kingdom. Though a king 
may abdicate for his own person, he can- 
not abdicate for the monarchy. By as 
strong, or by a stronger reason, the house 
of commons cannot renounce its share of 
authority. The engagement and pact of so- 
ciety, which generally goes by the name 
of the constitution, forbids such invasion 
and such surrender. The constitutent parts 
of a state are obliged to hold their public 
faith with each other, and with all those 
who derive any serious interest under their 

1 i. e., the time of the Revolution. 



engagements, as much as the whole state is 
bound to keep its faith with separate com- 
munities. Otherwise competence and power 
would soon be confounded, and no law be 
left but the will of a prevailing force. -On 
this principle the succession of the crown 
has always been what it now is, an heredi- 
tary succession by law : in the old line it was 
a succession by the common law; in the 
new, by the statute law, operating on the 
principles of the common law, not chang- 
ing the substance, but regulating the mode, 
and describing the persons. Both these 
descriptions of law are of the same force, 
and are derived from an equal authority, 
emanating from the common agreement and 
original compact of the state communi 
sponsione reipubliece, and as such are 
equally binding on king, and peojDle too, 
as long as the terms are observed, and they 
continue the same body politic. 

It is far from impossible to reconcile, 
if Ave do not suffer ourselves to be entan- 
gled in the mazes of metaphysie sophistry, 
the use both of a fixed rule and an occa- 
sional deviation ; the sacredness of an hered- 
itary principle of succession in our gov- 
ernment, with a power of change in its 
application in cases of extreme emergency. 
Even in that extremity (if we take the 
measure of our rights by our exercise of 
them at the Revolution) the change is to be 
confined to the peccant part only: to the 
part which produced the necessary devia- 
tion ; and even then it is to be effected with- 
out a decomposition of the whole civil and 
political mass, for the purpose of originat- 
ing a new civil order out of the first ele- 
ments of society. 

A state without the means of some change 
is without the means of its conservation. 
Without such means it might even risk the 
loss of that part of the constitution which 
it wished the most religiously to preserve. 
The two principles of conservation and cor- 
rection operated strongly at the two critical 
periods of the Restoration and Revolution, 
when England found itself without a king. 
At both those periods the nation had lost 
the bond of union in their ancient edifice; 
they did not, however, dissolve the whole 
fabric. On the contrary, in both eases they 
regenerated the deficient part of the oPd 
constitution through the parts which were 
not impaired. They kept these old parts 
exactly as they were, that the part recov- 
ered might be suited to them. They acted 
by the ancient organized states in the shape 



310 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



of their old organization, and not by the 
organic moleculce of a disbanded people. At 
no time, perhaps, did the sovereign legisla- 
ture manifest a more tender regard to their 
fundamental principle of British constitu- 
tional policy, than at the time of the Revo- 
lution, when it deviated from the direct line 
of hereditary succession. The crown was 
carried somewhat out of the line in which it 
had before moved; but the new line was de- 
rived from the same stock. It was still a 
line of hereditary descent ; still an hereditary 
descent in the same blood, though an hered- 
itary descent qualified with protestantism. 
When the legislature altered the direction, 
but kept the principle, they showed that 
they held it inviolable. . . . 

You will observe, that from Magna 
Charta to the Declaration of Right, it has 
been the uniform 2:iolicy of our constitution 
to claim and assert our liberties, as an en- 
tailed inheritance derived to us from our 
forefathers, and to be transmitted to our 
posterity; as an estate specially belonging 
to the people of this kingdom without any 
reference whatever to any other more gen- 
eral or prior right. By this means our con- 
stitution preserves an unity in so great a 
diversity of its parts. We have an inher- 
itable crown; an inheritable peerage; and 
an house of commons and a people inherit- 
ing privileges, franchises, and liberties, 
from a long line of ancestors. 

This policy appears to me to be the result 
of profound reflection ; or rather the happy 
effect of following nature, which is wisdom 
without reflection, and above it. A spirit 
of innovation is generally the result of a 
selfish temper and confined views. People 
will not look forward to posterity, who 
never look backward to their ancestors. Be- 
sides, the people of England well know 
that the idea of inheritance furnishes a sure 
principle of conservation, and a sure prin- 
ciple of transmission ; without at all ex- 
cluding a principle of improvement. It 
leaves acquisition free; but it secures 
what it acquires. Whatever advantages 
are obtained by a state proceeding on 
these maxims, are locked fast as in a 
sort of family settlement; grasped as 
in a kind of mortmain forever. By a 
constitutional policy, working after the pat- 
tern of nature, we receive, we hold, we 
transmit our government and our privileges, 
in the same manner in which we enjoy and 
transmit our property and our lives. The 
institutions of policy, the goods of fortune. 



the gifts of Providence, are handed down, 
to us and from us, in the same course and 
order. Our political system is placed in a 
just correspondence and symmetry with the 
order of the world, and with the mode of 
existence decreed to a permanent body com- 
posed of transitory parts; wherein, by the 
disposition of a stupendous wisdom, mould- 
ing together the great mysterious incorpo- 
ration of the human race, the whole, at one 
time, is never old, or middle-aged, or young, 
but in a condition of unchangeable con- 
stancy, moves on through the varied tenor 
of perpetual decay, fall, renovation, and 
progression. Thus, by preserving the 
method of nature in the conduct of the state, 
in what we improve, we are never wholly 
new ; in what we retain we are never wholly 
obsolete. By adhering in this manner and 
on those principles to our forefathers, we 
are guided not by the superstition of anti- 
quarians, but by the spirit of philosophic 
analogy. In this choice of inheritance we 
have given to our frame of polity the image 
of a relation in blood; binding up the con- 
stitution of our country with our dearest 
domestic ties; adopting our fundamental 
laws into the bosom of our family affec- 
tions; keeping inse^Darable, and cherishing 
with the warmth of all their combined and 
mutually reflected charities, our state, our 
hearths, our sepulchers, and our altars. 

Througii the same plan of a conformity 
to nature in our artificial institutions, and 
by calling in the aid of her unerring and 
powerful instincts, to fortify the fallible 
and feeble contrivances of our reason, we 
have derived several other, and those no 
small benefits, from considering our liber- 
ties in the light of an inheritance. Always 
acting as if in the presence of canonized 
forefathers, the spirit of freedom, leading 
in itself to misrule and excess, is tempered 
with an awful gravity. This idea of a lib- 
eral descent inspires us with a sense of ha- 
bitual native dignity, which prevents that 
upstart insolence almost inevitably adhering 
to and disgracing those who are the first ac- 
quirers of any distinction. By this means 
our liberty becomes a noble freedom. It 
carries an imposing and majestic aspect. It 
has a pedigree and illustrating ancestors. 
It has its bearings and its ensigns armorial. 
It has its gallery of portraits; its monu- 
mental inscriptions; its records, evidences, 
and titles. We procure reverence to our 
civil institutions on the principle upon which 
nature teaches us to revere individual men; 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCRACY 



311 



on account of their age; and on account of 
those from whom they are descended. All 
your sophisters cannot produce anything 
better adapted to preserve a rational and 
manly freedom than the course that we have 
pursued, who have chosen our nature rather 
than our speculations, our breasts rather 
than our inventions, for the great conserva- 
tories and magazines of our rights and 
privileges. . . . 

3. Of the Rights of Men 

It is no wonder that with these ideas of 
every thing in their constitution and gov- 
ernment at home, either in church or state, 
as illegitimate and usurped, or, at best as a 
vain mockery, they look abroad with an 
eager and passionate enthusiasm. Whilst 
they are possessed by these notions, it is 
vain to talk to them of the practice of their 
ancestors, the fundamental laws of their 
country, the fixed form of a constitution, 
whose merits are confirmed by the solid test 
of long experience, and an increasing public 
strength and national prosperity. They des- 
pise experience as the wisdom of unlettered 
men ; and as for the rest, they have wrought 
underground a mine that will blow up at 
one grand explosion all examples of an- 
tiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of 
parliament. They have "the rights of men." 
Against these there can be no prescription; 
against these no agreement is binding : these 
admit no temperament, and no compromise : 
any thing withheld from their full demand 
is so much of fraud and injustice. Against 
these their rights of men let no government 
look for security in the length of its con- 
tinuance, or in the justice and lenity of its 
administration. The objections of these 
speeulatists, if its forms do not quadrate 
with their theories, are as valid against such 
an old and beneficent government as against 
the most violent tyranny, or the greenest 
usurpation. They are always at issue with 
governments, not on a question of abuse, but 
a question of competency, and a question of 
title. I have nothing to say to. the clumsy 
subtlety of their political metaphysics. Let 
them be their amusement in the schools. — 
^'Illa se jactet in aula — ^olus, et clauso 
ventorum carcere regnet." — But let them 
not break prison to burst like a Levanter, to 
sweep the earth with their hurricane, and to 
break up the fountains of the great deep to 
overwhelm us. 

Far am I from denying in theory ; full as 



far is my heart from withholding in prac- 
tice (if I were of power to give or to with- 
hold), the real rights of men. In denying 
their false claims of right, I do not mean to 
injure those which are real, and are such as 
their pretended rights would totally destroy. 
If civil society be made for the advantage of 
man, all the advantages for which it is made 
become his right. It is an institution of 
beneficence; and law itself is only benefi- 
cence acting by a rule. Men have a right 
to live by that rule; they have a right to 
justice as between their fellows, whether 
their fellows are in politic function or in 
ordinary occupation. They have a right to 
the fruits of their industry; and to the 
means of making their industry fruitful. 
They have a right to the acquisitions of 
their parents; to the nourishment and im- 
provement of their offspring; to instruction 
in life, and to consolation in death. What- 
ever each man can separately do, without 
trespassing upon others, he has a right to 
do for himself ; and he has a right to a fair 
portion of all which society, with all its 
combinations of skill and force, can do in 
his favor. In this partnership all men have 
equal rights; but not to equal things. He 
that has but five shillings in the partnership 
has as good a right to it as he that has five 
hundred pound has to his larger proportion. 
But he has not a right to an equal dividend 
in the product of the joint stock; and as to 
the share of power, authority, and direc- 
tion which each individual ought to have in 
the management of the state, that I must 
deny to be amongst the direct original rights 
of man in civil society; for I have in my 
contemplation the civil social man, and no 
other. It is a thing to be settled by conven- 
tion. 

If civil society be the offspring of con- 
vention, that convention must be its law. 
That convention must limit and modify all 
the descriptions of constitution which are 
formed under it. Every sort of legislative, 
judicial, or executory power are its crea- 
tures. They can have no being in any other 
state of things ; and how can any man claim, 
under the conventions of civil society, rights 
which do not so much as suppose its exist- 
ence? Rights which are absolutely repug- 
nant to it ? One of the first motives to civil 
society, and which becomes one of its fun- 
damental rules, is, that no man should he 
judge in his own cause. By this each person 
has at once divested himself of the first fun- 
damental right of uncovenanted man, that 



312 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



is, to judge for himself, and to assert his 
own cause. He abdicates all right to be his 
own governor. He inclusively, in a great 
measure, abandons the right of self-defence, 
the first law of nature. Men cannot enjoy 
the rights of an uncivil and of a civil state 
together. That he may obtain justice he 
gives up his right of determining what it is 
in points the most essential to him. That 
he may secure some liberty, he makes a sur- 
render in trust of the whole of it. 

Government is not made in virtue of nat- 
ural rights, which may and do exist in total 
independence of it; and exist in much 
greater clearness, and in a much greater de- 
gree of abstract perfection : but their ab- 
stract perfection is their practical defect. 
By having a right to every thing, they want 
every thing. Government is a contrivance 
of human wisdom to provide for human 
wants. Men have a right that these wants 
should be provided for by this wisdom. 
Among these wants is to be reckoned the 
want, out of civil society, of a sufficient 
restraint upon their passions. Society re- 
quires not only that the passions of indi- 
viduals should be subjected, but that even 
in the mass and body as well as in the indi- 
viduals, the inclinations of men should fre- 
quently be thwarted, their will controlled, 
and their passions brought into subjection. 
This can only be done by a power out of 
themselves; and not, in the exercise of its 
function, subject to that will and to those 
passions which it is its office to bridle and 
subdue. In this sense the restraints on men, 
as well as their liberties, are to be reckoned 
among their rights. But as the liberties and 
the restrictions vary with times and circum- 
stances, and admit of infinite modifications, 
they cannot be settled upon any abstract 
rule; and nothing is so foolish as to discuss 
them upon that principle. 

The moment you abate any thing from 
the full rights of men, each to govern him- 
self, and suffer any artificial positive limi- 
tation upon those rights, from that moment 
the whole organization of government be- 
comes a consideration of convenience. This 
it is which makes the constitution of a state, 
and the due distribution of its powers, a 
matter of the most delicate and complicated 
skill. It requires a deep knowledge of 
human nature and human necessities, and 
of the things which facilitate or obstruct 
the various ends which are to be pursued by 
the mechanism of civil institutions. The 
state is to have recruits to its strength, and 



remedies to its distempers. What is the use 
of discussing a man's abstract right to food 
or to medieme? The question is upon the 
method of procuring and administering 
them. In that deliberation I shall always 
advise to call in the aid of the farmer and 
the physician, rather than the professor of 
metaphysics. 

The science of constructing a common- 
wealth, or renovating it, or reforming it, is, 
like every other experimental science, not to 
be taught a priori. Nor is it a short experi- 
ence that can instruct us in that practical 
science; because the real effects of moral 
causes are not always immediate; but that 
which in the first instance is prejudicial may 
be excellent in its remoter operation; and 
its excellence may arise even from the ill 
effects it produces in the beginning. The 
reverse also happens; and very plausible 
schemes, with very pleasing commencements, 
have often shameful and lamentable con- 
clusions. In states there are often some ob- 
scure and almost latent causes, things which 
appear at first view of little moment, on 
which a very great part of its prosperity or 
adversity may most essentially depend. The 
science of government being therefore so 
practical in itself, and uatended for such 
practical purposes, a matter which requires 
experience, and even more experience than 
any person can gain in his whole life, how- 
ever sagacious and observing he may be, it 
is with infinite caution that any man ought 
to venture upon pulling down an edifice 
which has answered in any tolerable degree 
for ages the common purposes of society, 
or on building it up again, without having 
models and patterns of approved utility be- 
fore his eyes. 

These metaphysic rights entering into 
common life, like rays of light which pierce 
into a dense medium, are, by the laws of 
nature, refracted from their straight line. 
Indeed in the gross and complicated mass 
of human passions and concerns, the primi- 
tive rights of men undergo such a variety 
of refractions and reflections that it becomes 
absurd to talk of them as if they continued 
in the simplicity of their original direction. 
The nature of man is intricate; the objects 
of society are of the greatest possible com- 
plexity; and therefore no simple disposi- 
tion or direction of power can be suitable 
either to man's nature, or to the quality of 
his affairs. When I hear the simplicity of 
contrivance aimed at and boasted of in any 
new political constitutions, I am at no loss 



THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



313 



to decide that the artificers are grossly ig- 
norant of their trade, or totally negligent of 
their duty. The simple governments are 
fundamentally defective, to say no worse of 
them. If you were to contemplate society 
in but one point of view, all these simple 
modes of polity are infinitely captivating. 
In effect each would answer its single end 
much more perfectly than the more complex 
is able to attain all its complex purposes. 
But it is better that the whole should be im- 
perfectly and anomalously answered, than 
that while some parts are provided for with 
great exactness, others might be totally neg- 
lected, or perhaps materially injured, by the 
overcare of a favorite member. 

The pretended rights of these theorists 
are all extremes ; and in proportion as they 
are metaphysically true, they are morally 
and politically false. The rights of men are 
in a sort of middle^ incapable of definition, 
but not impossible ■ to be discerned. The 
rights of men in governments are their ad- 
vantages; and these are often in balances 
between differences of good; in compro- 
mises sometimes between good and evil, and 
sometimes, between evil and evil. Political 
reason is a computing principle; adding, 
subtracting, multiplying, and dividing, mor- 
ally and not metaphysically or mathemat- 
ically, true moral denominations. 

By these theorists the right of the people 
is almost always sophistically confounded 
with their power. The body of the commu- 
nity, whenever it can come to act, can meet 
with no effectual resistance; but till power 
and right are the same, the whole body of 
them has no right inconsistent with virtue, 
and the first of all virtues, prudence. Men 
have no right to what is not reasonable, and 
to what is not for their benefit. . . . 

4. Of Chivalry 

It is now sixteen or seventeen years since 
I saw the queen of France, then the dauphi- 
ness, at Versailles ; and surely never lighted 
on this oi'b, which she hardly seemed to 
touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her 
just above the horizon, decorating and cheer- 
ing the elevated sphere she just began to 
move in; glittering like the morning star, 
full of life, and splendor, and joy. Oh ! 
what a revolution ! and what an heart must 
I have, to contemplate without emotion that 
elevation and that fall ! . Little did I dream 
when she added titles of veneration to those 
of enthusiastic, distant, respectful love, that 



she should ever be obliged to carry the sharp 
antidote against disgrace concealed in that 
bosom; little did I dream that I should 
have lived to see such disasters fallen upon 
her in a nation of gallant men, in a nation 
of men of honor and of cavaliers. I thought 
ten thou&and swords must have leaped from 
their scabbards to avenge even a look that 
thi'eatened her with insult. But the age of 
chivalry is gone. That of sophisters, econo- 
mists, and 'calculators, has succeeded; and 
the glory of Europe is extinguished forever. 
Never, never more, shall we behold that gen- 
erous loyalty to rank and sex, that proud 
submission, that dignified obedience, that 
subordination of the heart, which kept alive, 
even in servitude itself, the spirit of an ex- 
alted freedom. The unbought grace of life, 
the cheap defense of nations, the nurse of 
manly sentiment and heroic enterprise, is 
gone ! It is gone, that sensibility of prin- 
ciple, that chastity of honor, which felt a 
stain like a wound, which inspired courage 
whilst it mitigated ferocity, which ennobled 
whatever it touched, and under which vice 
itself lost half its evil, by losing all its gross- 
ness. 

This mixed system of opinion and senti- 
ment had its origin in the ancient chivalry; 
and the principle, though varied in its ap- 
pearance by the varying state of human 
affairs, subsisted and influenced through a 
long succession of generations, even to the 
time we live in. If it should ever be totally 
extinguished, the loss I fear will be great. 
It is this which has given its character to 
modern Europe. It is this which has dis- 
tinguished it under all its forms of govern- 
ment, and distinguished it to its advantage, 
from the states of Asia, and possibly from 
those states which flourished in the most 
brilliant periods of the antique world. It 
was this which, without confoimding ranks, 
had produced a noble equality, and handed 
it down through all the gradations of social 
life. It was this opinion which mitigated 
kings into companions, and raised private 
men to be fellows with kings. Without 
force, or opposition, it subdued the fierce- 
ness of pride and power; it obliged sov- 
ereigns to submit to the soft collar of social 
esteem, compelled stern authority to submit 
to elegance, and gave a domination, van- 
quisher of laws, to be subdued by manners. 

But now all is to be changed. All the 
pleasing illusions, which made power gentle, 
and obedience liberal, which harmonized the 
different shades of life, and which, by a 



314 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



blind assimilation, incorporated into politics 
the sentiments which beautify and soften 
private society, are to be dissolved by this 
new conquering- empire of light and reason. 
All the decent drapery of life is to be rudely 
torn off. All the super-added ideas, fur- 
nished from the wardrobe of a moral imagi- 
nation, which the heart owns, and the un- 
derstanding ratifies, as necessary to cover 
the defects of our naked shivering nature, 
and to raise it to dignity in our own esti- 
mation, are to be exploded as a ridiculous, 
absurd, and antiquated fashion. 

On this scheme of things, a king is but a 
man ; a queen is but a woman ; a woman is 
but an animal; and an animal not of the 
highest order. All homage paid to the sex 
in general as such, and without distinct 
views, is to be regarded as romance and 
folly. Regicide, and parricide, and sacri- 
lege, are but fictions of superstition, cor- 
rupting' jurisprudence by destroying its sim- 
plicity. The murder of a king, or a queen, 
or a bishop, or a father, are only common 
homicide; and if the people are by any 
chance, or in any way gainers by it, a sort 
of homicide much the most pardonable, and 
into which we ought not to make too severe 
a scrutiny. 

On the scheme of this barbarous philoso- 
phy, which is the offspring of cold hearts 
and muddy understandings, and which is as 
void of solid wisdom as it is destitute of all 
taste and elegance, laws are to be supported 
only by their own terrors, and by the con- 
cern which each individual may find in them 
from his own private speculations, or can 
spare to them from his own private inter- 
ests. In the groves of their academy, at the 
end of every vista, you see nothing Ijut the 
gallows. Nothing is left which engages the 
affections on the part of the commonwealth. 
On the principles of this mechanic philoso- 
phy, our institutions can never be embodied, 
if I may use the expression, in persons; so 
as to create in us love, veneration, admira- 
tion, or attachment. But that sort of reason 
which banishes the affections is incapable of 
filling- their place. These public affections, 
combined with manners, are required some- 
times as supplements, sometimes as correct- 
ives, always as aids to law. The precept 
given by a wise man, as well as a great critic, 
for the construction of poems, is equally 
true as to states. Non satis est pulchra esse 
poemata, dulcia sunto. There ought to be a 
system of manners in every nation which a 
well-formed mind would be disposed to rel- 



ish. To make us love our country, our coun- 
try ought to be lovely. 

But power, of some kind or other, will 
survive the shock in which manners and 
opinions perish; and it will find other and 
worse means for its support. The usurpa- 
tion which, in order to subvert ancient in- 
stitutions, has destroyed ancient principles, 
will hold power by arts similar to those by 
which it has acquired it. When the old 
feudal and chivalrous spirit of Fealty, 
which, by freeing kings from fear, freed 
both kings and subjects from the precau- 
tions of tyranny, shall be extinct in the 
minds of men, plots and assassinations will 
be anticipated by preventive murder and 
preventive confiscation, and that long roll 
of grim and bloody maxims, which form 
the political code of all power, not standing 
on its own honor, and the honor of those 
who are to obey it. Kings will be tyrants 
from policy when subjects are rebels from 
principle. 

When ancient opinions and rules of life 
are taken away, the loss cannot jDossibly be 
estimated. From that moment we have no 
compass to govern us ; nor can we know dis- 
tinctly to what port we steer. Europe un- 
doubtedly, taken in a mass, was in a flour- 
ishing condition the day on which your 
Revolution was completed. How much of 
that prosperous state was owing to the spirit 
of our old manners and opinions is not easy 
to say; but as such causes cannot be indif- 
ferent in their operation, we must presume, 
that, on the whole, their operation was bene- 
ficial. 

We are but too apt to consider things in 
the state in which we find them, without suf- 
ficiently adverting to the causes by which 
they have been produced, and possibly may 
be upheld. Nothing is more certain than 
that our manners, our civilization, and all 
the good things which are connected with 
manners, and with civilization, have, in this 
European world of ours, depended for ages 
u^Don two principles; and were indeed the 
result of both combined; I mean the spirit 
of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion. 
The nobility and the clergy, the one by pro- 
fession, the other by patronage, kept learn- 
ing in existence, even in the midst of arms 
and confusions, and whilst governments were 
rather in their causes than formed. Learn- 
ing paid back what it received to nobility 
and to priesthood; and paid it with usury, 
by enlarging- their ideas, and by furnishing 
their minds, Happy if they had all con- 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



315 



tinued to know their indissoluble union, and 
their proper place ! Happy if learning, not 
debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to 
continue the instructor, and not aspired to 
be the master ! Along with its natural pro- 
tectors and guardians, learning will be cast 
into the mire, and trodden down under the 
hoofs of a swinish multitude. 

If, as I suspect, modern letters owe more 
than they are always willing to own to an- 
cient manners, so do other interests which 
we value full as much as they are worth. 
Even commerce, and trade, and manufac- 
ture, the gods of our economical politicians, 
are themselves perhaps but creatures; are 
themselves but effects, which, as first causes, 
we choose to worship. They certainly grew 
under the same shade in which learning 
flourished. They too may decay with their 
natural protecting principles. With you, 
for the present at least, they all threaten to 
disappear together. Where trade and man- 
ufactures are wanting to a people, and the 
spirit of nobility and religion remams, sen- 
timent supplies, and not always ill supplies, 
their place; but if commerce and the arts 
should be lost in an experiment to ti'y how 
well a state may stand without these old 
fundamental principles, what sort of a thing 
must be a nation of gToss, stupid, ferocious, 
and at the same time, poor and sordid bar- 
barians, destitute of religion, honor, or 
manly pride, possessing nothing at present, 
and hoping for nothing hereafter'? 

I wish you may not be going fast, and by 
the shortest cut, to that horrible and dis- 
gustful situation. Already there appears a 
poverty of conception, a coarseness and vul- 
garity in all the proceedings of the assembly 
and of all their instructors. Their liberty is 
not liberal. Their science is presumptuous 
ignorance. Their humanity is savage and 
brutal. 

It is not clear whether in England we 
learned those grand and decorous principles, 
and manners, of which considerable traces 
yet remain, from you, or whether you took 
them from us. But to you, I think, we trace 
them best. You seem to me to be "gentis in- 
cunabula nostrcE." France has always more 
or less influenced manners in England; and 
when your fountain is choked up and pollut- 
ed, the stream will not run long, or not run 
clear with us, or perhaps with any nation. 
This gives all Europe, in my opinion, but 
too close and connected a concern in what 
is done in Prance. Excuse me, therefore. 



if I have dwelt too long on the atrocious 
spectacle of the sixth of October, 1789, or 
have given too much scope to the reflections 
which have arisen in my mind on occasion 
of the most important of all revolutions, 
which may be dated from that day, I mean a 
revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral 
opinions. As things now stand, with every- 
thing respectable destroyed without us, and 
an attempt to destroy within us every prin- 
ciple of respect, one is almost forced to 
apologize for harboring the common feel- 
ings of men. 

Why do I feel so differently from the 
Reverend Dr. Price, and those of his lay 
flock, who will choose to adopt the senti- 
ments of his discourse? For this plain 
reason — because it is natural I should; be- 
cause we are so made as to be affected at 
such spectacles with melancholy sentiments 
upon the unstable condition of moral pros- 
perity, and the tremendous uncertainty of 
human gTeatness; because in those natural 
feelings we learn great lessons; because in 
events like these our passions instruct our 
reason ; because when kings are hurled from 
their thrones by the Supreme Director of 
this great drama, and become the objects of 
insult to the base, and of pity to the good, 
we behold such disasters in the moral, as we 
should behold a miracle in the physical order 
of things. We are alarmed into reflection; 
our minds (as it has long since been ob- 
served) are purified by terror and pity; our 
weak, unthinking pride is humbled, under 
the dispensations of a mysterious wisdom. 
Some tears might be drawn from me, if such 
a spectacle were exhibited on the stage. I 
should be truly ashamed of finding in my- 
self that superficial, theatric sense of painted 
distress, whilst I could exult over it in real 
life. With such a perverted mind, I could 
never venture to show my face at a tragedy. 
People would think the tears that Garrick 
formerly, or that Siddons not long since, 
have extorted from me, were the tears of 
hypocrisy; I should know them to be the 
tears of folly. 

Indeed the theater is a better school of 
moral sentiments than churches, where the 
feelings of humanity are thus outraged. 
Poets who have to deal with an audience not 
yet graduated in the school of the rights of 
men, and who must apply themselves to the 
moral constitution of the heart, would not 
dare to produce such 'a triumph as a matter 
of exultation. There, where men follow their 



316 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



natural impulses, they would not bear the 
odious maxims of a Machiavellian policy, 
whether aj^plied to the attainment of mon- 
archical or democratic tyranny. They would 
reject them on the modern, as they once 
did on the ancient stage; Avhere they could 
not bear even the hypothetical proposition 
of such wickedness in the mouth of a per- 
sonated tyrant, though suitable to the char- 
acter he sustained. No theatric audience in 
Athens would bear what has been borne, in 
the midst of the real tragedy of this tri- 
umphal day; a princii^al actor weighing, as 
it were in scales hung in a shop of horrors, 
so much actual crime against so much con- 
tingent advantage, and after putting in and 
out weights, declaring that the balance was 
on the side of the advantages. They would 
not bear to see the crimes of new democracy 
posted as in a ledger against the crimes of 
old despotism, and the bookkeepers of poli- 
tics finding democracy still in debt, but by 
no means unable or unwilling to pay the 
balance. In the theater, the first intuitive 
glance, without any elaborate process of 
reasoning, would show that this method 
of political computation would justify every 
extent of crime. They would see that on 
these principles, even where the very worst 
acts were not perjDetrated, it was owing 
rather to the fortune of the conspirators 
than to their parsimony in the expenditure 
of treachery and blood. They would soon 
see that criminal means once tolerated are 
soon preferred. They present a shorter cut 
to the object than through the highway of 
the moral virtues. Justifying perfidy and 
murder for public benefit, public benefit 
would soon become the pretext, and perfidy 
and murder the end ; until rapacity, malice, 
revenge, and fear more dreadful than re- 
venge, could satiate their insatiable ap- 
petites. Such must be the consequences of 
losing in the splendor of these triumphs of 
the rights of men, all natural sense of wrong 
and right. , . , 

5. Of Free Government 

Society is indeed a contract. Subordinate 
contracts, for objects of mere occasional in- 
terest, may be dissolved at pleasure ; but the 
state ought not to be considered as nothing 
better than a partnership agreement in a 
trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, 
or some other such low concern, to be taken 
up for a little temporary interest, and to be 



dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is 
to be looked on with other reverence; be- 
cause it is not a partnership in things sub- 
servient only to the gross animal existence 
of a temporary and perishable nature. It is 
a partnership in all science; a partnership 
in all art ; a partnership in every virtue, and 
in all perfection. As the ends of such a 
partnership cannot be obtained in many 
generations, it becomes a partnership not 
only between those who are living, but be- 
tween those who are living, those who are 
dead, and those who are to be born. Each 
contract of each particular state is but a 
clause in the great primeval contract of 
eternal society, linking the lower witli the 
higher natures, connecting the visible and 
invisible world, according to a fixed compact 
sanctioned by the inviolable oath which holds 
all iDhysical and all moral natures, each in 
their appointed place. This law is not sub- 
ject to the will of those, who by an obliga- 
tion above them, and infinitely suiDcrior, are 
bound to submit their will to that law. The 
municiiDal corporations of that universal 
kingdom are not morally at liberty at their 
pleasure, and on their speculations of a con- 
tingent imi^rovement, Avholly to separate 
and tear asunder the bands of their sub- 
ordinate community, and to dissolve it into 
an unsocial, uncivil, unconnected chaos of 
elementary principles. It is the first and 
sui:)reme necessity only, a necessity that is 
not chosen but chooses, a necessity para- 
mount to deliberation, that, admits no dis- 
cussion, and demands no evidence, which 
alone can justify a resort to anarchy. This 
necessity is no exception to the rule; be- 
cause this necessity itself is a part too of 
that moral and physical disposition of things 
to which man must be obedient by consent 
or force. But if that which is only submis- 
sion to necessity should be made the object 
of choice, the law is broken; nature is dis- 
obeyed; and the rebellious are outlawed, 
cast forth, and exiled, from this world of 
reason, and order, and peace, and virtue, and 
fruitful penitence, into the antagonist world 
of madness, discord, vice, confusion, and 
unavailing sorrow. . . . 

At once to preserve and to reform is quite 
another thing. When the useful parts of 
an old establishment are kept, and what is 
superadded is to be fitted to what is re- 
tained, a vigorous mind, steady, persevering 
attention, various powers of comparison and 
combination, and the resources of !an un- 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCRACY 



317 



derstanding fruitful in expedients are to be 
exercised ; they are to be exercised in a con- 
tinued conflict with the combined force of 
opposite vices; with the obstinacy that re- 
jects all improvement, and the levity that is 
fatigued and disgusted with everything of 
which it is in possession. But you may 
object — ''A process of this kind is slow. It 
is not fit for an assembly, which glories in 
performing in a few months the work of 
ages. Such a mode of reforming possibly 
might take up many years." Without ques- 
tion it might; and it ought. It is one of 
the excellencies of a method in which time 
is amongst the assistants, that its operation 
is slow, and in some cases almost imper- 
ceptible. If circumspection and caution are 
a part of wisdom, when we work only upon 
inanimate matter, surely they become a part 
of duty, too, when the subject of our demoli- 
tion and construction is not brick and tim- 
ber, but sentient beings, by the sudden 
alteration of whose state, condition, and hab- 
its, multitudes may be rendered miserable. 
But it seems as if it were the prevalent 
opinion in Paris that an unfeeling heart, 
and an undoubting confidence, are the sole 
qualifications for a perfect legislator. Far 
different are my ideas of that high office. 
The true lawgiver ought to have an heart 
full of sensibility. He ought to love and 
respect his kind and to fear himself. It may 
be allowed to his temperament to catch his 
ultimate object with an intuitive glance ; but 
his movements towards it ought to be delib- 
erate. Political arrangement, as it is a work 
for social ends, is to be only wrought by 
social means. There mind must conspire 
with mind. Time is required to produce that 
union of minds which alone can produce all 
the good we aim at. Our patience will 
achieve more than our force. If I might 
venture to appeal to what is so much out of 
fashion in Paris, I mean, to experience, I 
should tell you, that in my course I have 
known, and, according to my measure, have 
co-operated with great men; and I have 
never yet seen any plan which has not been 
mended by the observations of those who 
were much inferior in understanding to the 
person who took the lead in the business. By 
a slow but well-sustained progress, the effect 
of each step is watched ; the good or ill suc- 
cess of the first, gives light to us in the sec- 
ond ; and so, from light to light, we are con- 
ducted with safety through the whole series. 
"We see that the parts of the system do not 



clash. The evils latent in the most promising 
contrivances are provided for as they arise. 
One advantage is as little as possible sac- 
rificed to another. We compensate, we 
reconcile, we balance. We are enabled to 
unite into a consistent whole the various 
anomalies and contending principles that are 
found in the minds and affairs of men. 
From hence arises, not an excellence in sim- 
plicity, but one far superior, an excellence in 
composition. Where the great interests of 
mankind are concerned through a long suc- 
cession of generations, that succession ought 
to be admitted into some share in the coun- 
cils which are so deeply to affect them. If 
justice requires this, the work itself requires 
the aid of more minds than one age can 
furnish. It is from this view of things that 
the best legislators have been often satis- 
fied with the establishment of some sure, 
solid, and ruling principle in government; 
a power like that which some of the 
philosophers have called a plastic nature; 
and having fixed the principle, they have 
left it afterwards to its own operation. . . . 
The effects of the incapacity shown by the 
popular leaders in all the great members of 
the commonwealth are to be covered with the 
"all-atoning name" of liberty. In some peo- 
ple I see great liberty indeed; in many, if 
not in the most, an oppressive, degrading 
servitude. But what is liberty without wis- 
dom, and without virtue ? It is the greatest 
of all possible evils ; for it is folly, vice, and 
madness, without tuition or restraint. Those 
who know what virtuous liberty is, cannot 
bear to see it disgraced by incapable heads, 
on account of their having high-sounding 
words in their mouths. Grand, swelling sen- 
timents of liberty, I am sure I do not de- 
spise. They warm the heart; they enlarge 
and liberalize our minds ; they animate our 
courage in a time of conflict. Old as I am, 
I read the fine raptures of Luean and Cor- 
neille with pleasure. Neither do I wholly 
condemn the little arts and devices of popu- 
lai'ity. They facilitate the carrying of many 
points of moment ; they keep the people to- 
gether; they refresh the mind in its exer- 
tions ; and they diffuse occasional gaiety over 
the severe brow of moral freedom. Every 
politician ought to sacrifice to the graces; 
and to join compliance with reason. But in 
such an undertaking as that in France, all 
these subsidiary sentiments and artifices are 
of little avail. To make a government re- 
quires no great prudence. Settle the seat 



318 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



of power; teach obedience; and the work 
is done. To give freedom is still more easy. 
It is not necessary to guide ; it only requires 
to let go the rein. But to form a free gov- 
ernment; that is, to temper together these 
opposite elements of liberty and restraint in 
one consistent work, requires much thought ; 
deep reflection; a sagacious, powerful, and 
combining mind. This I do not find in those 
who take the lead in the National Assembly. 
Perhaps they are not so miserably deficient 
as they appear, I rather believe it. It 
would put them below the common level of 
human understanding. But when the leaders 
choose to make themselves bidders at an 
auction of popularity, their talents, in the 
construction of the state, will be of no serv- 
ice. They will become flatterers instead of 
legislators; the instruments, not the guides 
of the people. If any of them should hap- 
pen to propose a scheme of liberty, soberly 
limited, and defined with proper qualifica- 
tions, he will be immediately outbid by his 
competitors, who will produce something- 
more splendidly popular. Suspicions will be 
raised of his fidelity to his cause. Modera- 
tion will be stigmatized as the virtue of 
cowards, and compromise as the prudence 
of traitors ; until, in hopes of preserving the 
credit which may enable him to temper and 
moderate on some occasions, the popular 
leader is obliged to become active in propa- 
gating doctrines, and establishing powers, 
that will afterwards defeat any sober pur- 
pose at which he ultimately might have 
aimed. 

But am I so unreasonable as to see noth- 
ing at all that deserves commendation in 
the indefatigable labors of this assembly? 
I do not deny that among an infinite num- 
ber of acts of violence and folly, some good 
may have been done. They who destroy 
everything certainly will remove some griev- 
ance. They who make everything new, have 
a chance that they may establish something 
beneficial. To give them credit for what 
they have done in virtue of the authority 
they have usurped, or which can exctise them 
in the crimes by which that authority has 
been acquired, it must appear that the 
same things could not have been ac- 
complished without producing such a revo- 
lution. Most assuredly they might ; because 
almost every one of the regulations made by 
them, which is not very equivocal, was either 
in the cession of the king, voluntarily made 
at the meeting of the states, or in the con- 



current instructions to the orders. Some 
usages have been abolished on just grounds; 
but they were such that if they had stood as 
they were to all eternity, they would little 
detract from the happiness and prosperity 
of any state. The improvements of the Na- 
tional Assembly are superficial ; their errors 
fundamental. 

Whatever they are, I wish my country- 
men rather to recommend to our neighbors 
the example of the British constitution, than 
to take models from them for the improve- 
ment of our own. In the former they have 
got an invaluable treasure. They are not, I 
think, without some causes of apprehension 
and complaint ; but these they do not owe to 
their constitution, but to their own conduct. 
I think our happy situation owing to our 
constitution; but owing to the whole of it, 
and not to any part singly ; owing in a great 
measure to what we have left standing in 
our several reviews and reformations, as well 
as to what we have altered or superadded. 
Our people will find employment enough for 
a truly patriotic, free, and independent 
spirit, in guarding what they possess from 
violation, I would not exclude alteration 
neither ; but even when I changed, it should 
be to preserve, I should be led to my remedy 
by a great grievance. In what I did, I 
should follow the example of our ancestors. 
I would make the reparation as nearly as 
possible in the style of the building. A 
politic caution, a guarded circumspection, a 
moral rather than a complexional timidity, 
were among the ruling principles of our 
forefathers in their most decided conduct. 
Not being illuminated with the light of which 
the gentlemen of France tell us they have 
got so abundant a share, they acted under 
a strong impression of the ignorance and 
fallibility of mankind. He that had made 
them thus fallible, rewarded them for hav- 
ing in their conduct attended to their nature. 
Let us imitate their caution, if we wish to 
deserve their fortune, or to retain their be- 
quests. Let us add, if we please ; but let us 
preserve what they have left ; and, standing 
on the firm ground of the British constitu- 
tion, let us be satisfied to admire rather than 
attempt to follow in their desperate flights 
the aeronauts of France. 

I have told you candidly my sentiments. 
I think they are not likely to alter yours. I 
do not know that they ought. You are 
young; you cannot guide, but must follow 
the fortune of your country. But hereafter 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



319 



they may he of some use to you, in some 
future form which your commonwealth may 
take. In the present it can hardly remain ; 
but before its final settlement it may be 
obliged to pass, as one of our poets says, 
"through great varieties of untried being." 
and in all its transmigrations to be purified 
by fire and blood. 

I have little to recommend my opinions 
but long observation and much impartiality. 
They come from one who has been no tool 
of power, no flatterer of greatness ; and who 
in his last acts does not wish to belie the 
tenor of his life. They come from one, al- 
most the whole of whose iDublie exertion has 
been a struggle for the liberty of others; 
from one in whose breast no anger durable 
or vehement has ever been kindled but by 
what he considered as tyranny; and who 
snatches from his share in the endeavors 
which are used by good men to discredit 
opulent oppression, the hours he has em- 
ployed on your affairs ; and who in so doing 
persuades himself he has not departed from 
his usual office. They come from one who 
desires honors, distinctions, 'and emolu- 
ments but little, and who expects them not 
at all; who has no contempt for fame, and 
no fear of obloquy; who shuns contention, 
though he will hazard an opinion : from one 
who wishes to preserve consistency ; but who 
would preserve consistency by varying his 
means to secure the unity of his end; and, 
when the equipoise of the vessel in which 
he sails may be endangered by overloading 
it upon one side, is desirous of carrying the 
small weight of his reasons to that which 
may preserve its equipoise. 

The Rights of Man 

thomas paine 

[From Paine's Reply to Burke, 1791] 

1. Government Is for the Living 

The English Parliament of 1688 did a 
certain thing, which, for themselves and 
their constituents, they had a right to do', 
and which it appeared right should be done. 
But, in addition to this right, which they 
possessed by delegation, they set up another 
right hy assumption, that of binding and 
controlling posterity to the end of time. The 
case, therefore, divides itself into two parts ; 
the right which they possessed by delega- 
tion, and the right which they set up by as- 



sumption. The first is admitted; but with 
respect to the second, I reply — 

There never did, there never will, and 
there never can, exist a Parliament, or any 
description of men, or any generation of 
men, in any countiy, possessed of the right 
or the power of binding and controlling 
posterity to the "end of time," or of com- 
manding forever how the world shall be gov- 
erned, or who shall govern it; and there- 
fore all such clauses, acts, or declarations by 
which the makers of them attempt to do 
what they have neither the right nor the 
power to do, nor the power to execute, are 
in themselves null and void. Every age and 
generation must be as free to act for itself 
in all cases as the age and generations which 
preceded it. The vanity and presumption 
of governing beyond the grave is the most 
ridiculous and insolent of all tyrannies. 
Man has no property in man; neither has 
any generation a property in the genera- 
tions which are to follow. The Parliament 
or the people of 1688, or of any other pe- 
riod, had no more right to dispose of the 
people of the present day, or to bind or to 
control them in any shape whatever, than 
the parliament or the people of the present 
day have to dispose of, bind, or control 
those who are to live a hundred or a thou- 
sand years hence. Every generation is, and 
must be, competent to all the purposes which 
its occasions require. It is the living, and 
not the dead, that are to be accommodated. 
When man ceases to be, his power and his 
wants cease with him ; and having no longer 
any participation in the concerns of this 
world, he has no longer any authority in di- 
recting who shall be its governors, or how 
its government shall be organized, or how 
administered. 

I am not contending for nor against any 
form of government, nor for nor against 
any party, here or elsewhei^e. That which a 
whole nation chooses to do it has a right to 
do. Mr. Burke says. No. Where, then, 
does the right exist? I am contending for 
the rights of the living, and against their 
being willed away and controlled and con- 
tracted for by the manuscript assumed au- 
thority of the dead, and Mr. Burke is eon- 
tending for the authority of the dead over 
the rights and freedom of the living. There 
was a time when kings disposed of their 
crowns by will upon their death-beds, and 
consigned the people, like beasts of the 
field, to whatever successor they appointed. 
This is now so exploded as scarcely to be 



320 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



remembered, and so monstrous as hardly to 
be believed. But the Parliamentary clauses 
upon which Mr. Burke builds his political 
church are of the same nature. 

The laws of every country must be analo- 
gous to some common principle. In Eng- 
land no parent or master, nor all the au- 
thority of Parliament, omnipotent as it has 
called itself, can bind or control the personal 
freedom even of an individual beyond the 
age of twenty-one years. On what ground 
of I'ight, then, could the Parliament of 1688, 
or any other Parliament, bind all posterity 
forever ? 

, Those who have quitted the world, and 
those who have not yet arrived at it, are as 
remote from each other as the utmost stretch 
of mortal imagination can conceive. What 
possible obligation, then, can exist between 
them — what rule or principle can be laid 
down that of two nonentities, the one out of 
existence and the other not in, and who 
never can meet in this world, the one should 
control the other to the end of time? 

In England it is said that money cannot 
be taken out of the pockets of the people 
without their consent. But who authorized, 
or who could authorize, the Parliament of 
1688 to control and take away the freedom 
of posterity (who were not in existence to 
give or to withhold their consent), and limit 
and confine their right of acting in certain 
cases forever*? 

A greater absurdity cannot present itself 
to the understanding of man than what Mr. 
Burke offers to his readers. He tells them, 
and he tells the world to come, that a cer- 
tain body of men who existed a hundred 
years ago made a law, and that there does 
not now exist in the nation, nor ever will, 
nor ever can, a power to alter it. Under 
how many subtilties or absurdities has the 
divine right to govern been imposed on the 
credulity of mankind? Mr. Burke has dis- 
covered a new one, and he has shortened his 
journey to Rome by appealing to the power 
of this infallible Parliament of former days, 
and he produces what it has done as of di- 
vine authority, for that power must cer- 
tainly be more than human which no human 
power to the end of time can alter. 

But Mr. Burke has done some service — 
not to his cause, but to his country — by 
bringing those clauses into public view. 
They serve to demonstrate how necessary it 
is at all times to watch against the at- 
tempted encroachment of power, and to pre- 
vent its running to excess. It is somewhat 



extraordinary that the offence for which 
James II. was expelled, that of setting up 
power by assumption, should be re-acted, 
under another shape and form, by the Par- 
liament that expelled him. It shows that 
the Rights of Man were but imperfectly 
understood at the Revolution, for certain it 
is that the right which that Parliament set 
up by assumption (for by delegation it had 
not, and could not have it, because none 
could give it) over the persons and freedom 
of posterity forever was of the same tyran- 
nical unfounded kind which James at- 
tempted to set up over the Parliament and 
the nation, and for which he was expelled. 
The only difference is (for in princiiole 
they differ not) that the one was an usurper 
over the living, and the other over the un- 
born ; and as the one has no better authority 
to stand upon than the other, both of them 
must be equally null and void, and of no 
effect. 

From what, or from whence, does Mr. 
Burke prove the right of any human power 
to bind posterity forever? He has pro- 
duced his clauses, but he must produce also 
his proofs that such a right existed, and 
show how it existed. If it ever existed it 
must now exist, for whatever appertains to 
the nature of man cannot be annihilated by 
man. It is the nature of man to die, and he 
will continue to die as long as he continues 
to be born. But Mr. Burke has set up a 
sort of political Adam, in whom all poster- 
ity are bound forever. He must, therefore, 
prove that his Adam possessed such a power, 
or such a right. 

The weaker any cord is, the less will it 
bear to be stretched, and the worse is the 
l^olicy to stretch it, unless it is intended to 
break it. Had anyone proposed the over- 
throw of Mr. Burke's positions, he would 
have proceeded as Mr. Burke has done. He 
would have magnified the authorities, on 
purpose to have called the right of them into 
question; and the instant the question of 
right was started, the authorities must have 
been given up. 

It requires but a very small glance of 
thought to perceive that although laws made 
in one generation often continue in force 
through succeeding generations, yet they 
continue to derive their force from the eon- 
sent of the living. A law not repealed con- 
tinues in force, not because it cannot be re- 
pealed, but because it is not repealed; and 
the non-repealing passes for consent. 

But Mr. Burke's clauses have not even 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



321 



this qualification in their favor. They be- 
come null, by attempting to become immor- 
tal. The nature of them precludes consent. 
They destroy the right which they might 
have, by grounding it on a right which they 
cannot have. Immortal power is not a 
human right, and therefore cannot be a 
right of Parliament. The Parliament of 
1688 might as well have passed an act to 
Have authorized themselves to live forever, 
as to make their authority live forever. All, 
therefore, that can be said of those clauses 
is that they are a formality of words, of as 
much import as if those who used them had 
'addressed a congratulation to themselves, 
and in the oriental style of antiquity had 
said : Parliament, live forever ! 

The circumstances of the world are con- 
tinually changing, and the opinions of men 
change also; and as government is for the 
living, and not for the dead, it is the living 
only that has any right in it. That which 
may be thought right and found convenient 
in one age may be thought wrong and found 
inconvenient in another. In such cases, who 
is to decide, the living or the dead? 

As almost one hundred pages of Mr. 
Bui'ke's book are employed upon these 
clauses, it will consequently folloAV that if 
the clauses themselves, so far as they set up 
an assumed usurped dominion over poster- 
ity forever, are unauthoritative, and in their 
nature null and void ; that all his voluminous 
inferences, and declamation drawn there- 
from, or founded thereon, are null and void 
also; and on this ground I rest tlie matter. 

We now come more particularly to the 
affairs of France. Mr. Burke's book has 
the appearance of being written as instruc- 
tion to the French nation ; but if I may per- 
mit myself the use of an extravagant meta- 
phor, suited to the extravagance of the case, 
it is darkness attempting to illuminate light. 

While I am writing this there are acci- 
dentally before me some proposals for a 
declaration of rights by the Marquis de la 
Fayette (I ask his pardon for using his 
former address, and do it only for distinc- 
tion's sake) to the National Assembly, on 
the 11th of July, 1789, three days before 
the taking of the Bastille, and I cannot but 
remark with astonishment how opposite the 
sources are from Avhich that gentleman and 
Mr. Burke draw their principles. Instead 
of referring to musty records and mouldy 
parchments to prove that the rights of the 
living are lost, "renounced and abdicated 
forever," by those who are now no more, as 



Mr. Burke has done, M. de la Fayette ap- 
plies to the living world, and emphatically 
says : "Call to mind the sentiments which 
nature has engraved on the heart of every 
citizen, and which take a new foi'ce when 
they are solemnly recognized by all: — For 
a nation to love liberty, it is sufficient that 
she knows it; and to be free, it is sufficient 
that she wills it." How dry, barren, and 
obscure is the source from which Mr. Burke 
labors ! and how ineffectual, though gay 
with flowers, are all his declamation and his 
arguments compared with these clear, con- 
cise, and soul-animating' sentiments! Few 
and short as they are, they lead on to a vast 
field of generous and manly thinking, and 
do not finish, like Mr. Burke's periods, with 
music in the ear, and nothing in the heart. 
As I have introduced M. de la Fayette, I 
will take the liberty of adding an anecdote 
respecting his farewell address to the Con- 
gress of America in 1783, and which oc- 
curred fresh to my mind, when I saw Mr. 
Burke's thundering attack on the French 
Revolution, M. de la Fayette went to 
America at the early period of the war, and 
continued a volunteer in her service to the 
end. His conduct through the whole of that 
enterprise is one of the most extraordinary 
that is to be found in the history of a young 
man, scarcely then twenty years of age. 
Situated in a country that was like the lap 
of sensual pleasure, and with the means of 
enjoying it, how few are there to be found 
who would exchange such a scene for the 
woods and wildernesses of America, and 
pass the flowery years of youth in unprofit- 
able danger and hardship ! but such is the 
fact. When the war ended, and he was on 
the point of taking his final departure, he 
presented himself to Congress, and contem- 
plating m his affectionate farewell the Rev- 
olution he had seen, expressed himself in 
these words : "May this great monument 
raised to liberty serve as a lesson to the op- 
pressor, and an example to the oppressed !" 

2. Of "Chivalry'' 

As to the tragic paintings by which Mr. 
Burke has outraged his own imagination, 
and seeks to work upon that of his readers, 
they are very well calculated for theatrical 
representation, where facts are manufac- 
tured for the sake of show, and accommo- 
dated to produce, through the weakness of 
sympathy, a weeping effect. But Mr. Burke 
should recollect that he is writing history, 



322 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



and not plays, and that his readers will ex- 
pect truth, and not the spouting rant of 
high-toned exclamation. 

When we see a man dramatically lament- 
mg in a publication intended to be believed 
that The age of chivalry is gone! that The 
glory of Europe is extinguished forever! 
that The unbought grace of life (if anyone 
knows what it is), the cheap defence of na- 
tions, the nurse of manly sentiment and he- 
roic enterprise is gone! and all this because 
tLe Quixot age of chivalry nonsense is gone, 
what opinion can we form of his judgment, 
or what regard can we pay to his facts'? In 
the rhapsody of his imagination he has dis- 
covered a world of wind mills, and his sor- 
rows are that there are no Quixots to attack 
them. But if the age of aristocracy, like 
that of chivalry, should fall (and they had 
originally some connection) Mr. Burke, the 
trumpeter of the Order, may continue his 
parody to the end, and finish with exclaim- 
ing: Othello's occupation's gone! 

Notwithstanding Mr. Burke's horrid 
paintings, when the French Revolution is 
compared with the Revolutions of other 
countries, the astonishment will be that it 
is marked with so few sacrifices; but this 
astonishment will cease when we reflect that 
principles, and not persons, were the medi- 
tated objects of destruction. The mind of 
the nation was acted upon by a higher stim- 
ulus than what the consideration of persons 
could inspire, and sought a higher conquest 
than could be produced by the downfall of 
an enemy. Among the few who fell there 
do not appear to be any that were inten- 
tionally singled out. They all of them had 
their fate in the circumstances of the mo- 
ment, and were not pursued with that long, 
cold-blooded unabated revenge which pur- 
sued the unfortunate Scotch in the affair of 
1745. 

Through the whole of Mr. Burke's book 
I do not observe that the Bastille is men- 
tioned more than once, and that with a kind 
of implication as if he were sorry it was 
pulled down, and wished it were built up 
again. "We have rebuilt Newgate," says 
he, "and tenanted the mansion ; and we have 
prisons almost as strong as the Bastille for 
those who dare to libel the queens of 
France." As to what a madman like the 
person called Lord G[eorge] Gr[ordon] 
might say, and to whom Newgate is rather 
a bedlam than a prison, it is unworthy a ra- 
tional consideration. It was a madman that 
libelled, and that is sufficient apology; and 



it afforded an opportunity for confining 
him, which was the thing that was wished 
for. But certain it is that Mr. Burke, who 
does not call himself a madman (whatever 
other people may do), has libelled in the 
most unprovoked manner, and in the gross- 
est style of the most vulgar abuse, the whole 
representative authority of France, and yet 
Mr. Burke takes his seat in the British 
House of Commons ! From his violence and 
his grief, his silence on some points and his 
excess on others, it is difficult not to believe 
that Mr. Burke is sorry, extremely sorry, 
that arbitrary power, the power of the Pope 
and the Bastille, are pulled down. 

Not one glance of compassion, not one 
commiserating reflection that I can find 
throughout his book, has he bestowed on 
those who lingered out the most wretched of 
lives, a life without hope in the most miser- 
able of prisons. It is painful to behold a 
man employing his talents to corrupt him- 
self. Nature has been kinder to Mr. Burke 
than he is to her. He is not affected by the 
reality of distress touching his heart, but by 
the showy resemblance of it striking his 
imagination. He pities the plumage, but 
forgets the dying bird. Accustomed to kiss 
the aristocratical hand that hath purloined 
him from himself, he degenerates into a 
composition of art, and the genuine soul of 
nature forsakes him. His hero or his hero- 
ine must be a tragedy-victim expiring in 
show, and not the real prisoner of misery, 
sliding into death in the silence of a dun- 
geon. 

As Mr. Burke has passed over the whole 
transaction of the Bastille (and his silence 
is nothing in his favor), and has enter- 
tained his readers with reflections on sup- 
posed facts distorted into real falsehoods, I 
will give, since he has not, some account of 
the circumstances which preceded that trans- 
action. They will serve to show that less 
mischief could scarcely have accompanied 
such an event when considered with the 
treacherous and hostile aggravations of the 
enemies of the Revolution. 

The mind can hardly picture to itself a 
more tremendous scene than what the city 
of Paris exhibited at the time of taking the 
Bastille, and for two days before and after, 
nor perceive the possibility of its quieting 
so soon. At a distance this transaction has 
appeared only as an act of heroism standing 
on itself, and the close political connection 
it had with the Revolution is lost in the 
brilliancy of the achievement. But we are 



THE EISB OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



323 



to consider it as the strength of the parties 
brought man to man, and contending for 
the issue. The Bastille was to be either the 
prize or the prison of the assailants. The 
downfall of it included the idea of the down- 
fall of despotism, and this compounded 
image was become as figuratively united as 
Bunyan's Doubting Castle and Giant De- 
spair. 

The National Assembly, before and at 
the time of taking the Bastille, was sitting 
at Versailles, twelve miles distant from 
Paris. About a week before the rising of 
the Parisians, and their taking the Bastille, 
it was discovered that a plot was forming, 
at the head of which was the Count d'Artois, 
the king's youngest brother, for demolish- 
ing the National Assembly, seizing its mem- 
bers, and thereby crushing, by a coup de 
main, all hopes and prospects of forming a 
free government. For the sake of human- 
ity, as well as freedom, it is well this plan 
did not succeed. Examples are not wanting 
to show how dreadfully vindictive and cruel 
are all old governments, when they are suc- 
cessful against what they call a revolt. 

This plan must have been some time in 
contemplation ; because, in order to carry it 
into execution, it was necessary to collect a 
large military force around Paris, and cut 
off the communication between that city 
and the National Assembly at Versailles. 
The troops destined for this service were 
chiefly the foreign troojDS m the pay of 
France, and who, for this particular pur- 
pose, were drawn from the distant prov- 
inces where they were then stationed. When 
they were collected to the amount of be- 
tween twenty-five and thirty thousand, it 
was judged time to put the plan into execu- 
tion. The ministry who were then in office, 
and who were friendly to the Revolution, 
were instantly dismissed and a new ministry 
formed of those who had concerted the proj- 
ect, among whom was Count de Broglio, and 
to his share was given the command of those 
troops. The character of this man as de- 
scribed to me in a letter which I communi- 
cated to Mr. Burke before he began to write 
his book, and from an authority which Mr. 
Burke well knows was good, was that of "a 
high-flying aristocrat, cool, and capable of 
every mischief." 

While these matters were agitating, the 
National Assembly stood in the most peril- 
ous and critical situation that a body of 
men can be supposed to act in. They were 
the devoted victims, and they knew it. They 



had the hearts and wishes of their country 
on their side, but military authority they 
had none. The guards of Broglio sur- 
rounded the hall where the Assembly sat, 
ready, at the word of command, to seize 
their persons, as had been done the year 
before to the Parliament of Paris. Had the 
National Assembly deserted their trust, or 
had they exhibited signs of weakness or 
fear, their enemies had been encouraged and 
their country depressed. When the situa- 
tion they stood in, the cause they were en- 
gaged in, and the crisis then ready to burst, 
which should determine their personal and 
political fate and that of their country, and 
probably of Europe, are taken into one 
view, none but a heart callous with preju- 
dice or corrupted by dependence can avoid 
interesting itself in their success. 

The Archbishop of Vienne was at this 
time President of the National Assembly — • 
a person too old to undergo the scene that a 
few days or a few hours might bring forth. 
A man of more activity and bolder forti- 
tude was necessary, and the National As- 
sembly chose (under the form of a Vice- 
President, for the Presidency still resided in 
the Archbishop) M. de la Fayette; and this 
is the only instance of a Vice-President 
being chosen. It was at the moment that 
this storm was pending (July 11th) that a 
declaration of rights was brought forward 
by M. de la Fayette, and is the same which 
is alluded to in p. [311]. It was hastily 
drawn up, and makes only a part of the 
more extensive declaration of rights agreed 
upon and adopted afterwards by the Na- 
tional Assembly. The particular reason for 
bringing it forward at this moment (M. de 
la Fayette has since informed me) was that, 
if the National Assembly should fall in the 
threatened destruction that then surrounded 
it, some trace of its principles might have 
the chance of sundving the wreck. 

Everything now was draAving to a crisis. 
The event was freedom or slavery. On one 
side, an army of nearly thirty thousand 
men ; on the other, an unarmed body of citi- 
zens — for the citizens of Paris, on whom 
the National Assembly must then immedi- 
ately depend, were as unarmed and as un- 
disciplined as the citizens of London are 
now. The French gniards had given strong 
symptoms of their being attached to the 
national cause; but their numbers were 
small, not a tenth part of the force that 
Broglio commanded, and their officers were 
in the interest of Broglio. 



324 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



Matters being now ripe for execution, the 
jiew ministry made their appearance in of- 
fice. The reader will carry in his mind that 
the Bastille was taken the 14th July; the 
point of time I am now speaking of is the 
12th. Immediately on the news of the 
change of ministry reaching Paris, in the 
afternoon, all the playhouses and places of 
entertainment, shops and houses, were shut 
up. The change of ministry was considered 
'as the prelude of hostilities, and the opinion 
was rightly founded. 

The foreign troops began to advance 
towards the city. The Prince de Lambesc, 
who commanded a body of German cavalry, 
approached by the Place of Lewis XV, 
which connects itself with some of the 
streets. In his march, he insulted and struck 
'an old man with a sword. The French are 
remarkable for their respect to old age ; and 
the insolence with which it appeared to be 
done, uniting with the general f ennentation 
they were in, produced a powerfiil effect, 
and a eiy of "To arms! to arms!" spread 
itself in a moment over the city. 

Arms they had none, nor scarcely anyone 
who knew the use of them; but desperate 
resolution, when every hope is at stake, sup- 
plies, for a while, the want of arms. Near 
where the Prince de Lambese was drawn up, 
were large piles of stones collected for build- 
ing the new bridge, and with these the peo- 
ple attacked the cavalry. A party of 
French guards, upon hearing the firing, 
rushed from their quarters and joined the 
people; and night coming on, the cavalry 
retreated. 

The streets of Paris, being narrow, are 
favorable for defense, and the loftiness of 
the houses, consisting of many stories, from 
which great annoyance might be given, se- 
cured them against nocturnal entei-p rises ; 
and the night was spent in providing them- 
selves with every sort of weapon they could 
make or procure : guns, swords, blacksmiths' 
hammers, carpenters' axes, iron crows, 
pikes, halberts, pitchforks, spits, clubs, etc., 
etc. The incredible numbers in which they 
assembled the next morning, and the still 
more incredible resolution they exhibited, 
embarrassed and astonished their enemies. 
Little did the new ministry expect such a 
salute. Accustomed to slavery themselves, 
they had no idea that liberty was capable of 
such inspiration, or that a body of unai^med 
citizens would dare to face the military 
force of thirty thousand men. Every mo- 
ment of this day was employed in collecting 



arms, concerting plans, and arranging them- 
selves into the best order which suclf an in- 
stantaneous movement could afford. Broglio 
continued lying round the city, but made no 
further advances this day, and the succeed- 
ing night passed with as much tranquillity 
as such a scene could possibly produce. 

But defence only was not the object of 
the citizens. They had a cause at stake, on 
which depended their freedom or their sla- 
very. They every moment expected an at- 
tack, or to hear of one made on the National 
Assembly; and in such a situation, the most 
prompt measures are sometimes the best. 
The object that now presented itself was 
the Bastille; and the eclat of carrying such 
a fortress in the face of such an army, could 
not fail to strike terror into the new min- 
istry, who had scarcely yet had time to meet. 
By some intercepted correspondence this 
morning, it was discovered that the Mayor 
of Paris, M. de Flesselles, who appeared to 
be in the interest of the citizens, was betray- 
mg them; and from this discovery, there 
remained no doubt that Broglio would rein- 
force the Bastille the ensuing evening. It 
was therefore necessary to attack it that 
day; but before this could be done, it was 
first necessary to procure a better supply of 
arms than they were then possessed of. 

There was, adjoining to the city, a large 
magazine of arms deposited at the Hospital 
of the Invalids, which the citizens sum- 
moned to surrender; and as the place was 
neither defensible, nor attempted much de- 
fence, they soon succeeded. Thus supplied, 
they marched to attack the Bastille; a vast 
mixed multitude of all ages, and of all de- 
grees, armed with all sorts of weapons. 
Imagination would fail in describing to 
itself the appearance of such a procession, 
and of the anxiety of the events which a 
few hours or a few minutes might produce. 
What plans the ministry were forming, were 
as unknown to the people within the city, as 
what the citizens were doing was unknown 
to the ministry ; and what movements Brog- 
lio might make for the support or relief of 
the place, were to the citizens equally as un- 
known. All was mystery and. hazard. 

That the Bastille was attacked with an 
enthusiasm of heroism, such only as the 
highest animation of liberty could inspire, 
and carried in the space of a few hours, is 
an event which the world is fully possessed 
of. I am not undertaking the detail of the 
attack, but bringing into view the conspir- 
acy against the nation which provoked it. 



THE EISE or MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



325 



and which fell with the Bastille. The prison 
to which the new ministry were dooming 
the National Assembly, in addition to its 
being the high altar and castle of despotism, 
became the proper object to begin with. This 
enterprise broke up the new ministry, who 
began now to fly from the ruin they had 
prepared for others. The troops of Broglio 
dispersed, and himself fled also. 

3. What Are the "Bights of Man"? 

Before anything can be reasoned upon to 
a conclusion, certain facts, principles, or 
data, to reason from, must be established, 
admitted, or denied. Mr. Burke, with his 
usual outrage, abused the Declaration of 
the Bights of Man, published by the Na- 
tional Assembly of France, as the basis on 
which the constitution of France is built. 
This he calls "paltry and blurred sheets of 
paper about the rights of man." Does Mr. 
Burke mean to deny that man has any 
rights? If he does, then he must mean that 
there are no such things as rights anywhere, 
and that he has none himself; for who is 
there in the world but mant But if Mr. 
Burke means to admit that man has rights, 
the question then will be : What are those 
rights, and how man came by them origi- 
nally"? 

The error of those who reason by prece- 
dents drawn from antiquity, respecting the 
rights of man, is that they do not go far 
enough into antiquity. They do not go the 
whole way. They stop in some of the inter- 
mediate stages of an hundred or a thousand 
years, and produce what was then done, as 
a rule for the present day. This is no au- 
thority at all. If we travel still farther into 
antiquity, we shall find a direct contrary 
opinion and practice prevailing; and if an- 
tiquity is to be authority, a thousand such 
authorities may be produced, successively 
contradicting each other; but if we proceed 
on, we shall at last come out right; we shall 
come to the time when man came from the 
hand of his Maker. "^Hiat was he thenf 
Man. Man was his high and only title, and 
a higher cannot be given him. But of titles 
I shall speak hereafter. 

We are now got at the origin of man, and 
at the origin of his rights. As to the man- 
ner in which the world has been governed 
from that day to this, it is no farther any 
concern of ours than to make a proper use 
of the errors or the improvements which the 
history of it presents. Those who lived a 



hundred or a thousand years ago, were then 
moderns, as we are now. They had their 
ancients, and those ancients had others, and 
we also shall be ancients in our turn. If 
the mere name of antiquity is to govern in 
the affairs of life, the people who are to live 
an hundred or a thousand years hence, may 
as well take us for a precedent, as we make 
a precedent of those who lived an hundred 
or a thousand years ago. The fact is, that 
portions of antiquity, by proving every- 
thing, establish nothing. It is authority 
against authority all the way, till we come 
to the divine origin of the rights of man at 
the creation. Here our inquiries find a rest- 
ing-place, and our reason finds a home. If 
a dispute about the rights of man had arisen 
at the distance of an hundred years from 
the creation, it is to this source of authority 
they must have referred, and it is to this 
same source of authority that we must now 
refer. 

Though I mean not to touch upon any 
sectarian principle of religion, yet it may 
be worth observing, that the genealogy of 
Christ is traced to Adam. Why then not 
trace the rights of man to the creation of 
man? I will ansAver the question. Because 
there have been upstart governments, thrust- 
ing themselves between, and presumptu- 
ously working to un-make man. 

If any generation of men ever possessed 
the right of dictating the mode by which 
the world should be governed forever, it 
was the first generation that existed; and 
if that generation did it not, no succeeding 
generation can show any authority for doing 
it, nor can set any up. The illuminating 
and divine principle of the equal rights of 
man (for it has its origin from the Maker 
of man) relates, not only to the living indi- 
viduals, but to generations of men succeed- 
ing each other. Every generation is equal 
in rights to generations which preceded it, 
by the same rule that every individual is 
born equal in rights Avith his contemporary. 

Every history of the creation, and every 
traditionaiy account, whether from the let- 
tered or unlettered world, however they may 
vary in their opinion or belief of certain 
particulars, all agTce in establishing one 
point, the unity of man; by which I mean 
that men are all of one degree, and conse- 
quently that all men are born equal, and 
with equal natural right, in the same man- 
ner as if posterity had been continued by 
creation instead of generation, the latter 
being the only mode by which the former is 



326 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



carried forward; and consequently every 
child born into the world must be consid- 
ered as deriving its existence from God. 
The world is as new to him as it was to the 
first man that existed, and his natural right 
in it is of the same kind. 

The Mosaic account of the creation, 
whether taken as divine authority or merely 
historical, is full to this point, the unity or 
equality of man. The expression admits of 
no controversy. "And God said. Let us 
make man in our own image. In the image 
of God created he him; male and female 
created he them." The distinction of sexes 
is pointed out, but no other distinction is 
even implied. If this be not divine author- 
ity, it is at. least historical authority, and 
shows that the equality of man, so far from 
being a modern doctrine, is the oldest upon 
record. 

It is also to be observed that all the re- 
ligions known in the world are founded, so 
far as they relate to man, on the unity of 
man, as being all of one degree. Whether 
in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state 
man may be supposed to exist hereafter, 
the good and the bad are the only distinc- 
tions. Nay, even the laws of governments 
are obliged to slide into this principle, by 
making degTees to consist in crimes and not 
in persons. 

It is one of the greatest of all truths, and 
of the highest advantage to cultivate. By 
considering man in this light, and by in- 
structing him to consider himself m this 
light, it places him in a close connection with 
all his duties, whether to his Creator or to 
the creation, of which he is a part ; and it is 
only when he forgets his origm, or, to use a 
more fashionable phrase, his birth and fam- 
ily, that he becomes dissolute. It is not 
among the least of the evils of the present 
existing governments in all parts of Europe 
that man, considered as man, is thrown back 
to a vast distance from his Maker, and the 
artificial chasm filled up with a succession 
of barriers, or sort of turnpike gates, 
through which he has to pass. I will quote 
Mr. Burke's catalogue of barriers that he 
has set up between man and his Maker. 
Putting himself in the character of a her- 
ald, he says : "We fear God — we look with 
awe to kings — with affection to Parliaments 
— ^with duty to magistrates — with reverence 
to priests, and with respect to nobility." 
Mr. Burke has forgotten to put in ''chiv- 
alry." He has also forgotten to put in 
Peter, 



The duty of man is not a wilderness of 
turnpike gates, through which he is to pass 
by tickets from one to the other. It is plain 
and simple, and consists but of two points. 
His duty to God, which every man must 
feel; and with respect to his neighbor, to 
do as he would be done by. If those to 
whom power is delegated do well, they will 
be respected : if not, they will be despised ; 
and with regard to those to whom no power 
is delegated, but who assume it, the rational 
world can know nothing of them. 

Hitherto we have spoken only (and that 
but in part) of the natural rights of man. 
We have now to consider the civil rights of 
man, and to show how the one originates 
from the other. Man did not enter into 
society to become worse than he was before, 
nor to have fewer rights than he had before, 
but to have those rights better secured. His 
natural rights are the foundation of all his 
civil rights. But in order to pursue this 
distinction with more precision, it will be 
necessary to mark the different qualities of 
natural and civil rights. 

A few words will explain this. Natural 
rights are those which appertain to man in 
right of his existence. Of this kind are all 
the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, 
and also all those rights of acting as an in- 
dividual for his own comfort and happiness, 
which are not injurious to the natural rights 
of others. Civil rights are those which ap- 
pertain to man in right of his being a mem- 
ber of society. Eveiy civil right has for its 
foundation some natural right pre-existing 
in the individual, but to the enjoyment of 
which his mdividual power is not, in all 
eases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind 
are all those which relate to security and 
protection. 

From this short review it will be easy to 
distinguish between that class of natural 
rights which man retains after entering into 
society and those which he throws into the 
common stock as a member of society. 

The natural rights which he retains are 
all those in which the power to execute is as 
perfect in the individual as the right itself. 
Among this class, as is before mentioned, 
are all the intellectual rights, or rights of 
the mind; consequently religion is one of 
those rights. The natural rights which are 
not retained, are all those in which, though 
the right is perfect in the individual, the 
power to execute them is defective. They 
answer not his purjDose. A man, by nat- 
ural right, has a right to judge in his own 



THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



327 



cause ; and so far as the right of the mind is 
concerned, he never surrenders it. But what 
availeth it him to judge, if he has not power 
to redress? He tlierefore deposits this right 
in the comiiion stock of society, and takes 
the arm of society, of which he is a part, in 
preference and in addition to his own. So- 
ciety grants him nothing. Every man is a 
proprietor in society, and draws on the cap- 
ital as a matter of right. 

From these premises two or tliree certain 
conclusions will follow: 

First, That every civil right grows out of 
a natural right; or, in other words, is 'a 
natural right exchanged. 

Secondly, That civil power properly con- 
sidered as such is made up of the aggregate 
of that class of the natural rights of man, 
which becomes defective in the individual in 
point of power, and answers not his pur- 
pose, but when collected to a focus becomes 
competent to the purpose of every one. 

Thirdly, That the power produced from 
the aggregate of natural rights, imperfect 
in power in the individual, cannot be ap- 
plied to invade the natural rights which are 
retained in the individual, and in which the 
power to execute is as perfect as the right 
itself. 

We have now, in a few words, traced man 
from a natural individual to a member of 
society, and shown, or endeavored to show, 
the quality of the natural rights retained, 
and of those which are exchanged for civil 
rights. Let us now apply these principles 
to governments. 

In casting our eyes over the world, it is 
extremely easy to distinguish the govern- 
ments which have arisen out of society, or 
out of the social compact, from those which 
have not ; but to place this in a clearer light 
than what a single glance may afford, it 
will be proper to take a review of the sev- 
eral sources from which governments have 
arisen and on which they have been founded. 

They may be all comprehended under 
three heads. First, Superstition. Secondly, 
Power. Thirdly, the common interest of 
society and the common rights of man. 

The first was a government of priestcraft, 
the second of conquerors, and the third of 
reason. 

When a set of artful men pretended, 
through the medium of oracles, to hold in- 
tercourse with the Deity, as familiarly as 
they now march up the back-stairs in Eu- 
ropean courts, the world was completely 
under the government of superstition. The I 



oracles were consulted, and whatever they 
were made to say became the law; and this 
sort of government lasted as long as this 
sort of superstition lasted. 

After these a race of conquerors arose, 
whose government, like that of William the 
Conqueror, was founded in power, and the 
sword assumed the name of a scepter. Gov- 
ernments thus established last as long as the 
power to support them lasts; but that they 
might avail themselves of every engine in 
their favor, they united fraud to force, and 
set up an idol which they called Divine 
Eight, and which, in imitation of the Pope, 
who affects to be spiritual and temporal, 
and in contradiction to the Founder of the 
Christian religion, twisted itself afterwards 
mto an idol of another shape, called Church 
and State. The key of St. Peter and the 
key of the Treasury became quartered on 
one another, and the wondering cheated 
multitude worshiped the invention. 

When I contemplate the natural dignity 
of man, when I feel (for Natui'e has not 
been kind enough to me to blunt my feel- 
ings) for the honor and happiness of its 
character, I become irritated at the attempt 
to govern mankind by force and fraud, as if 
they were all knaves and fools, and can 
scarcely avoid disgust at those who are thus 
imposed upon. 

We have now to review the governments 
which arise out of society, in contradistinc- 
tion to those which arose out of superstition 
and conquest. 

It has been thought a considerable ad- 
vance towards establishing the principles of 
Fi'eedom to say that Government is a com- 
pact between those who govern and those 
who are governed ; but this cannot be true, 
because it is putting the effect before the 
cause; for as man must have existed before 
governments existed, there necessarily w^s 
a time when governments did not exist, and 
consequently there could originally exist no 
governors to form such a compact with. 

The fact therefore must be that the indi- 
viduals themselves, each in his own personal 
and sovereign right, entered into a compact 
with each other to produce a government: 
and this is the only mode in which govern- 
ments have a right to arise, and the only 
principle on which they have a right to exist. 

4. Of an Ambitious Norman, and of Titles 

Before I proceed to consider other parts 
of the French Constitution, and by way of 



328 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



relieving the fatigue of argument, I will 
introduce an anecdote which I had from Dr. 
Franklin. 

While the Doctor resided in France as 
Minister from America, during the war, he 
had numerous proposals made to him by 
projectors of every country and of every 
kind, who wished to go to the land that 
floweth with milk and honey, America ; and 
among the rest, there was one who offered 
himself to be king. He introduced his pro- 
posal to the Doctor by letter, which is now 
in the hands of M. Beaumarchais, of Paris 
— stating, first, that as the Americans had 
dismissed or sent away their King, that they 
would want another. Secondly,- that him- 
self was a Norman. Thirdly, that he was 
of a more ancient family than the Dukes of 
Normandy, and of a more honorable descent, 
his line having never been bastardized. 
Fourthly, that there was already a prece- 
dent in England of kings coming out of 
Normandy, and on these grounds he rested 
his offer, enjoining that the Doctor would 
forward it to America. But as the Doctor 
neither did this, nor yet sent him an answer, 
the projector wrote a second lettei', in which 
he did not, it is true, threaten to go over 
and conquer America, but only with great 
dignity proposed that if his offer was not 
accepted, an aeknowledgTnent of about 
£30,000 might be made to him for his gen- 
erosity! Now, as all arguments respecting 
succession must necessarily connect that 
succession with some beginning, Mr. Burke's 
arguments on this subject go to show that 
there is no English origin of kings, and 
that they ai-e descendants of the Norman 
line in right of the Conquest. It may, there- 
fore, be of service to his doctrine to make 
this story known, and to inform him, that 
in case of that natural extinction to which 
all mortality is subject. Kings may again 
be had from Normandy, on more reasonable 
terms than William the Conqueror ; and con- 
sequently, that the good people of England, 
at the revolution of 1688, might have done 
much better, had such a generous Norman 
as this known their wants, and they had 
known his. The chivalrie character which 
Mr. Burke so much admires, is certainly 
much easier to make a bargain with than a 
hard dealing Dutchman. But to return to 
the matters of the constitution — 

The French Constitution says. There shall 
he no titles; and, of consequence, all that 
class of equivocal generation which in some 
countries is called "aristocracy'' and in 



others "nobility," is done away, and the 
peer is exalted into the Man. 

Titles are but niek-names, and every nick- 
name is a title. The thing is perfectly harm- 
less in itself, but it marks a sort of foppery 
in the human character, which degrades it. It 
reduces man into the diminutive of man in 
things which are gi'eat, and the counterfeit 
of women in things which are little. It 
talks about its fine blue ribbon like a girl, 
and shows its new garter like a child. A 
certain writer, of some antiquity, says: 
''When I was a child, I thought as a child; 
but when I became a man, I put away 
childish things." 

It is, properly, from the elevated mind 
of France that the folly of titles has fallen. 
It has outgrown the baby clothes of Count 
and Duke, and breeched itself in manhood. 
France has not levelled, it has exalted. It 
has put down the dwarf, to set up the man. 
The punyism of a senseless word like Duke, 
Count, or Earl has ceased to please. Even 
those who possessed them have disowned the 
gibberish, and as they outgrew the rickets, 
have despised the rattle. The genuine mind 
of man, thirsting for its native home, so- 
ciety, contemns the gewgaws that separate 
hina from it. Titles are like circles drawn 
by the magician's wand, to contract the 
sphere of man's felicity. He lives immured 
within the Bastille of a word, and surveys 
at a distance the envied life of man. 

Is it, then, any wonder that titles should 
fall in France? Is it not a greater won- 
der that they should be kept up anywhere? 
What are they? What is their worth, and 
"what is their amount"? When we think 
or speak of a Judge or a General, we asso- 
ciate with it the ideas of office and charac- 
ter; we think of gravity in one and brav- 
ery in the other ; but when we use the word 
merely as a title, no ideas associate with it. 
Through all the vocabulary of Adam there 
is not such an animal as a Duke or a Count; 
neither can we connect any certain ideas 
with the words. Whether they mean 
strength or weakness, wisdom or folly, a 
child or a man, or the rider or the horse, 
is all equivocal. What respect then can be 
paid to that which describes nothing, and 
which means nothing? Imagination has 
given figure and character to centaurs, 
satyrs, and down to all the fairy tribe; but 
titles baffle even the powers of fancy, and 
are a chimerical nondescript. 

But this is not all. If a whole country is 
disposed to hold them in contempt, all their 



THE EISE OP MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



329 



value is gone, and none will own them. It 
is common opinion only that makes them 
anything, or nothing, or worse than noth- 
ing; There is no occasion to take titles 
away, for they take themselves away when 
society concurs to ridicule them. This 
species of imaginary consequence has visi- 
bly declined in every part of Europe, and 
it hastens to its exit as the world of reason 
continues to rise. There was a time when 
the lowest class of what are called nobility 
was more thought of than the highest is 
now, and when a man in armor riding 
throughout Christendom in quest of adven- 
tures was more stared at than a modern 
Duke. The world has seen this folly fall, 
and it has fallen by being laughed at, and 
the farce of titles will follow its fate. The 
patriots of France have discovered in good 
time that rank and dignity in society must 
take a new ground. The old one has fallen 
through. It must now take the substan- 
tial ground of character, instead of the 
chimerical ground of titles; and they have 
brought their titles to the altar, and made 
of them a burnt-offering to Reason. 

5. America and the French Revolution 

As Mr. Burke has not written on consti- 
tutions so neither has he written on the 
French Revolution. He gives no account of 
its commencement or its progress. He only 
expresses his wonder. "It looks," says he, 
"to me, as if I were in a great crisis, not 
of the affairs of France alone, but of all 
Europe, perhaps of more than Euro^De. All 
circumstances taken together, the French 
Revolution is the most astonishing that has 
hitherto happened in the world." 

As wise men are astonished at foolish 
things, and other people at wise ones, I 
know not on which ground to account for 
Mr. Burke's astonishment; but certain it is, 
that he does not understand the French 
Revolution. It has apparently burst forth 
like a creation from a chaos, but it is no 
more than the consequence of a mental revo- 
lution priorily existing in France. The 
mind of the nation had changed before- 
hand, and the new order of things has natur- 
ally followed the new order of thoughts. I 
will here, as concisely as I can, trace out 
the growth of the French Revolution, and 
mark the circumstances that have contrib- 
uted to produce it. 

The despotism of Louis XIV, united with 
the gaiety of his Court, and the gaudy os- 



tentation of his character, had so humbled, 
and at the same time so fascinated the mind 
of France, that the people appeared to have 
lost all sense of their own dignity, in con- 
templating that of their Grand Monarch; 
and the whole reign of Louis XV, remark- 
able only for weakness and effeminacy, made 
no other alteration than that of spreading 
a sort of lethargy over the nation, from 
which it showed no disposition to rise. 

The only signs which appeared of the 
spirit of Liberty during those periods, are 
to be found in the writings of the French 
philosophers. Montesquieu, President of 
the Parliament of Bordeaux, went as far as a 
writer under a despotic government could 
well proceed; and being obliged to divide 
himself between principle and prudence, his 
mind often appears under a veil, and we 
ought to give him credit for more than he 
has expressed. 

Voltaire, who was both the flatterer and 
the satirist of despotism, took another line. 
His forte lay in exposing and ridiculing the 
superstitions which priest-craft, united with 
state-craft, had interwoven with govern- 
ments. It was not from the purity of his 
principles, or his love of mankind (for satire 
and philanthropy are not naturally con- 
cordant), but from his strong capacity of 
seeing folly in its true shape, and his 
irresistible propensity to expose it, that 
he made those attacks. They were, how- 
ever, as formidable as if the motive had 
been virtuous; and he merits the thanks 
rather than the esteem of mankind. 

On the contrary, we find in the writings 
of Rousseau, and the Abbe Raynal, a love- 
liness of sentiment in favor of liberty, that 
excites respect, and elevates the human fac- 
ulties; but having raised this animation, 
they do not direct its operation, and leave 
the mind in love with an object, without de- 
scribing the means of possessing it. 

The writings of Quesnay, Turgot, and the 
friends of those authors, are of the serious 
kind; but they labored under the same dis- 
advantage with Montesquieu ; their writings 
abound with moral maxims of government, 
but are rather directed to economize and 
reform the administration of the govern- 
ment, than the government itself. 

But all those writings and many others 
had their weight ; and by the different man- 
ner in which they treated the subject of 
government, Montesqtiieu by his judgment 
and knowledge of laws, Voltaire by his 



§30 



THE GKEAT TEADITION 



wit, Rousseau and Raynal by their anima- 
tion, and Quesnay and Turgot by their 
moral maxims and systems of economy, 
readers of every class met with something 
to their taste, and a spirit of political in- 
quiry began to diffuse itself through the na- 
tion at the time the dispute between Eng- 
land and the then colonies of America broke 
out. 

In the war which France afterwards en- 
gaged in, it is very well known that the 
nation appeared to be before-hand with 
the French ministry. Each of them had its 
view; but those views were directed to dif- 
ferent objects; the one sought liberty, and 
the other retaliation on England. The 
French officers and soldiers who after this 
went to America, were eventually placed in 
the school of Freedom, and learned the prac- 
tice as well as the principles of it by heart. 

As it was impossible to separate the mili- 
tary events which took place in America 
from the principles of the American Revo- 
lution, the publication of those events in 
France necessarily connected themselves 
with the principles which produced them. 
Many of the facts were in themselves prin- 
ciples ; such as the declaration of American 
Independence, and the treaty of alliance 
between France and America, which recog- 
nized the natural rights of man, and justi- 
fied resistance to oppression. 

The then Minister of France, Count Ver- 
gennes, was not the friend of America ; and 
it is both justice and gratitude to say, that 
it was the Queen of France who gave the 
cause of America a fashion at the French 
Court. Count Vergennes was the personal 
and social friend of Dr. Franklin ; and the 
Doctor had obtained, by his sensible grace- 
fulness, a sort of influence over him; but 
with respect to principles Count Vergennes 
was a despot. 

The situation of Dr. Franklin, as Min- 
ister from America to France, should be 
taken into the chain of circumstances. The 
diplomatic character is of itself the narrow- 
est sphere of society that man can act in. 
It forbids intercourse by the reciprocity of 
suspicion ; and a diplomatic is a sort of un- 
connected atom, continually repelling and 
repelled. But this was not the case with 
Dr. Franklin. He was not the diplomatic 
of a Court, but of MAN. His character 
as a philosopher had been long established, 
and his circle of society in France was uni- 
versal. 



Count Vergennes resisted for a consider- 
able time the publication in France of 
American constitutions, translated into the 
French language : but even in this he was 
obliged to give way to public opinion, and 
a sort of propriety in admitting to appear 
what he had undertaken to defend. The 
American constitutions were to liberty what 
a grammar is to language : they define its 
parts of speech, and practically construct 
them into syntax. 

The peculiar situation of the then Marquis 
de la Fayette is another link in the great 
chain. He served in America as an Ameri- 
can officer under a commission of Congress, 
and by the universality of his acquaintance 
was in close friendship with the civil gov- 
ernment of America, as well as with the 
military line. He spoke the language of the 
country, entered into the discussions on the 
principles of government, and was always a 
welcome friend at any election. 

When the war closed, a vast reinforcement 
to the cause of Liberty spread itself over 
France, by the return of the French offi- 
cers and soldiers. A knowledge of the 
practice was then joined to the theory; and 
all that was wanting to give it real existence 
was opportunity. Man cannot, properly 
speaking, make circumstances for his pur- 
pose, but he always has it in his power to 
improve them when they occur, and this was 
the case in France. 

6. "Made in Germany" 

Mr. Burke is laboring in vain to stop the 
progress of knowledge; and it comes with 
the worse gi'aee from him, as there is a 
certain transaction known in the city which 
renders him suspected of being a pensioner 
in a fictitious name. This may account for 
some strange doctrine he has advanced in 
his book, which though he points it at the 
Revolution Society, is effectually directed 
against the whole nation. 

"The King of England," says he, "holds 
Ms crown (for it does not belong to the 
Nation, according to Mr. Burke) in con- 
tempt of the choice of the Revolution So- 
ciety, who have not a single vote for a king 
among them either individually or collec- 
tively; and his Majesty's heirs each in their 
time and order, will come to the Crown 
witJi the same contempt of their choice, 
with which his Majesty has succeeded to 
that which he now wears." 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



331 



As to who is King in England, or else-* 
where, or whether there is any King at all, 
or whether the people choose a Cherokee 
chief, or a Hessian hussar for a King, it is 
not a matter that I trouble myself about — 
be that to themselves; but with resjject to 
the doctrine, so far as it relates to the Rights 
of Men and Nations, it is as abominable as 
anything ever uttered in the most enslaved 
country under heaven. Whether it sounds 
worse to my ear, by not being accustomed 
to hear such despotism, than what it does 
to the ear of another person, I am not so 
well a judge of ; but of its abominable prin- 
ciple I am at no loss to judge. 

It is not the Revolution Society that Mr. 
Burke means ; it is the Nation, as well in its 
original as in its representative character; 
and he has taken care to make himself un- 
derstood, by saying that they have not a vote 
either collectively or individually. The Revo- 
lution Society is composed of citizens of 
all denominations, and of members of both 
the Houses of Parliament; and conse- 
quently, if there is not a right to a vote in 
any of the characters, there can be no right 
to any either in the nation or in its Parlia- 
ment. This ought to be a caution to every 
country how it imports foreign families 
to be kings. It is somewhat curious to ob- 
serve, that although the people of England 
had been in the habit of talking about kings, 
it is always a Foreign House of Kings; 
hating Foreigners yet governed by them. — 
It is now the House of Brunswick, one 
of the petty tribes of Germany. 

It has hitherto been the practice of the 
English Parliaments to regulate what was 
called the succession (taking it for granted 
that the Nation then continued to accord to 
the form of annexing a monarchical branch 
of its government; for without this the 
Parliament could not have had authority to 
have sent either to Holland or to Hanover, 
or to impose a king upon the nation against 
its will). And this must be the utmost 
limit to which Parliament can go upon this 
case ; but the right of the Nation goes to the 
whole ease, because it has the right of 
changing its whole form of government. 
The right of a Parliament is only a right 
in trust, a right by delegation, and that 
but from a very small part of the Nation ; 
and one of its Houses has not even this. 
But the right of the Nation is an original 
right, as universal as taxation. The na- 
tion is the paymaster of everything, and 



everything must conform to its general 
will. 

I remember taking notice of a speech in 
what is called the English House of Peers, 
by the then Earl of Shelburne, and I think 
it was at the time he was Minister, which 
is applicable to this case. I do not di- 
rectly charge my memory with every par- 
ticular; but the words and the purport, as 
nearly as I remember, were these: "That 
the form of a Government was a matter 
wholly at the will of the Nation at all times, 
that if it chose a monarchical form, it had 
a right to have it so; and if it afterwards 
chose to be a Republic, it had a right to be 
a Republic, and to say to a King, 'We 
have no longer any occasion for you.' " 

When Mr. Burke says that "His Majesty's 
heirs and successors, each in their time and 
order, will come to the crown with the same 
contempt of their choice with which His 
Majesty had succeeded to that he wears," 
it is saying too much even to the humblest 
individual in the country; part of whose 
daily labor goes towards making up the 
million sterling a-year, which the-coun'try 
gives the person it styles a king. Govern- 
ment with insolence is despotism; but when 
contempt is added it becomes worse; and 
to pay for contempt is the excess of slav- 
ery. This species of government comes from 
Germany; and reminds me of what one of 
the Brunswick soldiers told me, who was 
taken prisoner by the Americans in the late 
war: "Ah!" said he, "America is a fine 
free country, it is worth the people's fight- 
ing for; I know the difference by know- 
ing my own: in my country, if the prince 
says eat straw, we eat straw." God help 
that country, thought I, be it England or 
elsewhere, whose liberties are to be pro- 
tected by German princiiDles of government, 
and Princes of Brunswick ! 

7. A League of Nations 

From the Revolutions of America and 
France, and the symptoms that have a\j- 
peared in other countries, it is evident that 
the opinion of the world is changing with 
respect to systems of Government, and that 
revolutions are not within the compass of 
political calculations. The progress of time 
and circumstances, which men assign to the 
accomplishment of great changes, is too me- 
chanical to measure the force of the mind, 
and the rapidity of reflection, by which 



332 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



revolutions are generated. All the old gov- 
ernments have received a shock from those 
that already appear, and which were once 
more imiDrobable, and are a greater subject 
of wonder, than a general revolution in 
Europe would be now. 

When we survey the wretched condition 
of man, under the monarchical and heredi- 
tary systems of Government, dragged from 
his home by one power, or driven by an- 
other, and impoverished by taxes more than 
by enemies, it becomes evident that those 
systems are bad, and that a general revo- 
lution in the principle and construction of 
Governments is necessary. 

What is government more than the man- 
agement of the affairs of a Nation? It is 
not, and from its nature cannot be, the 
property of any particular man oy family, 
but of the whole community, at whose ex- 
pense it is supported; and though by force 
and contrivance it has been usurped into 
an inheritance, the usurpation cannot alter 
the right of things. Sovereignty, as a mat- 
ter of right, appertains to the Nation only, 
and not to any individual ; and a Nation has 
at all times an inherent indefeasible right 
to abolish any form of Government it finds 
inconvenient, and to establish such as ac- 
cords with its interest, disposition, and hap- 
piness. The romantic and barbarous dis- 
tinction of men into Kings and subjects, 
though it may suit the condition of courtiers, 
cannot that of citizens; and is exploded by 
the principle upon which Governments are 
now founded. Every citizen is a member 
of the Sovereignty, and, as such, can ac- | 
knowledge no personal subjection; and his 
obedience can be only to the laws. 

When men think of what Government is, 
they must necessarily suppose it to pos- 
sess a knowledge of all the objects and ] 
matters upon which its authority is to be 
exercised. In this view of Government, the 
republican system, as established by Amer- 
ica and France, operates to embrace the 
whole of a Nation; and the knowledge 
necessary to the interest of all the parts, is 
to be found in the center, which the parts 
by representation form. But the old Gov- 
ernments are on a construction that excludes 
knowledge as well as happiness; Govern- 
ment by Monks, who knew nothing of the 
world beyond the walls of a Convent, is as 
consistent as government by Kings. 

What were formerly called Revolutions, 
were little more than a change of persons, 



or an alteration of local circumstances. They 
rose and fell like things of course, and had 
nothing in their existence or their fate that 
could influence beyond the spot that pro- 
duced them. But what we now see in the 
world, from the Eevolutions of America and 
France, are a renovation of the natural order 
of things, a system of principles as uni- 
versal as truth and the existence of man, and 
combining moral with political happiness 
and national prosperity. 

''I. Men are horn, and always continue, 
free and equal in respect of their rights. 
Civil distinctions, therefore, can he founded 
only on public utility: 

"II. The end of all political associations 
is the preservation of the natural and im- 
prescriptible rights of man; and these rights 
are liberty, property, security, and resis- 
tance of oppression. 

''III. The nation is essentially the source 
of all sovereignty ; nor can any individual^ 
or ANT BODY OF MEN^ be entitled to any 
authority which is not expressly derived 
from it." 

In these principles, there is nothing to 
throw a Nation into confusion by i'nflam- 
ing ambition. They are calculated to call 
forth wisdom and abilities, and to exercise 
them for the public good, and not for the 
emolument or aggrandizement of particular 
descriptions of men or families. Monarchi- 
cal sovereignty, the enemy of mankind, and 
the source of misery, is abolished; and the 
sovereignty itself is restored to its natural 
and original place, the Nation. Were this 
the case throughout Europe, the cause of 
wars would be taken away. 

It is attributed to Henry the Fourth of 
France, a man of enlarged and benevolent 
heart, that he proposed, about the year 1610, 
a plan for abolishing war in Europe. The 
plan consisted in constituting an Euro- 
pean Congress, or as the French authors 
style it, a Pacific Republic; by appointing 
delegates from the several Nations who were 
to act as a Court of arbitration in any dis- 
putes that might arise between nation and 
nation. 

Had such a plan been adopted at the 
time it was proposed, the taxes of Eng- 
land and France, as two of the parties, 
would have been at least ten million ster- 
ling annually to each Nation less than they 
were at the commencement of the French 
Revolution. 

To conceive a cause why such a plan has 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOCEACY 



333 



not been adopted (and that instead of a 
Congress for the purpose of preventing war, 
it has been called only to terminate a war, 
after a fruitless expense of several years) 
it will be necessary to consider the interest 
of Governments as a distinct interest to 
that of Nations. 

Whatever is the cause of taxes to a Na- 
tion, becomes also the means of revenue to 
Government. Every war terminates with an 
addition of taxes, and consequently with an 
addition of revenue; and in any event of 
war, in the manner they are now com- 
menced and concluded, the power, and in- 
terest of Governments are increased. War, 
therefore, from its productiveness, as it 
easily furnishes the pretense of necessity for 
taxes and appointments to places and offices, 
becomes a principal part of the system of 
old Governments ; and to establish any mode 
to abolish war, however advantageous it 
might be to Nations, would be to take from 
such Government the most lucrative of its 
branches. The frivolous matters upon which 
war is made, show the disposition and avid- 
ity of Governments to uphold the system of 
war, and betray the motives upon which 
they act. 

Why are not Republics plunged into war, 
but because the nature of their Government 
does not admit of an interest distinct from 
that of the Nation? Even Holland, though 
an ill-constructed Republic, and with a 
commerce extending over the world, existed 
nearly a century without war: and the in- 
stant the form of Government was changed 
in France, the republican principles of 
peace and domestic prosperity and economy 
arose with the new Government; and the 
same consequences would follow the cause in 
other Nations. 

As war is the system of Government on 
the old construction, the animosity which 
Nations reciprocally entertain, is nothing 
more than what the policy of their Gov- 
ernments excites to keep up the spirit of the 
system. Each Government accuses the 
other of perfidy, intrigue, and ambition, as 
a means of heating the imagination of their 
respective Nations, and incensing them to 
hostilities. Man is not the enemy of man, 
but through the medium of a false system 
of Government. Instead, therefore, of ex- 
claiming against the ambition of Kings, the 
exclamation should be directed against the 
principle of such Governments ; and instead 
of seeking to reform the individual, the 



wisdom of a Nation should apply itself to 
reform the system. 

Whether the forms and maxims of Gov- 
ernments which are still in practice, were 
adapted to the condition of the world at the 
period they were established, is not in this 
case the question. The older they are, the 
less correspondence can they have with the 
present state of things. Time, and change 
of circumstances and opinions, have the same 
progressive effect in rendering modes of 
Government obsolete as they have upon 
customs and manners. — Agriculture, com- 
merce, manufactures, and the tranquil arts, 
by which the prosperity of Nations is best 
promoted, require a different system of 
Government, and a different species of 
knowledge to direct its operations, than what 
might have been required in the former con- 
dition of the world. 

As it is not difficult to perceive, from the 
enlightened state of mankind, that heredi- 
tary Governments are verging to their de- 
cline, and that Revolutions on the broad 
basis of national sovereignty and Govern- 
ment by representation, are making their 
way in Europe, it would be an act of wis- 
dom to anticipate their approach, and pro- 
duce Revolutions by reason and accommo- 
dation, rather than commit them to the issue 
of convulsions. 

From what we now see, nothing of re- 
form in the political world ought to be 
held improbable. It is an age of Revolu- 
tions, in which everything may be looked 
for. The intrigue of Courts, by which the 
system of war is kept up, may provoke a 
confederation of Nations to abolish it : and 
an European Congress to patronize the 
progress of free Government, and promote 
the civilization of Nations with each other, 
is an event nearer in probability, than once 
were the revolutions and alliance of France 
and America. 

Political Justice 

william godwin 

[From An Inquiry Concerning Political 
Justice^ 1793] 

i. Wealth and Poverty 

First then it is to be observed, that, in 
the most refined states of Europe, the in- 
equality of property has arisen to an alarm- 
ing height. Vast numbers of their inhab- 



334 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



itants are deprived of almost every aeeom- 
modation that can render life tolerable or 
secure. Their utmost industry scarcely suf- 
fices for their support. The women and 
children lean with an insupportable weight 
upon the efforts of the man, so that a large 
family has in the lower orders of life be- 
come a proverbial expression for an uncom- 
mon degree of poverty and wretchedness. 
If sickness or some of those casualties which 
are perpetually incident to an active and la- 
borious life, be added to these burdens, the 
distress is greater. 

It seems to be agreed that in England 
there is less wretchedness and distress than 
in most of the kingdoms of the continent. 
In England the poor rates amovmt to the 
sum of two millions sterling per annum. It 
has been calculated that one person in seven 
of the inhabitants of this country derives at 
some period of his life assistance from this 
fund. If to this we add the persons who, 
from pride, a spirit of independence, or the 
want of a legal settlement, though in equal 
distress, receive no such assistance, the pro- 
portion will be considerably increased. 

I lay no stress upon the accuracy of this 
calculation; the general fact is sufficient to 
give us an idea of the greatness of the 
abuse. The consequences that result are 
placed beyond the reach of contradiction, 
A perpetual struggle with the evils of pov- 
erty, if frequently ineffectual, must neces- 
sarily render many of the sufferers desper- 
ate. A painful feeling of their oppressed 
situation will itself deprive them of the 
power of surmounting it. The superiority 
of the rich, being thus unmercifully exer- 
cised, must inevitably expose them to re- 
prisals ; and the poor man will be induced to 
regard the state of society as a state of war, 
an unjust combmation, not for protecting 
every man in his rights and securing to him 
the means of existence, but for eng'rossing 
all its advantages to a few favored individ- 
uals, and reserving for the portion of the 
rest, want, dependence, and misery. 

A second source of those destructive pas- 
sions by which the peace of society is inter- 
rupted, is to be found in the luxury, the 
pageantry, and magnificence with which 
enormous wealth is usually accompanied. 
Human beings are capable of encountering 
with cheerfulness considerable hardships, 
when those hardships are impartially shared 
with the rest of society, and they are not 
insulted with the spectacle of indolence and 
ease in others, no way deserving of greater 



advantages than themselves. But it is a 
bigger aggravation of their own calamity, 
to have the privileges of others forced on 
their observation, and, while they are per- 
petually and vainly endeavoring to secure 
for themselves and their families the poor- 
est conveniences, to find others reveling in 
the fruits of their labors. This aggravation 
is assiduously administered to them under 
most of the political establishments at pres- 
ent in existence. There is a numerous class 
of individuals who, though rich, have nei- 
ther brilliant talents nor sublime virtues; 
and however highly they may prize their 
education, their affability, their superior 
polish, and the elegance of their manners, 
have a secret consciousness that they pos- 
sess nothing by which they can so securely 
assert their preeminence and keep their in- 
feriors at a distance, as the splendor of their 
equipage, the magnificence of their retinue, 
and the sumptuousness of their entertain- 
ments. The poor man is struck with this 
exhibition ; he feels his own miseries ; he 
knows how unwearied are his efforts to ob- 
tain a slender pittance of this prodigal 
waste; and he mistakes opulence for felic- 
ity. He cannot persuade himself that an 
embroidered garment may frequently cover 
an aching heart. 

2. Of Perfectibility 

Lastly, man is perfectible. This propo- 
sition needs some explanation. 

By perfectible it is not meant that he is 
capable of being brought to perfection. But 
the word seems sufficiently adapted to ex- 
press the faculty of being continually made 
better and receiving perpetual improve- 
ments; and in this sense it is here to be un- 
derstood. This term, perfectible, thus ex- 
plained, not only does not imply the capacity 
of being brought to perfection, but stands 
in express opposition to it. If we could 
arrive at perfection, there would be an end 
of our improvement. There is however one 
thing of great importance that it does 
imply : every perfection or excellence that 
human beings are competent to conceive, 
human beings, unless in cases that are pal- 
pably and unequivocally excluded by the 
structure of their frame, are competent to 
attain. . . . 

An opinion has been extensively enter- 
tained, "that the differences of the human 
species in different ages and countries, par- 
ticularly so far as relates to moral princi- 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



335 



pies of conduct, are extremely insignifieant 
and trifling; that we are deceived in this 
respect by distance and confounded by 
glare; but that in reality the virtues and 
vices of men, collectively taken, always have 
remained, and of consequence, it is said, "al- 
ways will remain, nearly at the same point." 

The erroneousness of this opinion will 
perhaps be more completely exposed by a 
summary recollection of the actual history 
of our species, than by the closest deduction 
of abstract reason. We will in this place 
simply remind the reader of the great 
changes which man has undergone as an in- 
tellectual being, entitling us to infer the 
probability of improvements not less essen- 
tial to be realized in future. The conclusion 
to be deduced from this delineation, that 
his moral improvements will in some degree 
keep pace with his intellectual, and his ac- 
tions correspond with his opinions, must 
depend for its force upon the train of rea- 
soning which has already been brought for- 
ward under that head. 

Such was man in his original state, and 
such is man as we at present behold him. Is 
it possible for us to contemplate what he 
has already done, without being impressed 
with a strong presentiment of the improve- 
ments he has yet to accomplish? There is 
no science that is not capable of additions; 
there is no art that may not be carried to 
still higher perfection. If this be true of 
all other sciences, why not morals'? If this 
be true of all other arts, why not social in- 
stitution'? The very conception of this as 
possible, is in the highest degree encourag- 
ing. If we can §till further demonstrate it 
to be a part of the natural and regular 
progress of mind, our conndence and our 
hopes will then be complete. This is the 
temper with which we ought to engage in 
the study of political truth. Let us look 
back, that we may profit by the experience 
of mankind; but let us not look back as if 
the wisdom of our ancestors was such as to 
leave no room for future improvement. 

3. The Moral Effects of Aristocracy 

Of all the principles of justice, there is 
none so material to the moral rectitude of 
mankind as this, that no man can be distin- 
guished but by his personal merit. Why 
not endeavor to reduce to practice so simple 
and sublime a lesson? When a man has 
proved himself a benefactor to the public, 
when he has already by laudable preference 



cultivated in himself talents which need 
only encouragement and public favor to 
bring them to maturity, let that man be hon- 
ored. In a state of society where fictitious 
distinctions are unknown, it is possible he 
should not be honored. But that a man 
should be looked up to with servility and 
awe because the king has bestowed on him a 
spurious name, or decorated him with a 
ribbon, that another should wallow in lux- 
ury because his ancestor three centuries ago 
bled m the quarrel of Lancaster or York; 
do we imagine that these iniquities can be 
practiced without injury'? Let those who 
entertain this opinion converse a little with 
the lower order of mankind. They will per- 
ceive that the unfortunate wretch, who with 
unremitted labor finds himself incapable 
adequately to feed and clothe the family, has 
a sense of injustice rankling at his heart : 

One whom distress has spited with the world. 
Is he whom tempting fiends would pitch 

upon 
To do such deeds, as make the prosperous 

men 
Lift up their hands and wonder who could 

do them. —Tragedy of Douglas. 
Such is the education of the human species. 
Such is the fabric of political society. 

But let us suppose that their sense of in- 
justice were less acute than it is here de- 
scribed, what favorable inference can be 
drawn from thaf? Is not the injustice reaH 
If the minds of men be so withered and 
stupefied by the constancy with which it is 
practiced, that they do not feel the rigor 
that grinds them into nothing, how does 
that improve the picture? 

Let us for a moment give the reins to re- 
flection and endeavor accurately to conceive 
the state of mankind where justice should 
form the public and general principle. In 
that case our moral feelings would assume a 
firm and wholesome tone, for they would not 
be perpetually counteracted by examples 
that weaken their energy and confound their 
clearness. Men would be fearless because 
they would know that there were no legal 
snares lying in wait for their lives. They 
would be courageous because no man would 
be pressed to the earth that another might 
enjoy immoderate luxury, because every one 
would be secured of the just reward of his 
industry and prize of his exertions. Jeal- 
ousy and hatred would cease, for they are 
the offspring of injustice. Every man 
would speak truth with bis neighbor, there 



336 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



would be no temptation to falsehood and 
deceit. Mind would find its level, for there 
would be every thing to encourage and to 
animate. Science would be unspeakably 
improved, for understanding would convert 
it into a real power, no longer an ignis 
fatuus, shining and expiring by turns, and 
leading us mto sloughs of sophistry, false 
science, and specious mistake. All men 
would be disposed to avow dispositions and 
actions; none would endeavor to suppress 
the just eulogium of his neighbor, for, so 
long as there were tongues to record, the 
suppression would be impossible ; none fear 
to detect the misconduct of his neighbor, for 
there would be no laws converting the sin- 
cere expression of our convictions into a 
libel. 

Let us fairly consider for a moment what 
is the amount of justice included in the in- 
stitution of aristocracy. I am born, sup- 
pose, a Polish prince with an income of 
$300,000 per annum. You are born a ma- 
norial serf or a Creolian negro, attached to 
the soil, and transferable by barter or other- 
wise to twenty successive lords. In vaiu 
shall be your most generous efforts and your 
unwearied industry to free yourself from 
the intolerable yoke. Doomed by the law 
of your birth to wait at the gates of the 
palace you must never enter, to sleep under 
a ruined weather-beaten roof, while your 
master sleeps under canopies of state, to 
feed on putrefied offals while the world is 
ransacked for delicacies for his table, to 
labor without moderation or limit under a 
parching sun while he basks in perpetual 
sloth, and to be rewarded at last with con- 
tempt, reprimand, stripes, and mutilation. 



In fact the ease is worse than this. I could 
endure all that injustice or caprice could 
inflict, provided I possessed in the resource 
of a firm mind the power of looking down 
with pity on my tyrant, and of knowing 
that I had that within, that sacred charac- 
ter of truth, virtue, and fortitude, which all 
his injustice could not reach. But a slave 
and a serf are condemned to stupidity and 
vice, as well as to calamity. 

Is all this nothing? Is all this necessary 
for the maintenance of civil order? Let it 
be recollected that for this distinction there 
is not the smallest foundation in the nature 
of things; that, as we have already said, 
there is no particular mould for the con- 
struction of lords; and that they are born 
neither better nor worse than the poorest of 
their dependents. It is this structure of 
aristocracy in all its sanctuaries and frag- 
ments against which reason and philosophy 
have declared war. It is alike mijust, 
whether we consider it in the castes of India, 
the villainage of the feudal system, or the 
despotism of the patricians of ancient Rome 
dragging their debtors into personal servi- 
tude to expiate loans they oould not repay. 
Mankind will never be in an eminent degree 
virtuous and happy till each man shall pos- 
sess that portion of distinction and no more, 
to which he is entitled by his personal mer- 
its. The dissolution of aristocracy is equally 
the interest of the oppressor and the op- 
pressed. The one will be delivered from 
the listlessness of tyranny, and the other 
from the brutalizing operation of servitude. 
How long shall we be told in vain, "that 
mediocrity of fortune is the true rampart 
of personal happiness"? 



5. ENGLAND AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION 



On the French Revolution 

william cowper 

[Extracts from Letters, 1790-1793] 



The French, who like all lively folks are 
extreme in every thing, are such in their 
zeal for freedom ; and if it were possible to 
make so noble a. cause ridiculous, their man- 
ner of promoting it could not fail to do so. 
Princes and peers reduced to plain gentle- 
manship, and gentles reduced to a level 



with their own lackeys, are excesses of which 
they will repent hereafter. Differences of 
rank and subordination are, I believe, of 
God's appointment, and consequently es- 
sential to the well-being of society: but 
what we mean by fanaticism in religion is 
exactly that which animated their politics; 
and unless time should sober them, they will, 
after all, be an unhappy people. Perhaps 
it deserves not much to be wondered at, that 
at their first escape from tyrannic shackles 
they should act extravagantly and treat 
their kings as they sometimes treated their 
idols. To these, howevei", they are recon- 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



337 



ciled in due time again, but their respect 
for monarchy is at an end. They want 
nothing now but a little English sobriety, 
and that they want extremely; I heartily 
wish them some wit in their anger, for it 
were great pity that so many millions should 
be miserable for want of it. 



II 



You can hardly have sent me intelligence 
that would have gratified me more than that 
of my two dear friends, Sir John and Lady 
Throckmorton, having departed from Paris 
two days before the terrible 10th of August. 
I have had many anxious thoughts on their 
account; and am truly happy to learn they 
have sought a more peaceful region, while 
it was yet permitted them to do so. They 
will not, I trust, revisit those scenes of tu- 
mult and horror while they shall continue to 
merit that description. We are here all of 
one mind respecting the cause in which the 
Parisians are engaged; wish them a free 
people, and as happy as they can wish them- 
selves. But their conduct has not always 
pleased us: we are shocked at their san- 
guinary proceedings, and begin to fear, my- 
self in particular, that they will prove 
themselves unworthy, because incapable of 
enjoying it, of the inestimable blessings of 
liberty. My daily toast is, Sobriety and 
Freedom to the French ; for they seem as 
destitute of the former as they are eager to 
secure the latter. 

Ill 

This has been a time in which I have 
heard no news but of the shocking kind, and 
the public news is as shocking as any. War 
I perceive — war in procinct — and I cannot 
but consider it as a prelude to war at home. 
The national burden is already nearly intol- 
erable, and the expenses of the war will 
make it quite so. We have many spirits in 
the country eager to revolt, and to act a 
French tragedy on the stage of England. 
Alas ! poor Louis ! I will tell you what the 
French have done. They have made me 
weep for a King of France, which I never 
thought to do, and they have made me sick 
of the veiy name of liberty, which I never 
thought to be. Oh, how I detest them ! Cox- 
combs, as they are, on this occasion as they 
ever are on all. Apes of the Spartan and 
the Roman character, with neither the vir- 
tue nor the s:ood sense that belonged to it. 



Is this treason at Eartham*? I hope not. 
If it is, I must be a traitor. 

Experiences of an English Idealist 

william wordsworth 

[From The Prelude, Books IX-XI; written 
1799-1805; pubUshed 1850] 

1. First View of the Bevolution ^ 

Through Paris lay my readiest course, 

and there 
Sojourning a few days, I visited 
In haste, each spot of old or recent fame. 
The latter chiefly; from the field of Mars 
Down to the suburbs of St. Antony, 
And from Mont Martre southward to the 

Dome 
Of Genevieve. In both her clamorous Halls, 
The National Synod and the Jacobins, 
I saw the Revolutionary Power 
Toss like a ship at anchor, rocked by storms ; 
The Arcades I traversed, in the Palace huge 
Of Orleans; coasted round and round the 

line 
Of Tavern, Brothel, Gaming-house, and 

Shop, 
Great rendezvous of worst and best, the walk 
Of all who had a purpose, or had not; 
I stared and listened, with a stranger's ears. 
To Hawkers and Haranguers, hubbub wild ! 
And hissing Factionists with ardent eyes. 
In knots, or pairs, or single. Not a look 
Hope takes, or Doubt or Fear is forced to 

wear, 
But seemed there present; and I scanned 

them all, 
Watched every gesture uncontrollable. 
Of anger, and vexation, and despite. 
All side by side, and struggling face to face, 
With gaiety and dissolute idleness. 

Where silent zephyrs sported with the 

dust 
Of the Bastille, I sate in the open sun. 
And from the rubbish gathered up a stone. 
And pocketed the relic, in the guise 
Of an enthusiast; yet, in honest truth, 
I looked for something that I could not find. 
Affecting more emotion than I felt ; 
For 'tis most certain, that these various 

sights. 
However potent their first shock, with me 

1 Wordsworth visited France in November, 1791, 
and remained until December, 1792, an eye witness 
of some of tlie most stirring scenes of tlie Revolu- 
tion. 



338 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Appeared to recompense the traveler's pains 
Less than the painted Magxlalene of Le 

Brun, 
A beauty exquisitely wrought, with hair 
Disheveled, gleaming eyes, and rueful cheek 
Pale and bedropped with overflowing tears. 
[Book IX, lines 42-80.] 

2. An Idealist of the Revolution 

Meantime, day by day, the roads 
Were croAvded with the bravest youth of 

France, 
And all the promjotest of her sj)irits, linked 
In gallant soldiership, and posting on 
To meet the war ujDon her frontier bounds. 
Yet at this very moment do tears start 
Into mine eyes : I do not say I weep — 
I wept not then, — but tears have dimmed my 

sight. 
In memory of the farewells of that time. 
Domestic severings, female fortitude 
At dearest separation, patriot love 
And self-devotion, and terrestrial hope. 
Encouraged with a martyr's confidence; 
Even files of strangers merely seen but once, 
And for a moment, men from far with sound 
Of music, martial tunes, and banners spread. 
Entering the city, here and there a face. 
Or person singled out among the rest, 
Yet still a stranger and beloved as such; 
Even by these jDassing spectacles my heart 
Was oftentimes uplifted, and they seemed 
Arguments sent from Heaven to prove the 

cause 
Good, pure, which no one could stand up 

against, 
Who was not lost, abandoned, selfish, proud. 
Mean, miserable, wilfully depraved, 
Hater perverse of equity and truth. 

Among that band of Officers was one. 
Already hinted at,^ of other mould — 
A patriot, thence rejected by the rest, 
And with an oriental loathing spurned. 
As of a different caste. A meeker man 
Than this lived never, nor a more benign. 
Meek though enthusiastic. Injuries 
Made Mm more gracious, and his nature 

then 
Did breathe its sweetness out most sensibly. 
As aromatic flowers on Alpine turf. 
When foot hath crushed them. He through 

the events 
Of that great change wandered in perfect 

faith, 

1 Michael Beaupuy, one of the true knights 
errant of the Revolution, met by Wordsworth dur- 
ing his sojourn in Blois. 



As through a book, an old romance, or tale 
Of Fairy, or some dream of actions wrought 
Behind the summer clouds. By birth he 

ranked 
With the most noble, but unto the poor 
Among mankind he was in service bound. 
As by some tie invisible, oaths professed 
To a religious order. Man he loved 
As man; and, to the mean and the obscure, 
And all the homely in their homely works 
Transferred a courtesy which had no air 
Of condescension ; but did rather seem 
A passion and a gallantry, like that 
Which he, a soldier, in his idler day 
Had paid to woman : somewhat vain he was, 
Or seemed so, yet it was not vanity. 
But fondness, and a kind of radiant joy 
Diffused around him, while he was intent 
On works of love or freedom, or revolved 
Complacently the progress of a cause. 
Whereof he was a part : yet this was meek 
And placid, and took nothing from the man 
That was delightful. Oft in solitude 
With him did I discourse about the end 
Of civil government, and its wisest forms; 
Of ancient loyalty, and chartered rights, 
Custom and habit, novelty and change; 
Of self-respect, and virtue in the few 
For patrimonial honor set apart. 
And ignorance in the laboring multitude. 
For he, to all intolerance indisposed, 
Balanced these eonteinplations in his mind; 
And I, who at that time was scarcely dipped 
Into the turmoil, bore a sounder judgment 
Than later days allowed; carried about me, 
With less alloy to its integrity. 
The experience of past ages, as, through 

help 
Of books and common life, it makes sure 

way 
To youthful minds, by objects over near 
Not pressed upon, nor dazzled or misled 
By struggling with the crowd for present 

ends. 

But though not deaf, nor obstinate to find 
Error without excuse upon the side 
Of them who strove against us, more delight 
We took, and let this freely be confessed, 
In painting to ourselves the miseries 
Of royal courts, and that volui3tuous life 
Unfeeling, where the man Avho is of soul 
The meanest thrives the most ; where dig- 
nity, _ _ _ 
True personal dignity, abideth not; 
A light, a cruel, and vain world cut off 
From the natural inlets of just sentiment. 
From lowly sympathy and chastening truth ; 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEAGY 



339 



Where good and evil interchange their 

names, 
And thirst for bloody spoils abroad is paired 
With vice at home. We added dearest 

themes — 
Man alid his noble nature, as it is 
The gift which God has placed within his 

power, 
His blind desires and steady faculties 
Capable of clear truth, the one to break 
Bondage, the other to build liberty 
On firm foundations, making social life, 
Through knowledge spreading and imj^er- 

ishable. 
As just in regulation, and as pure 
As individual in the wise and good. 

We summoned up the honorable deeds 
Of ancient Story, thought of each bright 

spot, 
That would be found in all recorded time, 
Of truth preserved and error passed away; 
Of single spirits that catch the flame from 

Heaven, 
And how the multitudes of men will feed 
And fan each other; thought of sects, how 

keen 
They are to i^ut the appropriate nature on, 
Triumphant over every obstacle 
Of custom, language, country, love, or hate, 
And what they do and suffer for their creed ; 
How far they travel, and how long endure ; 
How quickly mighty Nations have been 

formed, 
From least beginnings ; how, together locked 
By new opinions, scattered tribes have made 
One body, spreading wide as clouds in 

heaven. 
To aspirations then of our own minds 
Did Ave appeal; and, finally, beheld 
A living confirmation of the whole 
Before us, in a people from the depth 
Of shameful imbecility uprisen, 
Fresh as the morning star. Elate we looked 
Upon their virtues; saw, in rudest men, 
Self-sacrifice the firmest; generovis love. 
And continence of mind, and sense of right. 
Uppermost in the midst of fiercest strife. 

Oh, sweet it is, in academic groves, 
Or such retirement. Friend ! as we have 

known 
In the green dales beside our Rotha's stream, 
•Greta, or Derwent, or some nameless rill. 
To ruminate, with interchange of talk. 
On rational liberty, and hope in man, 
Justice and peace. But far more sweet such 
toil- 



Toil, say I, for it leads to thoughts ab- 
struse — 
If nature then be standing on the brink 
Of some great trial, and we hear the voice 
Of one devoted, — one whom circumstance 
Hath called ujDon to embody his deep sense 
In action, give it outwardly a shape, 
And that of benediction, to the Avorld. 
Then doubt is not, and truth is more than 

truth, — 
A hope it is, and a desire ; a creed 
Of zeal, by an authority Divine 
Sanctioned, of danger, difficulty, or death. 
Such conversation, under Attic shades. 
Did Dion hold with Plato ; ripened thus 
For a deliverer's glorious task, — and such 
He, on that ministry already bound, 
Held with Eudemus and Timonides, 
Surrounded by adventurers in arms. 
When those two vessels with their daring 

freight. 
For the Sicilian Tyrant's overthrow. 
Sailed from Zacynthus, — philosophic war. 
Led by Philosophers. With harder fate, 
Though like ambition, such was he, 

Friend ! 
Of whom I speak. So Beaupuy (let the 

name 
Stand near the worthiest of Antiquity) 
Fashioned his life; and many a long dis- 
course. 
With like pei-suasion honored, we main- 
tained : 
He, on his part, aceoutered for the worst. 
He perished fighting, in supreme command, 
Upon the borders of the unhappy Loire, 
For liberty, against deluded men. 
His fellow country-men ; and yet most 

blessed 
In this, that he the fate of later times 
Lived not to see, nor Avhat we now behold. 
Who have as ardent hearts as he had then. 

Along that very Loire, with festal mirth 
Resounding at all hours, and innocent yet 
Of civil slaughter, was our frequent walk; 
Or in wide forests of continuous shade. 
Lofty and over-arched, Avith open space 
Beneath the trees, clear footing many a 

mile — ■ 
A solemn region. Oft amid those haunts, 
From earnest dialogues I slipped in thought, 
And let remembrance steal to other times. 
When o'er those interwoven roots, moss- 
clad. 
And smooth as marble or a waveless sea. 
Some Hermit, from his cell forth-strayed, 
might pace 



340 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



In sylvan meditation undisturbed; 
As on the pavement of a Gothic church 
Walks a lone Monk, when service hath ex- 
pired, 
In peace and silence. But if e'er was 

heard, — 
Heard, though unseen, — a devious traveler, 
Retiring or approaching from afar 
With speed and echoes loud of trampling 

hoofs 
From the hard floor reverberated, then 
It was Angelica thundering through the 

woods 
Upon her palfrey, or that gentle maid 
Erminia, fugitive as fair as she. 
Sometimes methought I saw a pair of 

knights 
Joust underneath the trees, that as in storm 
Rocked high above their heads; anon, the 

din 
Of boisterous merriment, and music's roar, 
In sudden proclamation, burst from haunt 
Of Satyrs in some viewless glade, with 

dance 
Rejoicing o'er a female in the midst, 
A mortal beauty, their unhappy thrall. 
The width of those huge forests, unto me 
A novel scene, did often in this way 
Master my fancy while I wandered on 
With that revered companion. And some- 
times — 
When to a convent in a meadow green, 
By a brook-side, we came, a roofless pile. 
And not by reverential touch of Time 
Dismantled, but by violence abrupt — 
In spite of those heart-bracing colloquies, 
In spite of real fervor, and of that 
Less genuine and wrought up within my- 
self— 
I could not but bewail a wrong so harsh, 
And for the Matin-bell to sound no more 
Grieved, and the twilight taper, and the 

cross 
High on the topmost pinnacle, a sign 
(How welcome to the weary traveler's 

eyes ! ) 
Of hospitality and peaceful rest. 
And when the partner of those varied walks 
Pointed upon occasion to the site 
Of Romorentin, home of ancient kings. 
To the imperial edifice of Blois, 
Or to that rural castle, name now slipped 
From my remembrance, where a lady lodged. 
By the first Francis wooed, and bound to 

him 
In chains of mutual passion, from the tower, 
As a tradition of the country tells. 
Practiced to commune with her royal knight 



By cressets and love-beacons, intercourse 
'Twixt her high-seated residence and his 
Far off at Chambord on the plain beneath; 
Even here, though less than, with the peace- 
ful house 
Religious, 'mid those frequent monuments 
Of Kings, their vices and their better deeds, 
Imagination, potent to inflame 
At times with virtuous wrath and noble 

scorn, 
Did also often mitigate the force 
Of civic prejudice, the bigotry, 
So call it, of a youthful patriot's mind; 
And on these spots with many gleams I 

looked 
Of chivalrous delight. Yet not the less. 
Hatred of absolute rule, where will of one 
Is law for all, and of that barren pride 
In them who, by immunities unjust, 
Between the sovereign and the people stand, 
His helper and not theirs, laid stronger hold 
Daily upon me, mixed with pity too 
And love ; for where hope is, there love will 

be 
For the abject multitude. And when we 

chanced 
One day to meet a hunger-bitten girl. 
Who crept along fitting her languid gait 
Unto a heifer's motion, by a cord 
Tied to her arm, and picking thus from the 

lane 
Its sustenance, while the girl with pallid 

hands 
Was busy knitting in a heartless mood 
Of solitude, and at the sight my friend 
In agitation said, " 'Tis against that 
That we are fighting," I with him believed 
That a benignant spirit was abroad 
Which might not be withstood, that poverty 
Abject as this would in a little time 
Be found no more, that we should see the 

earth 
Unthwarted in her wish to recompense 
The meek, the lowly, patient child of toil, 
All institutes forever blotted out 
That legalized exclusion, empty pomp 
Abolished, sensual state and cruel power. 
Whether by edict of the one or few ; 
And finally, as sum and crown of all. 
Should see the people having a strong hand 
In framing their own laws; whence better 

days 
To all mankind. But, these things set apart, 
Was not this single confidence enough 
To animate the mind that ever turned 
A thought to human welfare, — that, hence- 
forth 
Captivity by mandate without law 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



341 



Should cease ; and open aeeusatiou lead 
To sentence in the hearing of the worid, 
And open punishment, if not the air 
Be free to breathe in, and the heart of man 
Dread nothing? From this height I shall 

not stoop 
To humbler matter that detained us oft 
In thought or conversation, public acts. 
And public persons, and emotions wrought 
Within the breast, as ever-varying winds 
Of record or i-eport swept over us ; 
But I might here, instead, repeat a tale 
Told by my Patriot friend, of sad events, 
That prove to what low depth had struck 

the roots, 
How widely spread the boughs, of that old 

tree 
Which, as a deadly mischief, and a f oul 
And black dishonor, France was weary of. 
[Book IX, lines 262-552.] 

3. Disappointment and Restoration 
1 

In this frame of mind. 
Dragged by a chain of harsh necessity. 
So seemed it, — now I thankfully acknowl- 
edge, 
Forced by the gracious providence of 

Heaven, — 
To England I returned, else (though as- 
sured 
That I both was and must be of small 

weight, 
No better than a landsman on the deck 
Of a ship struggling with a hideous storm) 
Doubtless, I should have then made com- 
mon cause 
With some who perished; haply perished 

too, 
A poor mistaken and bewildered offering, — 
Should to the breast of Nature have gone 

back, 
With all my resolutions, all my hopes," 
A Poet only to myself, to men 
Useless, and even, beloved Friend! a soul 
To thee unknown ! 

Twice had the trees let fall 
Their leaves, as often Winter had put on 
His hoary crown, since I had seen the surge 
Beat against Albion's shore, since ear of 

mine 
Had caught the accents of my native speech 
Upon our native country's sacred ground. 
A patriot of the world, how could I glide 
Into communion with her sylvan shades, 
Erewhile my tuneful haunt ? It pleased me 
more 



To abide in the great City, where I found 

The general air still busy with the stir 

Of that first memorable onset made 

By a strong levy of humanity 

Upon the traffickers in Negro blood; 

Effort which, though defeated, had recalled 

To notice old forgotten principles. 

And through the nation spread a novel heat 

Of virtuous feeling. For myself, I own 

That this particular strife had wanted power 

To rivet my affections ; nor did now 

Its unsuccessful issue much excite 

My sorrow ; for I brought with me the faith 

That, if France prospered, good men would 

not long 
Pay fruitless worship to humanity. 
And this most rotten branch of human 

shame. 
Object, so seemed it, of superfluous pains. 
Would fall together with its parent tree. 
What, then, were my emotions, when in 

arms 
Britain put forth her freeborn strength in 

league. 
Oh, pity and shame ! with those confederate 

Powers ! 
Not in my single self alone I found, 
But in the minds of all ingenuous youth. 
Change and subversion from that hour. No 

shock 
Given to my moral natui-e had I known 
Down to that very moment ; neither lapse 
Nor turn of sentiment that might be named 
A revolution, save at this one time ; 
All else was progress on the self-same path 
On which, with a diversity of pace, 
I had been traveling: this a stride at once 
Into another region. As a light 
And pliant harebell, swinging in the breeze 
On some gray rock — its birthplace — so had I 
Wantoned, fast rooted on the ancient tower 
Of my beloved country, wishing not 
A happier fortune than to wither there : 
Now was I from that pleasant station torn 
And tossed about in whirlwind. I rejoiced, 
Yea, afterwards — truth most painful to 

record ! — 
E xulted, in the triumph of my soul. 
When Englishmen by thousands were 

o'erthrown. 
Left without glory on the field, or driven, 
Brave hearts! to shameful flight. It was 

a grief, — 
Grief call it not, 'twas anything but that, — 
A conflict of sensations without name. 
Of which he only, who may love the sight 
Of a village steeple, as I do, can judge, 



342 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



When, in the congregation bending all 

To their great Father, prayers were 

offered up, 
Or praises for our country's victories ; 
And, 'mid the simple worshii^ers, perchance 
I only, like an uninvited guest 
Whom no one owned, sate silent, shall I 

add, 
Fed on the day of vengeance yet to come. 

Oh! much have 'they to account for, who 

could tear. 
By violence, at one decisive rent. 
From the best youth in England their dear 

pride, 
Their joy, in England; this, too, at a time 
In which worst losses easily might wear 
The best of names, when patriotic love 
Did of itself in modesty give way. 
Like the Precursor when the Deity 
Is come Whose harbinger he was ; a time 
In which apostasy from ancient faith 
Seemed but conversion to a higher creed; 
Withal a season dangerous and wild, 
A time when sage Experience would have 

snatched 
Flowers out of any hedge-row to compose 
A chaplet in contempt of his gray locks. 

When the proud fleet that bears the red- 
cross flag 
In that unworthy service was prepared 
To mingle, I beheld the vessels lie, 
A brood of gallant creatures, on the deep ; 
I saw them in their rest, a sojourner 
Through a whole month of calm and glassy 

days 
In that delightful island which protects 
Their place of convocation — there I heard, 
Each evening, pacing by the still seashore, 
A monitory sound that never failed, — 
The sunset cannon. While the orb went 

down 
In the tranquillity of nature, came 
That voice, ill requiem ! seldom heard by me 
Without a spirit overcast by dark 
Imaginations, sense of woes to come, 
Sorrow for human kind, and pain of heart. 

In France, the men, who, for their desper- 
ate ends, 

Had plucked up mercy by the roots, were 
glad 

Of this new enemy. Tyrants, strong before 

In wicked pleas, were strong as demons 
now; 

And thus, on every side beset with foes, 



The goaded land waxed mad; the crimes of 

few • 
Spread into madness of the many; blasts 
From hell came sanctified like airs from 

heaven. 
The sternness of the just, the faith of those 
Who doubted not that Providence had times 
Of vengeful retribution, theirs who throned 
The human Understanding paramount 
And made of that their God, the hopes of 

men 
Who were content to barter short-lived 

pangs 
For a paradise of ages, the blind rage 
Of insolent tempers, the light vanity 
Of intermeddlers, steady purposes 
Of the suspicious, slips of the indiscreet. 
And all the accidents of life — ^were pressed 
Into one service, busy with one work. 
The Senate stood aghast, her prudence 

quenched. 
Her wisdom stifled, and her justice scared, 
Her frenzy only active to extol 
Past outrages, and shape the way for new, 
Which no one dared to oppose or mitigate. 

Domestic carnage now filled the whole 
year 
With feast-days; old men from the chim- 
ney-nook. 
The maiden from the bosom of her love. 
The mother from the cradle of her babe. 
The warrior from the field — all perished, 

all- 
Friends, enemies, of all parties, ages, ranks, 
Head after head, and never heads enough 
For those that bade them fall. They found 

their joy. 
They made it jDroudly, eager as a child, 
(If like desires of innocent little ones 
May with such heinous appetites be com- 
pared). 
Pleased in some open field to exercise 
A toy that mimics with revolving wings 
The motion of a wind-mill ; though the air 
Do of itself blow fresh, and make the vanes 
Spin in his eyesight, that contents him not. 
But, with the plaything at arm's length, 

he sets 
His front against the blast, and runs amain, 
That it may whirl the faster. 

Amid the depth 
Of those enormities, even thinking minds 
Forgot, at seasons, whence they had their 

being ; 
Forgot that such a sound was ever heard 
As Liberty upon earth: yet all beneath 



THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



343 



Her innocent authority was wrought, 
Nor could have been, without her blessed 

name. 
The illustrious wife of Roland, in the hour 
Of her comiDosure, felt that agony, 
And gave it vent in her last words.^ 

Friend ! 
It was a lamentable time for man. 
Whether a hope had e'er been his or not; 
A woeful time for them whose hopes sur- 
vived 
The shock; most woeful for those few who 

still 
Were flattered, and had trust in human 

kind: 
They had the deepest feeling of the grief. 
Meanwhile the Invaders fared as they de- 
served : 
The Herculean Commonwealth had ptit 

forth her arms, 
And throttled with an infant godhead's 

might 
The snakes about her cradle; that was 

well, 
And as it should be; yet no cure for them 
Whose souls were sick with pain of what 

would be 
Hereafter brought in charge against man- 
kind. 
Most melancholy at that time, Friend ! 
Were my day-thoughts, — my nights were 

miserable ; 
Through months, through years, long after 

the last beat 
Of those atrocities, the hour of sleep 
To me came rarely charged with natural 

gifts, 
Such ghastly visions had I of despair 
And tyranny, and implements of death ; 
And innocent victims sinking under fear, 
And momentary hope, and worn-out prayer, 
Each in his separate cell, or penned in 

crowds 
For sacrifice, and struggling with fond 

mirth 
And levity in dungeons, where the dust 
Was laid with tears. . Then suddenly the 

scene 
Changed, and the unbroken dream entan- 
gled me 
In long orations, which I strove to plead 
Before unjust tribunals, — with a voice 
Laboring,, a brain confounded, and a sense, 
Death-like, of treacherous desertion, felt 
In the last place of refuge — my own soul. 

I "Oh, Liberty, what things are done in thy 
name." Madame Koland was guillotined, Novem- 
ber 8, 1793. 



When I began in youth's delightful prime 
To yield myself to Nature, when that strong 
And holy passion overcame me first. 
Nor day nor night, evening or morn, was 

free 
From its oppression. But, Power Su- 



preme 



Without Whose call this world would cease 

to breathe. 
Who from the Fountain of Thy grace dost 

fill 
The veins that branch through every frame 

of life. 
Making man what he is, creature divine, 
In single or in social eminence. 
Above the rest raised infinite ascents 
When reason that enables him to be 
Is not sequestered — what a change is here! 
How different ritual for this after-worship, 
What countenance to promote this second 

love! 
The first was service paid to things which lie 
Guarded within the bosom of Thy will. 
Therefore to serve was high beatitude ; 
Tumult was therefore gladness, and the 

fear 
Ennobling, venerable; sleep secure. 
And waking thoughts more rich than hap- 
piest dreams. 

But as the ancient Prophets, borne aloft 
In vision, yet constrained by natural laws 
With them to take a troubled human heart. 
Wanted not consolations, nor a creed 
Of reconcilement, then when they de- 
nounced, 
On towns and cities, wallowing in the abyss 
Of their offences, punishment to come; 
Or saw, like other men, with bodily eyes. 
Before them, in some desolated place. 
The wrath consummate and the threat ful- 
filled; 
So, with devout humility be it said, 
So, did a portion of that spirit fall 
On me uplifted from the vantage-ground 
Of pity and sorrow to a state of being 
That through the time's exceeding fierceness 

saw 
Glimpses of retribution, terrible. 
And in the order of sublime behests : 
But, even if that were not, amid the awe 
Of unintelligible chastisement, 
Not only acquiescences of faith 
Survived, but daring sympathies with 

power, 
Motions not treacherous or profane, else 

why 
Within the folds of no ungentle breast 



344 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Their dread vibration to this hour pro- 
longed ? 
Wild blasts of music thus could find their 

way 
Into the midst of turbulent events ; 
So that worst tempests might be listened to. 
Then was the truth received into my heart, 
That, under heaviest sorrow earth can bring, 
If from the affliction somewhere do not 

grow 
Honor which could not else have been, a 

' faith, 
An elevation, and a sanctity. 
If new strength be not given nor old re- 
stored, 
The blame is ours, not Nature's. When a 

taunt 
Was taken up by scoffers in their pride. 
Saying, "Behold the harvest that we reap 
From popular government and equality," 
I clearly saw that neither these nor aught 
Of wild belief engrafted on their names 
By false philosophy had caused the woe. 
But a terrific reservoir of guilt 
And ignorance filled up from age to age. 
That could no longer hold its loathsome 

charge, 
But burst and spread in deluge through the 
land. 

And as the desert hath green spots, the 

sea 
Small islands scattered amid stormy waves. 
So that disastrous period did not want 
Bright sprinklings of all human excellence. 
To which the silver wands of saints in 

HeaveUj 
Might point with rapturous joy. Yet not 

the less^ 
For those examples, in no age sui'passed, 
Of fortitude and energy and love. 
And human nature faithful to herself 
Under worst trials, was I driven to think 
Of the glad times when first I traversed 

France 
A youthful pilgrim; above all reviewed 
That eventide, when under windows bright 
With happy faces and with garlands hung, 
And through a rainbow-arch that spanned 

the street, 
Triumphal pomp for liberty confirmed, 
I paced, a dear companion at my side. 
The town of Arras, whence with promise 

high 
Issued, on delegation to sustain 
Humanity and right, that Robespierre, 
He who thereafter, and in how short time! 
Wielded the scepter of the Atheist crew. 



When the calamity spread far and wide — 
And this same city, that did then appear 
To outrun the rest in exultation, groaned 
Under the vengeance of her cruel son. 
As Lear reproached the winds — I could al- 
most 
Have quarreled with that blameless spectacle 
For lingering yet an image in my mind 
To mock me under such a strange reverse. 

Friend! few happier moments have 

been mine 
Than that which told the downfall of this 

Tribe 
So dreaded, so abhorred. The day deserves 
A separate record. Over the smooth sands 
Of Leven's ample estuary lay 
My journey, and beneath a genial sun. 
With distant prospect among gleams of sky 
And clouds, and intermingling mountain- 
tops, 
In one inseparable glory clad. 
Creatures of one ethereal substance met 
In consistory, like a diadem 
Or crown of burning seraphs as they sit 
In the enipyrean. Underneath that pomp 
Celestial, lay unseen the pastoral vales 
Among whose happy fields I had grown up 
From childhood. On the fulgent spectacle. 
That neither passed away nor changed, I 

gazed 
Enrapt; but brightest things are wont to 

draw 
Sad opposites out of the inner heart. 
As even their pensive influence drew from 

mine. 
How could it otherwise? for not in vain 
That very morning had I turned aside 
To seek the ground where, 'mid a throng of 

graves, 
An honored teacher of my youth was laid, 
And on the stone were graven by his desire 
Lines from the churchyard elegy of Gray. 
This faithful guide, speaking from his 

death-bed, 
Added no farewell to his parting counsel, 
But said to me, "My head will soon lie low" ; 
And when I saw the turf that covered him. 
After the lapse of full eight years, those 

words, 
With sound of voice and countenance of the 

Man, 
Came back upon me, so that some few tears 
Fell from me in my own despite. But now 
I thought, still traversing that widespread 

plain. 
With tender pleasure of the verses graven 
Upon his tombstone, whispering to myself: 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



345 



He loved the Poets, and, if now alive, 
Would have loved me, as one not destitute 
Of promise, nor belying the kind hope 
That he had formed, when I, at his com- 
mand. 
Began to spin, with toil, my earliest songs. 

As I advanced, all that I saw or felt 
Was gentleness and peace. Upon a small 
And rocky island near, a fragment stood 
(Itself like a sea rock) the low remains 
(With shells encrusted, dark with briny 

weeds) 
Of a dilapidated structure, once 
A Romish chapel, where the vested priest 
Said matins at the hour that suited those 
Who crossed the sands with ebb of morning 

tide. 
Not far from that still ruin all the plain 
Lay spotted with a variegated crowd 
Of vehicles and travelers, horse and foot. 
Wading beneath the conduct of their guide 
In loose procession through the shallow 

stream 
Of inland waters; the great sea meanwhile 
Heaved at safe distance, far retired. I 

paused, 
Longing for skill to paint a scene so bright 
And cheerful, but the foremost of the band 
As he approached, no salutation given 
In the familiar language of the day. 
Cried, "Robespierre is dead !" — nor was a 

doubt. 
After strict question, left within my mind 
That he and his supporters all were fallen.^ 

Great was my transport, deep my grati- 
tude 
To everlasting Justice, by this fiat 
Made manifest. "Come now, ye golden 

times," 
Said I, forth-pouring on those open sands 
A hymn of triumph : "as the morning comes 
From out the bosom of the night, come ye : 
Thus far our trust is verified ; behold ! 
They who with clumsy desperation brought 
A river of Blood, and preached that nothing 

else 
Could cleanse the Augean stable, by the 

• might 
Of their own helper have been swept away; 
Their madness stands declared and visible; 
Elsewhere will safety now be sought, and 

earth 
March firmly towards righteousness and 
peace." — 

1 Robespierre was guillotined, July 10, 1794. 



Then schemes I framed more calmly, when 

'and how 
The madding factions might be tranquil- 
lized. 
And how through hardships manifold and 

long 
The glorious renovation would proceed. 
Thus interrupted by uneasy burst 
Of exultation, I pursued my way 
Along that very shore which I had skimmed 
In former days, when — spurring from the 

Vale 
Of Nightshade, and St. Mary's moldering 

fane. 
And the stone abbot, after circuit made 
In wantonness of heart, a joyous band 
Of schoolboys hastening to their distant 

home 
Along the margin of the moonlight sea — 
We beat with thundering hoofs the level 

sand. 

II 
From that time forth. Authority in France 
Put on a milder face ; Terror had ceased, 
Yet everything was wanting that might give 
Courage to them who looked for good by 

light 
Of rational Experience, for the shoots 
And hopeful blossoms of a second spring: 
Yet, in me, confidence was unimpaired; 
The Senate's language, and the public acts 
And measures of the Government, though 

both 
Weak, and of heartless omen, had not power 
To daunt me; in the People was my trust. 
And in the virtues which mine eyes had 

seen. 
I knew that wound external could not take 
Life from the young Republic; that new 

foes 
Would only follow, in the path of shame, 
Their brethren, and her triumphs be in the 

end 
Great, universal, irresistible. 
This intuition led me to confound 
One vietoi-y with another, higher far, — 
Triumphs of unambitious peace .at home. 
And noiseless fortitude. Beholding still 
Resistance strong as heretofore, I thought 
That what was in degree the same was like- 
wise 
The same in quality, — that, as the worse 
Of the two spirits then at strife remained 
Untired, the better, surely, would preserve 
The heart that first had roused him. Youth 

maintains. 
In all conditions of society, 
Communion more direct and intimate 



346 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



With Nature, — hence, ofttimes, with reason 

too — 
Than age or manhood, even. To Nature, 

then, 
Power had reverted : habit, custom, law, 
Had left an interregnum's open sjDaee 
For her to move about in, uncontrolled. 
Hence could I see how Babel-like their task. 
Who, by the recent deluge stupefied, 
With their whole souls went culling from 

the day 
Its petty promises, to build a tower 
For their own safety; laughed with my 

compeers 
At gravest heads, by enmity to France 
Distempered, till they found, in every blast 
Forced from the street-disturbing news- 
man's horn. 
For her great cause record or prophecy 
Of utter ruin. How might we believe 
That wisdom could, in any shape, come near 
Men clinging to delusions so insane *? 
And thus, exjDerienee proving that no few 
Of our opinions had been just, we took 
Like credit to ourselves where less was due, 
And thought that other notions were as 

sound, 
Yea, could not but be right, because we saw 
That foolish men opposed them. 

To a strain 
More animated I might here give way, 
And tell, since juvenile errors are my theme, 
What in those days through Britain was 

performed 
To turn all judgments out of their right 

course ; 
But this is passion ovei'-near ourselves, 
Reality too close and too intense, 
And intermixed with something, in my mind. 
Of scorn and condemnation personal, 
That would profane the sanctity of verse. 
Our Shepherds, this say merely, at that time 
Acted, or seemed at least to act, like men 
Thirsting to make the guardian crook of law 
A tool of murder; they who ruled the 

State, — 
Though with such awful proof before their 

eyes 
That he, who would sow death, reaps death, 

or worse, 
And can reap nothing better, — child-like 

longed 
To imitate, not wise enough to avoid; 
Or left (by mere timidity betrayed) 
The plain straight road, for one no better 

chosen 
Than if their wish had been to undermine 
Justice, and make an end of Liberty. 



But from these bitter truths I must return 
To my own history. It hath been told 
That I was led to take an eager part 
In arguments of civil polity. 
Abruptly, and indeed before my time: 
I had approached, like other youths, the 

shield 
Of human nature from the golden side. 
And would have fought, even to the death, 

to attest 
The quality of the metal which I saw. 
What there is best in individual man. 
Of wise in passion, and sublime in power, 
Benevolent in small societies, 
And great in large ones, I had oft revolved. 
Felt deeply, but not thoroughly understood 
By reason : nay, far from it ; they were yet, 
As cause was given me afterwards to learn. 
Not proof against the injuries of the day; 
Lodged only at the sanctuary's door, 
Not safe within its bosom. Thus prepared, 
And with such general insight into evil. 
And of the bounds which sever it from good, 
As books and common intercourse with life 
Must needs have given — to the inexperi- 
enced mind. 
When the world travels in a beaten road, 
Guide faithful as is needed — I began 
To meditate Avith ardor on the rule 
And management of nations; what it is 
And ought to be; and strove to learn how 

far 
Their power or weakness, wealth or poverty, 
Their happiness or misery, depends 
Upon their laws, and fashion of the State. 

pleasant exercise of hope and joy ! 
For mighty were the auxiliars which then 

stood 
Upon our side, us who were strong in love ! 
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive. 
But to be young was very Heaven ! 

times. 
In which the meager, stale, forbidding ways 
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once 
The attraction of a country in romance! 
When Reason seemed the most to assert her 

rights 
When most intent on making of herself 
A prime enchantress — to assist the work, 
Which then was going forward in her name ! 
Not favored spots alone, but the whole 

Earth, 
The beauty wore of promise — that which 

sets 
(As at some moments might not be unfelt 
Among the bowers of Paradise itself) 
The budding rose above the rose full blown. 



THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



347 



What temper at the prospect did not wake 
To happiness unthought off The inert 
Were roused, and lively natures rapt away ! 
They who had fed their childhood upon 

dreams, 
The play-fellows of fancy, who had made 
All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and 

strength 
Their ministers, — ^who in lordly wise had 

stirred 
Among the grandest objects of the sense. 
And dealt with whatsoever they found there 
As if they had within some lurking right 
To wield it ; — they, too, who of gentle mood 
Had watched all gentle motions, and to these 
Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers 

more mild. 
And in the region of their peaceful selves ; — 
Now was it that both found, the meek and 

lofty 
Did both find, helpers to their hearts' desire. 
And stuff at hand, plastic as they could 

wish, — 
Were called upon to exercise their skill. 
Not in Utopia, — subterranean fields, — 
Or some secreted island. Heaven knows 

where ! 
But in the very world, which is the world 
Of all of us, — the place where, in the end. 
We find our happiness, or not at all! 

Why should I not confess that Earth was 

then 
To me, what an inheritance, new-fallen. 
Seems, when the first time visited, to one 
Who thither comes to find in it his home ? 
He walks about and looks upon the spot 
With cordial transport, molds it and remolds. 
And is half pleased with things that are 

amiss, 
'Twill be such joy to see them disappear. 

An active partisan, I thus convoked 
From every object pleasant circumstance 
To suit my ends; I moved among mankind 
With genial feelings still predominant; 
When erring, erring on the better part. 
And in the kinder spirit ; jjlacable. 
Indulgent, as not uninformed that men 
See as they have been taught — Antiquity 
Gives rights to error ; and aware, no less, 
That throwing off oppression must be work 
As well of License as of Liberty; 
And above all — for this was more than all — 
Not caring if the wind did now and then 
Blow keen upon an eminence that gave 
Prospect so large into futurity; 



In brief, a child of Nature, as at first, 
Diffusing only those affections wider 
That from the cradle had grown up with me, 
And losing, in no other way than light 
Is lost in light, the weak in the more strong. 

In the main outline, such it might be said 
Was my condition, till with open war 
Britain opposed the liberties of France, 
This threw me first out of the pale of love; 
Soured and corrupted, upwards to the 

source. 
My sentiments; was not, as hitherto, 
A swallowing up of lesser things in great, 
But change of them into their contraries; 
And thus a way was opened for mistakes 
And false conclusions, in degree as gross. 
In kind more dangerous. What had been 

a pride, 
Was now a shame ; my likings and my loves 
Ran in new channels, leaving old ones dry; 
And hence a blow that, in maturer age. 
Would but have touched the judgment, 

struck more deep 
Into sensations near the heart : meantime. 
As from the first, wild theories were afloat, 
To whose pretensions, sedulously urged, 
I had but lent a careless ear, assured 
That time was ready to set all things right, 
And that the multitude, so long oppressed. 
Would be oppressed no more. 

But when events 
Brought less encouragement, and unto these 
The immediate proof of principles no more 
Could be entrusted, while the events them- 
selves. 
Worn out in greatness, stripped of novelty, 
Less occupied the mind, and sentiments 
Could through my understanding's natural 

gTowth 
No longer keeiD their ground, by faith main- 
tained 
Of inward consciousness, and hope that laid 
Her hand upon her object — evidence 
Safer, of universal application, such 
As could not be impeached, was sought else- 
where. 

But now, become oppressors in their tutn, 
Frenchmen had changed a war of self- 
defense 
For one of conquest, losing sight of all 
Which they had struggled for : up mounted 

now, 
Openly in the eye of earth and heaven, 
The scale of liberty. I read her doom. 
With anger vexed, with disappointment sore, 



348 



THE geeat tradition 



But not dismayed, nor taking to the shame 
Of a false prophet. While resentment rose 
Striving to hide, what nought could heal, 

the wounds 
Of mortified presumption, I adhered 
More firmly to old tenets, and, to prove 
Their temper, strained them more; and 

thus, in heat 
Of contest, did opinions every day 
Grow into' consequence, till round my mind 
They clung, as if they were its life, nay 

moi'e, 
The very being of the immortal soul. 

This was the time, when, all things tend- 
ing fast 
To depravation, speculative schemes — 
That promised to abstract the hopes of Man 
Out of his feelings, to be fixed thenceforth 
Forever in a purer element — 
Found ready welcome. Tempting region 

that 
For Zeal to enter and refresh herself. 
Where passions had the privilege to work. 
And never hear the sound of their own 

names. 
But, speaking more in charity, the dream 
Flattered the young, pleased with extremes, 

nor least 
With that which makes our Reason's naked 

self 
The object of its fervor. What delight! 
How glorious! in self-knowledge and self- 
rule, 
To look through all the frailties of the 

world. 
And, with a resolute mastery shaking off 
Infirmities of nature, time, and place. 
Build social upon personal Liberty, 
Which, to the blind restraints of general 

laws 
Superior, magisterially adopts 
One guide, the light of circumstances, 

flashed 
Upon an independent intellect. 
Thus expectation rose again; thus hope, 
From her first ground expelled, grew proud 

once more. 
Oft, as my thoughts were turned to human 

kind, 
I scorned indifference; but, infiamed with 

thirst 
Of a secure intelligence, and sick 
Of other longing, I pursued what seemed 
A more exalted nature ; wished that Man 
Should start out of his earthy, worm-like 

state. 



And spread abroad the wings of Liberty, 
Lord of himself, in undisturbed delight — 
A noble aspiration ! yet I feel 
(Sustained by worthier as by wiser 

thoughts) 
The aspiration, nor shall ever cease 
To feel it ; — ^but return we to our course. 

Enough, 'tis true — could such a plea 

excuse 
Those aberrations — had the clamorous 

friends 
Of ancient Institutions said and done 
To bring disgrace upon their very names ; 
Disgrace, of which, custom and written law, 
And sundry moral sentiments as props 
Or emanations of those institutes, 
Too justly bore a part. A veil had been 
Uplifted; why deceive ourselves? in sooth, 
'Twas even so; and sorrow for the man 
Who either had not eyes wherewith to see, 
Or, seeing, had forgotten! A strong shock 
Was given to old opinions ; all men's minds 
Had felt its power, and mine was both let 

loose, 
Let loose and goaded. After what hath 

been 
Already said of patriotic love. 
Suffice it here to add, that, somewhat stern 
In temperament, withal a happy man. 
And therefore bold to look on painful 

things. 
Free likewise of the world, and thence more 

bold, 
I summoned my best skill, and toiled, intent 
To anatomize the frame of social life ; 
Yea, the whole body of society 
Searched to its heart. Share with me, 

Friend! the wish 
That some dramatic tale, endued with shapes 
Livelier, and flinging out less guarded words 
Than suit the work we fashion, might set 

forth 
What then I learned, or think I learned, of 

truth. 
And the errors into which I fell, betrayed 
By present objects, and by reasonings false 
From their beginnings, inasmuch as drawn 
Out of a heart that had been turned aside 
From Nature's way by outward accidents. 
And which was thus confounded, more and 

more 
Misguided, and misguiding. So I fared, 
Dragging all precepts, judgments, maxims, 

creeds, 
Like culprits to the bar ; calling the mind. 
Suspiciously, to establish in plain day 



THE RISE OF MODEEN DEMOCRACY 



349 



Her titles and her honors ; now believing, 
Now disbelieving; endlessly perplexed 
With impulse, motive, right and wrong, the 

gTound 
Of obhgation, what the rule and whence 
The sanction; till, demanding formal proof, 
And seeking it in everything, I lost 
All feeling of conviction, and, in fine. 
Sick, wearied out with contrarieties, 
Yielded up moral questions in despair. 

This was the crisis of that strong disease, 
This the soul's last and lowest ebb; I 

drooped, 
Deeming our blessed reason of least use 
Where wanted most : "The lordly attributes 
Of will and choice," I bitterly exclaimed, 
"What are they but a mockery of a Being 
Who hath in no concerns of his a test 
Of good and evil ; knows not what to fear 
Or hope for, what to covet or to shun; 
And who, if those could be discerned, would 

yet 
Be little profited, would see, and ask 
Where is the obligation to enforce? 
And, to acknowledged law rebellious, still. 
As selfish passion urged, would act amiss ; 
The dupe of folly, or the slave of crime." 

Depressed, bewildered thus, I did not walk 
With scoffers, seeking light and gay revenge 
From indiscriminate laughter, nor sate 

down 
In reconcilement with an utter waste 
Of intellect ; such sloth I could not brook, 
(Too well I loved, in that my spring of life, 
Painstaking thoughts, and truth, their dear 

reward) 
But turned to abstract science, and there 

sought 
Work for the reasoning faculty enthroned 
Where the disturbances of space and time — 
Whether in matters various, properties 
Inherent, or from human will and power 
Derived — find no admission. Then it was — 
Thanks to the bounteous Giver of all 

good ! — 
That the beloved Sister in whose sight 
Those days were passed, now speaking in a 

voice 
Of sudden admonition — like a brook 
That did but cross a lonely road, and now 
Is seen, heard, felt, and caught at every 

turn. 
Companion never lost through many a 

league- 
Maintained for me a saving intercourse 



With my true self; for, though bedimmed 

and changed 
Much, as it seemed, I was no further 

changed 
Than as a clouded and a waning moon : 
She whispered still that brightness would 

return. 
She, in the midst of all, preserved me still 
A Poet, made me seek beneath that name, 
And that alone, my office" upon earth ; 
And, lastly, as hereafter will be shown. 
If willing audience fail not. Nature's self, 
By all varieties of human love 
Assisted, led me back through opening day 
To those sweet counsels between head and 

heart 
Whence grew that genuine knowledge, 

fraught with peace. 
Which, through the later sinkings of this 

cause, 
Hath still upheld me, and upholds me now 
In the catastrophe (for so they dream. 
And nothing less), when, finally to close 
And seal up all the gains of Prance, a Pope 
Is summoned in to crown an Emperor — 
This last opprobrium, when we see a people. 
That once looked up in faith, as if to Heaven 
For manna, take a lesson from the dog 
Returning to his vomit ; when the sun 
That rose in splendor, was alive, and moved 
In exultation with a living pomp 
Of clouds — his glory's natural retinue — 
Hath dropped all functions by the gods 

bestowed, 
And, turned into a gewgaw, a machine, 
Sets like an Opera phantom. 

Thus, Friend ! i 
Through times of honor and through times 

of shame 
Descending, have I faithfully retraced 
The perturbations of a youthful mind 
Under a long-lived storm of great events — 
A story destined for thy ear, who now. 
Among the fallen of nations, dost abide 
Where Etna, over hill and valley, easts 
His shadow stretching towards Syracuse, 
The city of Timoleon ! Righteous Heaven ! 
How are the mighty prostrated ! They first, 
They first of all that breathe should have 

awaked 
When the great voice was heard from out 

the tombs 
Of ancient heroes. If I suffered grief 
For ill-required France, by many deemed 
A trifler only in her proudest day ; 

1 Coleridge, to whom the poem is addressed. 



350 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



Have been distressed to think of what she 

once 
Promised, now is ; a far more sober cause 
Thine eyes must see of sorrow in a land, 
To the reanimating influence lost 
O'f memory, to virtue lost and hope. 
Though with the wreck of loftier years 

bestrewn. 

But indignation works where hope is not, 
And thou, Friend! wilt be refreshed. 

There is 
One great society alone on earth : 
The noble Living and the noble Dead. 

[Books X, 221-602; XI, 1-395.] 

France: An Ode^ 
samuel taylor coleridge 



Ye Clouds! that far above me float and 

pause, 
Whose pathless march no mortal may con- 
trol ! 
Ye Ocean Waves ! that, wheresoe'er ye roll. 
Yield homage only to eternal laws ! 
Ye Woods ! that listen to the night-bird's 
sii:iging, 
Midway the smooth and perilous slope 
reclined, 
Save when your own imperious branches 
swinging. 
Have made a solemn music of the wind ! 
Where, like a man beloved of God, 
Through glooms, which never woodman trod, 

How oft, pursuing fancies holy. 
My moonlight way o'er flowering weeds I 
wound. 
Inspired beyond the guess of folly. 
By each rude shape and wild unconquera- 
ble sound! 
ye loud Waves! and ye Forests high! 
And ye Clouds that far above me 
soared ! 

* Written in February, 1798, and entitled The 
Recantation; an Ode. Observe that there is 
neither in Coleridge nor in Wordsworth any 
recantation of their allegiance to the principle of 
liberty. His disappointment in France has, how- 
ever, led Coleridge to the conviction "that those 
feelings and that grand ideal of Freedom which 
the mind attains by its contemplation of its indi- 
vidual nature, and of the sublime surrounding ob- 
jects (see first stanza), do not belong to men as a 
society, nor can possibly be either gratified or 
realized under any form of human government, 
but belong to the individual man, so far as he is 
pure, and inflamed with the adoration of God 
in Nature." This attitude, the refuge of political 
idealists in despair, looks forward to the point 
of view of Shelley and Byron. 



Thou rising Sun! thou blue rejoicing Sky! 
Yea, everything that is and will be free! 
Bear witness for me, wheresoe'er ye be. 
With what deep worship I have still 

adored 
The spirit of divinest Liberty. 

II 

AVhen France in wrath her giant-limbs up- 
reared, 
And with that oath which smote air, 

earth, and sea. 
Stamped her strong foot and said she 
would be free. 
Bear witness for me, how I hoped and 

feared ! 
With what a joy my lofty gratulation 

Unawed I sang, amid a slavish band: 
And when to whelm the disenchanted nation, 
Like fiends embattled by a wizard's wand. 
The Monarchs marched in evil day, 
And Britain join'd the dire array; 
Though dear her shores and circling ocean, 
Though many friendships, many youthful 
loves 
Had swoln the patriot emotion 
And flung a magic light o'er all her hills 

and groves; 
Yet still my voice, unaltered, sang defeat 
To all that braved the tyrant-quelling 
lance, 
And shame too long delay'd and vain 

retreat ! 
For ne'er, Liberty ! with partial aim 
I dimmed thy light or damped thy holy 
flame ; 
But blessed the paeans of delivered France, 
And hung my head and wept at Britain's 
name. 

Ill 

"And what," I said, ''though Blasphemy's 
loud scream 
With that sweet music of deliverance 

strove ! 
Though all the fierce and drunken pas- 
sions wove 
A dance more wild than e'er was maniac's 
dream ! 
Ye storms, that round the dawning east 
assembled. 
The Sun was rising, though ye hid his 
light !" 
And when to soothe my soul, that hoped 
and trembled, 
The dissonance ceased, and all seemed calm 
and bright ; 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



351 



When France her front deep-scarr'd and 

gory 
Concealed with clustering wreaths of 
glory ; 
When insupportably advancing, 
Her arm made mockery of the warrior's 
ramp ; 
While timid looks of fury glancing, 
Domestic treason, crushed beneath her 
fatal stamp, 
Writhed like a wounded dragon in his gore; 
Then I reproached my fears that would 
not flee; 
"And soon," I said, "shall Wisdom teach 

her lore 
In the low huts of them that toil and groan ; 
And, conquering by her happiness alone, 
Shall France compel the nations to be 
free. 
Till Love and Joy look round, and call the 
earth their own." 



Forgive me, Freedom ! O forgive those 
dreams ! 
I hear thy voice, I hear thy loud lament. 
From bleak Helvetia's icy caverns sent — 
I hear thy groans upon her blood-stained 
streams ! 
Heroes, that for your peaceful country 
perished, 
And ye, that fleeing, spot your mountain 
snows 
With bleeding wounds; forgive me, that 
I cherished 
One thought that ever blessed your cruel 
foes! 
To scatter rage and traitorous guilt 
Where Peace her jealous home had built ; 
A patriot-race to disinherit 
Of all that made their stormy wilds so dear ; 

And with inexpiable spirit 
To taint the bloodless freedom of the 
mountaineer — 



France, that mockest Heaven, adulterous, 
blind. 
And patriot only in pernicious toils ! 
Are these thy boasts, Champion of human 
kind? 
To mix with Kings in the low lust of sway. 
Yell in the hunt, and share the murderous 

prey; 
To insult the shrine of Liberty with spoils 
From freemen torn; to tempt and to 
betray ? 



The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain, 
Slaves by their own compulsion ! In mad 

game 
They burst their manacles and wear the 
name 
Of Freedom, graven on a heavier chain ! 
Liberty ! with profitless endeavor 
Have I pursued thee, many a weary hour; 
But thou nor swell'st the victor's strain 
nor ever 
Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human 
power. 
Alike from all, howe'er they praise thee, 
(Nor prayer, nor boastful name delays 
thee) 
Alike from Priestcraft's harpy minions. 
And factious Blasphemy's obscener slaves, 
Thou speedest on thy subtle pinions, 
The guide of homeless winds, and playmate 

of the waves ! 
And then I felt thee! — on that sea-cliff's 
verge. 
Whose pines, scarce traveled by the breeze 
above, 
Had made one murmur with the distant 



surge 



Yes, while I stood and gazed, my temples 

bare. 
And shot my being through earth, sea, and 
air. 
Possessing all things with intensest love, 
O Liberty ! my spirit felt thee there. 



352 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



II. THE CONFLICT WITH NAPOLEON 



1. THE ISSUE 



The War of Liberty ^ 

william wordsworth 

[From The Convention of Cintra, 1809] 

1. The Cause 

If I were speaking of things however 
weighty, that were long past and dwindled 
in the memory, I should scarcely venture to 
use this language; but the feelings are of 
yesterday — they are of today; the flower, a 
melancholy flower it is! is still to blow, nor 
will, I trust, its leaves be shed through 
months that are to come : for I repeat that 
the heart of the nation is in this struggle. 
This just and necessary war, as we have 
been accustomed to hear it styled from the 
beginning of the contest in tlae year 1793, 
had, some time before the Treaty of Amiens, 
viz., after the subjugation of Switzerland, 
land not till then, begun to be regarded by 
the body of the people, as indeed both just 
and necessary; and this justice and neces- 
sity were by none more clearly perceived, or 
more feelingly bewailed, than by those who 
had most eagerly opposed the war in its 
commencement, and who continued most 
bitterly to regret that this nation had ever 
borne a part in it. Their conduct was herein 
consistent : they proved that they kept their 
eyes steadily fixed upon principles; for, 
though there was a shifting or transfer of 
hostility in their minds as far as regarded 
persons, they only combated the same enemy 
opposed to them under a different shape; 

1 Napoleon's aggressions in the Spanish Penln- 
Bula had roused the national spirit in the peoples 
of Spain and Portugal, who in 1808 rose against 
him as one man. The news was hailed with joy 
in England as the first instance on the continent 
of a genuinely patriotic opposition to the tyrant. 
An English army under Sir Arthur Wellesley 
drove the French from the field of Vimiera and 
forced a surrender on the 30th of August. By 
the terms drawn up in the Convention of Cintra, 
the French army was allowed to evacuate Por- 
tugal with its arms and baggage. Against the 
weakness implied in this loss of the fruits of vic- 
tory Wordsworth and many others protested 
vehemently. His Tract on the Convention of 
Cintra, like all his political utterances from 1802 
to 1815, was prompted by the realization that 
the war against Napoleon's military tyranny must 
be carried to an uncompromising conclusion. For 
a full account of the significance of Wordsworth's 
views, particularly his belief in the principle of 
the autonomy of all peoples, see A. V. Dicey, The 
Statesmanship of Wordsworth. 



and that enemy was the spirit of selfish 
tyranny and lawless ambition. This spirit, 
the class of persons of whom I have been 
speaking (and I would now be understood, 
as associating them with an immense ma- 
jority of the people of Great Britain, whose 
affections, notwithstanding all the delusions 
which had been practiced upon them, were, 
in the former part of the contest, for a long 
time on the side of their nominal enemies), 
this spirit, when it became undeniably em- 
bodied in the French government, they 
wished, in spite of all dangers, should be 
opposed by war; because peace was not to 
be procured without submission, which could 
not but be followed by a communion, of 
which the word of greeting would be, on the 
one part, insitlt, — and, on the other, degra- 
dation. The people now wished for war, as 
their rulers had done before, because open 
war between nations is a defined Sand effec- 
tual partition, and the sword, in the hands 
of the good and the virtuous, is the most 
intelligible symbol of abhorrence. It was 
in order to be preserved from spirit-break- 
ing submissions — from the guilt of seeming 
to approve that which they had not the 
power to prevent, and out of a conscious- 
ness of the danger that such guilt would 
otherwise actually steal upon them, and that 
thus, by evil communications and participa- 
tions, would be w^eakened and finally de- 
stroyed, those moral sensibilities and ener- 
gies, by virtue of which alone, their liber- 
ties, and even their lives, could be preserved, 
— that the people of Great Britain deter- 
mined to encounter all perils which could 
follow in the train of open resistance. There 
were some, and those deservedly of high 
character m the country, who exerted their 
utmost influence to counteract this resolu- 
tion ; nor did they give to it so gentle a 
name as want of prudence, but. they boldly 
termed it blindness and obstinacy. Let them 
be judged with charity! But there are 
promptings of wisdom from the penetralia 
of human nature, which a people can hear, 
though the wisest of their practical States- 
men be deaf towards them. This authentic 
voice, the people of England had heard and 
obeyed: and, in opposition to French tyr- 
anny, growing daily more, insatiate and im- 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



353 



placable, they ranged themselves zealously 
under their Government; though they nei- 
ther forgot nor forgave its transgressions, 
in having first involved them in a war with 
a people then struggling for its own liber- 
ties under a twofold affliction — confounded 
by inbred faction, and beleaguered by a 
cruel and imperious external foe. But these 
remembrances did not vent themselves in 
reproaches, nor hinder us from being rec- 
onciled to our Kulers, when a change or 
rather a revolution in circumstances had 
imposed new duties : 'and, in defiance of 
local and personal clamor, it may be safely 
said that the nation united heart and hand 
with the Government in its resolve to meet 
the worst, rather than stoop its head to re- 
ceive that which, it felt, would not be the 
garland but the yoke of peace. Yet it was 
an afflicting alternative; and it is not to be 
denied that the effort if it had the deter- 
mination, wanted the cheerfulness of duty. 
Our condition savored too much of a grind- 
ing constraint — too much of the vassalage 
of necessity ; — it had too much of fear, and 
therefore of selfishness, not to be contem- 
plated in the main with rueful emotion. We 
desponded though we did not despair. In 
fact, a deliberate and preparatory forti- 
tude — a sedate and stem melancholy, which 
had no sunshine and was exhilarated only 
by the lightnings of indignation — this was 
the highest and best state of moral feeling 
to which the most noble-minded among us 
could attain. 

But, from the moment of the rising of 
the people of the Pyrenean peninsula, there 
was a mighty change; we were instantane- 
ously animated; and, from that moment, 
the contest assumed the dignity which it is 
not in the power of any thing but hope to 
bestow : and, if I may dare to transfer lan- 
guage, prompted by a revelation of the state 
of being that admits not of decay or change, 
to the concerns and interests of our transi- 
tory planet, from that moment "this cor- 
ruptible put on incorruption, and this mor- 
tal put on immortality." This sudden ele- 
vation was on no account more welcome — 
was by nothing more endeared than by the 
returning sense which accompanied it of 
inward liberty and choice, which gratified 
our moral yearnings, inasmuch as it would 
give henceforward to our 'actions as a peo- 
ple, an origination and direction unquestion- 
ably moral — as it was free — as it was mani- 
festly in sympathy with the species — as it 
admitted therefore of fluctuations of gen- 



erous feeling — of approbation and of com- 
placency. We were intellectualized also in 
proportion; we looked backward upon the 
records of the human race with pride, and, 
instead of being afraid, we delighted to look 
forward into futurity. It was imagined 
that this new-born spirit of resistance, rising 
from the most sacred feelings of the human 
heart, would diffuse itself through many 
countries; and not merely for the distant 
future, but for the present, hopes were en- 
tertained as bold as they were disinterested 
and generous. 

Never, indeed, was the fellowship of our 
sentient nature more intimately felt — never 
was the irresistible power of justice more 
gloriously displayed than when the British 
and Spanish Nations, with an impulse like 
that of two ancient heroes throwing down 
their weapons and reconciled in the field, 
cast off at once their aversions and enmities, 
and mutually embraced each other — to sol- 
emnize this conversion of love, not by the 
festivities of peace, but by combating side 
by side through danger and under affliction 
in the devotedness of perfect brotherhood. 
This was a conjunction which excited hope 
as fervent as it was rational. On the one 
side was 'a nation which brought with it 
sanction and authority, inasmuch as it had 
tried and approved the blessings for which 
the other had risen to contend : the one was 
a people which, by the help of the sur- 
rounding ocean and its own virtues, had pre- 
served to itself through ages its liberty, pure 
and inviolated by a foreign invader; the 
other a high-minded nation, which a tyrant, 
presuming on its decrepitude, had, through 
the real decrepitude of its Government, per- 
fidiously enslaved. What could be more de- 
lightful than to think of an intercourse 
beginning in this manner? On the part of 
the Spaniards their love towards us was en- 
thusiasm and adoration; the faults of our 
national character were hidden from them 
by a veil of splendor; they saw nothing 
around us but glory and light; and, on our 
side, we estimated their character with par- 
tial and indulgent fondness; — thinking on 
their past greatness, not as the undermined 
foundation of a magnificent building, but 
as the root of a majestic tree recovered 
fram a long disease, and beginning again 
to flourish with promise of wider branches 
and a deeper shade than it had boasted in 
the fulness of its strength. If in the sensa- 
tions with which the Spaniards prostrated 
themselves before the religion of their coun- 



354 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



try we did not keep pace with them — if even 
their loyalty was such as, from our mixed 
constitution of Government and from other 
causes, we could not thoroughly sympathize 
with, — and if lastly, their devotion to the 
person of their Sovereign appeared to us to 
have too much of the alloy of delusion, — in 
all these things we judged them gently; and, 
taught by the reverses of the French revo- 
lution, we looked upon these dispositions as 
more human — more social — and therefore as 
wiser, and of better omen, than if they had 
stood forth the zealots of abstract princi- 
ples, out of the laboratory of unfeeling phi- 
losophists. Finally, in this reverence for 
the past and present, we found an earnest 
that they were prepared to contend to the 
death for as much liberty as their habits 
and their knowledge enabled them to re- 
ceive. To assist them and their neighbors 
the Portuguese in the attainment of this 
end, we sent to them in love and in friend- 
ship a powerful army to aid — to invigorate 
— and to chastise: — they landed; and the 
first proof they afforded of their being 
worthy to be sent on such a service — the 
first pledge of amity given by them — was 
the victory of Vimiera; the second pledge 
(and this was from the hand of their Gen- 
erals) was the Convention of Cintra. 

2. The Relation of National Happiness to 
National Independence 

Allowing that the "regni novitas" should 
either compel or tempt the usurper to do 
away some ancient abuses, and to accord 
certain insignificant privileges to the people 
upon the purlieus of the forest of freedom 
(for assuredly he will never suffer them to 
enter the body of it) ; allowing this, and 
much more ; that the mass of the population 
would be placed in a condition outwardly 
more thriving — would be better off (as the 
phrase in conversation is) ; it is still true 
that — in the act and consciousness of sub- 
mission to an imposed lord and master, to a 
will not growing out of themselves, to the 
edicts of another people their triumphant 
enemy — there would be the loss of a sensa- 
tion within for which nothing external, even 
though it should come close to the garden 
and the field — to the door and the fireside, 
can make amends. The artisan and the mer- 
chant (men of classes perhaps least attached 
to their native soil) would not be insensible 
to this loss ; and the mariner, in his thought- 
ful mood, would sadden under it upon the 



wide ocean. The central or cardinal feeling 
of these thoughts may, at a future time, 
furnish fit matter for the genius of some 
patriotic Spaniard to express in his noble 
language — as an inscription for the sword 
of Francis the First; if that sword, which 
was so ingloriously and perfidiously sur- 
rendered, should ever, by the energies of 
liberty, be recovered, and deposited in its 
ancient habitation in the Escurial. The pa- 
triot will recollect that — if the memorial, 
then given up by the hand of the Govern- 
ment, had also been abandoned by the heart 
of the people, and that indignity patiently 
subscribed to, — his country would have been 
lost forever. 

There are multitudes by whom, I know, 
these sentiments will not be languidly re- 
ceived at this day; and sure I am that, a 
hundred and fifty years ago, they would 
have been ardently welcomed by all. But, 
in many parts of Europe (and especially in 
our own country) men have been pressing 
forward, for some time, in a path which has 
betrayed by its f ruitf ulness ; furnishing 
them constant employment for picking up 
things about their feet, when thoughts were 
perishing in their minds. While mechanic 
arts, manufactures, agriculture, commerce, 
and all those products of knowledge which 
are confined to gross — definite — and tangi- 
ble objects, have, with the aid of experi- 
mental philosophy, been every day putting 
on more brilliant colors ; the splendor of the 
imagination has been fading: sensibility, 
which was formerly a generous nursling of 
rude nature, has been chased from its an- 
cient range in the wide domain of patriot- 
ism and religion with the weapons of 
derision by a shadow calling itself good 
sense : calculations of presumptuous expedi- 
ency — groping its way among partial and 
temporary consequences — have been substi- 
tuted for the dictates of paramount and in- 
fallible conscience, the supreme embracer of 
consequences : lifeless and circumspect de- 
cencies have banished the graceful negli- 
gence and unsuspicious dignity of virtue. 

The progress of these arts also, by fur- 
nishing such attractive stores of outward 
accommodation, has misled the higher orders 
of society in their more disinterested exer- 
tions for the service of the lower. Animal 
comforts have been rejoiced over, Sas if they 
were the end of being. A neater and more 
fertile garden ; a greener field ; implements 
and utensils more apt ; a dwelling more 
commodious and better furnished ; — let these 



THE RISE or MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



355 



be attained, say the actively benevolent, and 
we are sure not only of being in the right 
road, but of having successfully terminated 
our journey. Now a country may advance, 
for some time, in this course with apparent 
profit : these accommodations, by zealous en- 
couragement, may be attained : and still the 
peasant or artisan, their master, be a slave 
in mind; a slave rendered even more abject 
by the very tenure under which these pos- 
sessions are held : and — if they veil from us 
this fact, or reconcile us to it — they are 
worse than worthless. The springs of emo- 
tion may be relaxed or destroyed within 
him ; he may have little thought of the past, 
and less uaterest in the future. — The great 
end and difficulty of life for men of all 
classes, and especially difficult for those who 
live by manual labor, is a union of peace 
with mnocent and laudable animation. Not 
by bread alone is the life of man- sustained ; 
not by raiment alone is he wai'med; — but 
by the genial and vernal inmate of the 
breast, which at once pushes forth and 
cherishes; by self-support and self-sufficing 
endeavors; by anticipations, apprehensions, 
and active remembrances; by elasticity 
under insult, and firm resistance to injury; 
by joy, and by love; by pride which his 
imagination gathers in from afar; by pa- 
tience, because life wants not promises; by 
admiration; by gratitude which — debasing 
him not when his fellow-being is its object 
— habitually expands itself, for his eleva- 
tion, in complacency towards his Creator. 

Now, to the existence of these blessings, 
national independence is indispensable ; and 
many of them it will itself produce and 
maintain. For it is some consolation to 
those who look back upon the history of the 
world to know — that, even without civil lib- 
erty society may possess — diffused through 
its inner recesses in the minds even of its 
humblest members — something of dignified 
enjoyment. But, without national independ- 
ence, this is impossible. The difference be- 
tween inbred oppression and that which is 
from without, is essential; inasmuch as the 
former does not exclude, from the minds of a 
people, the feeling of being self -governed ; 
does not imply (as the latter does, when pa- 
tiently submitted to) an abandonment of the 
first duty imposed by the faculty of reason. 
In reality, where this feeling has no place, 
a people are not a society, but a herd; man 
being indeed distinguished among them 
from the brute ; but only to his disgrace. I 
am aware that there are too many who 



think that, to the bulk of the community, 
this independence is of no value; that it is 
a refinement with which they feel they have 
no concern; inasmuch as under the best 
frame of government, there is an inevitable 
dependence of the poor upon the rich — of 
the many upon the few — so unrelenting and 
imperious as to reduce this other, by com- 
parison, into a force which has small influ- 
ence, and is entitled to no regard. Super- 
add civil liberty to national independence; 
and this position is overthrown at once : for 
there is no more certain mark of a sound 
frame of polity than this; that, in all uidi- 
vidual instances (and it is upon these gen- 
eralized that this position is laid down), the 
dependence is in reality far more strict on 
the side of the wealthy; and the laboring 
man leans less upon others than any man in 
the commu.nity — but the case before us is 
of a country not internally free, yet sup- 
posed capable of repelling an external 
enemy who attempts its subjugation. If a 
country have put on chains of its own forg- 
ing, in the name of virtue, let it be con- 
scious that to itself it is accountable : let it 
not have cause to look beyond its own lim- 
its for reproof: and, — in the name of hu- 
manity, — if it be self-depressed, let it have 
its pride and some hope within itself. The 
poorest peasant, in an unsubdued land, feels 
this pride. I do not appeal to the example 
of Britain or of Switzerland, for the one is 
free, and the other lately was free (and, I 
trust, will ere long be so again) : but talk 
with the Swede ; and you will see the joy he 
finds in these sensations. With him animal 
courage (the substitute for many and the 
friend of all the manly virtues) has space 
to move in; and is at once elevated by his 
imagination, and softened by his affections : 
it is invigorated also ; for the whole courage 
of his country is in his breast. 

In fact, the peasant, and he who lives by 
the fair reward of his manual labor, has 
ordinarily a larger proportion of his grati- 
fication dependent upon these thoughts — 
than, for the most part, men in other classes 
have. For he is in his person attached, by 
stronger roots, to the soil of which he is 
the growth : his intellectual notices are gen- 
erally confined within narrower bounds : in 
him no partial or antipatriotic interests 
counteract the force of those nobler sympa- 
thies and antipathies which he has in right 
of his country ; and lastly the belt or girdle 
of his mind has never been stretched to utter 
relaxation by false philosophy, under a con- 



356 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



ceit of making it sit more easily and grace- 
fully. These sensations are a social inher- 
itance to him: more important, as he is 
precluded from luxurious — and those which 
are usually called refined — enjoyments. 

Love and admiration must push them- 
selves out toward some quarter: otherwise 
the moral man is killed. Collaterally they 
advance with gxeat vigor to a certain extent 
— and they are checked: in that direction, 
limits hard to pass are perpetually encoun- 
tered : they meet with gladsome help and no 
obstacles; the tract is interminable. — Perdi- 
tion to the tyrant who would wantonly cut 
off an independent nation from its inherit- 
ance in past ages; turning the tombs and 
burial-places of the forefathers into dreaded 
objects of sorrow, or of shame and reproach, 
for the children! 

3. The Grounds of Hope 

Here then they, with whom I hope, take 
their stand. There is a spiritual commu- 
nity binding together the living and the 
dead; the good, the brave, and the wise, of 
all ages. We would not be rejected from 
this community : and therefore do we hope. 
We look forward with erect mind, thinking 
and feeling: it is an obligation of duty: 
take away the sense of it, and the moral 
being would die within us. Among the 
most illustrious of that fraternity, whose 
encouragement we participate, is an Eng- 
lishman who sacrificed his life in devotion 
to a cause bearing a stronger likeness to 
this than any recorded in histoiy. It is the 
elder Sidney — a deliverer and defender, 
whose name I have before uttered with rev- 
erence; who, treating of the war of the 
Netherlands against Philip the Second, thus 
writes: "If her Majesty," says he, "were 
the fountain, I would fear, considering what 
I daily find, that we should wax dry. But 
she is but 'a means whom God useth. And 
I know not whether I am deceived; but I 
am fully persuaded, that, if she should her- 
self fail, other springs would rise to help 
this action. For, methinks, I see the great 
work indeed in hand against the abusers of 
the world ; wherein it is not greater fault to 
have confidence in man's power, than it is 
too hastily to despair of God's work." 

The pen which I am guiding has stopped 
in my hand, and I have scarcely power to 
proceed. I will lay down one principle ; and 
then shall contentedly withdraw from the 
sanctuary. 



When wickedness acknowledges no limit 
but the extent of her power, and advances 
with aggravated impatience like a devour- 
ing fire, the only worthy or adequate oppo- 
sition is that of virtue submitting to no cir- 
cumscription of her endeavors save that of 
her rights, and aspiring from the impulse 
of her own ethereal zeal. The Christian ex- 
hortation for the individual is here the pre- 
cept for nations — "Be ye therefore perfect, 
even as your Father, which is in Heaven, is 
perfect." 

Sonnets on the Crisis 

william wordsworth 

(1802-1811) 

"Fair Star of Evening" 

Fair Star of evening, Splendor of the west, 
Star of my Country! — on the horizon's 

brink 
Thou hangest, stooping as might seem, to 

sink 
On England's bosom; yet well pleased to 

rest. 
Meanwhile, and be to her a glorious crest 
Conspicuous to the Nations. Thou, I think, 
Shouldst be my Country's emblem; and 

should'st wink, 
Bright Star ! with laughter on her banners, 

drest 
In thy fresh beauty. There ! that dusky spot 
Beneath thee, that is England; there she 

lies. 
Blessings be on you both! one hope, one 

lot, 
One life, one glory! I, with many a fear 
For my dear Country, many heartfelt sighs, 
Among men who do not love her, linger 

here. 

On the Extinction of the Venetian Bepuhlic 

Once did she hold the gorgeous east in fee ; 
And was the safeguard of the west: the 

worth 
Of Venice did not fall below her birth, 
Venice, the eldest child of Liberty. 
She was a maiden city, bright and free; 
No guile seduced, no force could violate ; 
And, when she took unto herself a Mate, 
She must espouse the everlasting Sea. 
And what if she had seen those glories fade, 
Those titles vanish, and that strength decay ; 
Yet shall some tribute of regret be paid 
When her long life hath reached its final 

day: 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



357 



Men are we, and must grieve when even 

the Shade 
Of that which once was great is passed 

away. 

Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of 

Switzerland 

Two voices are there ; one is of the sea, 
One of the- mountains ; each a mighty voice : 
In both from age to age thou didst rejoice, 
They were thy chosen music, Liberty ! 
There came a tryant, and with holy glee 
Thou f ought'st against him ; but hast vainly 

striven : 
Thou from thy Alpine holds at length art 

driven, 
Where not a torrent murmurs heard by thee. 
Of one deep bliss thine ear hath been bereft : 
Then cleave, cleave to that which still is 

left; 
For, high-soiTled Maid, what sorrow would 

it be 
That mountain floods should thunder as be- 
fore, 
And ocean bellow from his rocky shore, 
And neither awful voice be heard by thee. 

September, 1802, Near Dover 

Inland, within a hollow vale, I stood ; 
And saw, while sea was calm and air was 

clear. 
The coast of France — the coast of France 

how near! 
Drawn almost into frightful neighborhood. 
I shrunk; for verily the barrier flood 
Was like a lake, or river bright and fair, 
A span of waters; yet what power is there! 
What mightiness for evil and for good! 
Even so doth God protect us if we be 
Virtuous and wise. Winds blow, and waters 

roll, . 
Strength to the brave, and Power, and 

Deity; 
Yet in themselves are nothing ! One decree 
Spake laws to them, and said that by the 

soul 
Only, the nations shall be great and free. 

Written in London, September, 1802^ 

Friend! I know not which way I must 

look 
For comfort, being, as I am, opprest, 

^ Written just after Wordsworth's return from 
France, this sonnet expresses the poet's sense of 
the contrast between the desolation produced by 
the Revolution in France and the unwholesome 
peace of England. 



To think that now our life is only drest 
For show; mean handiwork of craftsman, 

cook, 
Or groom! — we must run glittering like a 

brook 
In the open sunshine, or we are unblest : 
The wealthiest man among us is the best j 
No grandeur now in nature or in book 
Delights us. Rapine, avarice, expense, 
This is idolatry; and these we adore: 
Plain living and high thinking are no more ; 
The homely beauty of the good old cause 
Is gone ; our peace, our fearful innocence. 
And pure religion breathing household laws. 

"Milton! Thou Shouldst Be Living at 
This Hour" 

Milton! thou shouldst be living at this 

hour: 
England hath need of thee; she is a fen 
Of stagnant waters; altar, sword, and pen, 
Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and 

bower. 
Have forfeited their ancient English dower 
Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; 
Oh ! raise us up, return to us again ; 
And give us manners, virtue, freedom, 

power. 
Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart ; 
Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like 

the sea; 
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, 
So didst thou travel on life's common way. 
In cheerful godliness ; and yet thy heart 
The lowliest duties on herself did lay. 

"It Is Not to Be Thought of 

It is not to be thought of that the Flood 
Of British freedom, which, to the open sea 
Of the world's praise, from dark antiquity 
Hath flowed, "with pomp of waters unwith- 

stood," 
Roused though it be full often to a mood 
Which spurns the check of salutary bands, 
That this most famous Stream in bogs and 

sands 
Should perish ; and to evil and to good 
Be lost forever. In our halls is hung 
Armory of the invincible knights of old : 
We must be free or die, who speak the 

tongue 
That Shakespeare spake: the faith and 

morals hold 
Which Milton held. In everything we are 

sprung 
Of earth's first blood, have titles manifold. 



358 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



"When I Have Borne in Memory" 

"When I have borne in memory what has 
tamed 

Great Nations, how ennobling thoughts de- 
part 

When men change swords for ledgers and 
desert 

The student's bower for gold, some fears 
unnamed 

I had, my Country! — am I to be blamed? 

Now when I think of thee, and what thou 
art, 

Verily, in the bottom of my heart, 

Of those unfilial fears I am ashamed. 

For dearly must we prize thee; we who 
find 

In thee a bulwark for the cause of men ; 

And I by my affection was beguiled. 

What wonder if a Poei now and then, 

Among the many movements of his mind, 

Felt for thee as a lover or a child ! 

"There Is a Bondage Worse, Far Worse, 
to Bear" 

There is a bondage worse, far worse, to bear 
Than his who breathes, by roof, and floor, 

and wall. 
Pent in, a Tyrant's solitary Thrall: 
'Tis his who walks about in the open air, 
One of a Nation who, henceforth, must wear 
Their fetters in their souls. For who could 

be. 
Who, even the best, in such condition, free 
From self-reproach, reproach that he must 

share 
With Human-nature"? Never be it ours 
To see the sun how brightly it will shine, 
And know that noble feelings, manly 

powers, 
Instead of gathering strength, must droop 

and pine; 
And earth with all her pleasant fruits and 

flowers 
Fade, and participate in man's decline. 

"These Times Strike Monied Worldlings 
with Dismay" 

These times strike monied worldlings with 

dismay : 
Even rich men, brave by nature, taint the air 
With words of apprehension and despair: 
While tens of thousands, thinking on the 

affray. 
Men unto whom sufficient for the day 
And minds not stinted or untilled are given, 



Sound, healthy, children of the God of 

heaven. 
Are cheerful as the rising sun in May. 
What do we gather hence but firmer faith 
That every gift of noble origin 
Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual 

breath ; 
That virtue and the faculties within 
Are vital, — and that riches are akin 
To fear, to change, to cowardice, and death ? 

"England! the Time Is Come" 

England! .the time is come when thou 

should'st wean 
Thy heart from its emasculating food; 
The truth should now be better understood ; 
Old things have been unsettled; we have 

seen 
Fair seed-time, better harvest might have 

been 
But for thy trespasses ; and, at this day, 
If for Greece, Egypt, India, Africa, 
Aught good were destined, thou would'st 

step between. 
England! all nations in this charge agree; 
But worse, more ignorant in love and hate, 
Far — far more abject, is thine Enemy : 
Therefore the wise pray for thee, though the 

freight 
Of thy offences be a heavy weight: 
Oh grief that Earth's best hopes rest all 

with thee ! 

"Here Pause: The Poet Claims at Least 
This Praise" 

Here pause: the poet claims at least this 
praise. 

That virtuous Liberty hath been the scope 

Of his pure song, which did not shrink from 
hope 

In the worst moment of these evil days; 

From hope, the paramount duty that 
Heaven lays. 

For its own honor, on man's suffering heart. 

Never may from our souls one truth de- 
part — 

That an accursed thing it is to gaze 

On prosperous tyrants with a dazzled eye; 

Nor — touched with due abhorrence of their 
guilt 

For whose dire ends tears flow, and blood is 
spilt. 

And justice labors in extremity — 

Forget thy weakness, upon which is built, 

wretched man, the throne of tyranny ! 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCKACY 



359 



"Vanguard of Liberty'' 

Vanguard of Liberty, ye raen of Kent, 

Ye children of a soil that doth advance 

Her haughty brow against the coast of 
France, 

Now is the time to prove your hardiment! 

To France be words of invitation sent ! 

They from their .fields can see the counte- 
nance 

Of your fierce war, may ken the glittering 
lance 

And hear you shouting forth your brave 
intent. 

Left single, in bold parley, ye of yore, 

Did from the Norman win a gallant wreath ; 

Confirmed the charters that were yours be- 
fore ; — 

No parleying now ! In Britain is one 
breath ; 

We all are with you now from shore to 
shore : 

Ye men of Kent, 'tis victory or death I 

"Come Ye— Who, If (Which Heaven 
Avert ly^ 

Come ye — ^who, if (which Heaven avert!) 
the Land 

Were with herself at strife, would take your 
stand. 

Like gallant Falkland, by the Monarch's 
side. 

And, like Montrose, make Loyalty your 
pride — 

Come ye — ^who, not less zealous, might dis- 
play 

Banners at enmity with regal sway. 

And, like the Pyms and Miltons of that day. 

Think that a State would live in sounder 
health 



If Kingship bowed its head to Common- 
wealth — 
Ye too — whom no discreditable fear 
Would keep, perhaps with many a fruitless 

tear. 
Uncertain what to choose and how to steer— 
And ye — ^who might mistake for sober 

sense 
And wise reserve, the plea of indolence — 
Come ye — whate'er your creed — waken 

all, 
Whate'er your temper, at your Country's 

call; 
Resolving (this a free-born Nation can) 
To have one Soul, and joerish to a man. 
Or save this honored Land from every Lord 
But British reason and the British sword. 

"Another Tear!"^ 

Another year! — another deadly blow! 
Another mighty Empire overthrown ! 
And We are left, or shall be left, alone; 
The last that dare to struggle with the 

Foe. 
'Tis well! from this day forward we shall 

know 
That in ourselves our safety must be sought ; 
That by our own right hands it must be 

wrought ; 
That we must stand unpropped, or be laid 

low. 
dastard whom such foretaste doth not 

cheer ! 
We shall exult, if they who rule the land 
Be men who hold its many blessings dear. 
Wise, upright, valiant; not a servile band, 
Who are to judge of danger which they 

fear. 
And honor which they do not understand. 



2. THE DOWNFALL OF TYRANNY 



Sonnets on Napoleon 

william wordsworth 

October, 18G3 

When, looking on the present face of things, 
I see one man, of men the meanest too ! 
Raised up to sway the world, to do, undo. 
With mighty Nations for his underlings. 
The great events with which old story rings 
Seem vain and hollow ; I find nothing great : 

1 Written in 1803 "On the Expected Invasion," 



Nothing is left which I can venerate; 
So that a doubt almost within me springs 
Of Providence, such emptiness at length 
Seems at the heart of all things. But, great 

God! 
I measure back the steps which I have trod ! 
And tremble, seeing whence proceeds the 

strength 
Of such poor Instruments, with thoughts 

sublime 

I tremble at the sorrow of the time. 

^ Written after tlie overthrow of Prussia In the 
battle of Jena, October 14, 1806. 



360 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Anticipation. October, 1803 

Shout, for a mighty Victory is won! 

On British ground the Invaders are laid 
low; 

The breath of Heaven has drifted them like 
snow, 

And left them lying in the silent sun, 

Never to rise again ! — the work is done. 

Come forth, ye old men, now in peaceful 
show 

And greet your sons ! drums beat and trum- 
pets blow! 

Make merry, wives! ye little children, stun 

Your grandame's ears with pleasure of your 
noise ! 

Clap, infants, clap your hands! Divine 
must be 

That triumph, when the very worst, the 
pain. 

And even the prospect of our brethren slain. 

Hath something in it which the heart en- 
joys :— 

In glory will they sleep and endless sanctity. 

Nelson at Trafalgar 

robert southey 

[From The Life of Nelson, 1813] 

On the 9th ^ Nelson sent Collingwood 
what he called, in his diary, the Nelson- 
touch. "I send you," said he, "my plan of 
attack, as far as a man dare venture to 
guess at the very uncertain position the 
enemy may be found in : but it is to place 
you perfectly at ease respecting my inten- 
tions, and to give full scope to your judg- 
ment for carrying them into effect. We can, 
my dear Coll, have no little jealousies. We 
have only one great object in view, that of 
annihilating our enemies, and getting a glo- 
rious peace for our country. No man has 
more confidence in another than I have in 
you; and no man will render your services 
more justice than your very old friend Nel- 
son and Bronte." The order of sailing was 
to be the order of battle: the fleet in two 
lines, with an advanced squadron of eight of 
the fastest sailing two-deckers. The second 
in command, having the entire direction of 
his line, was to break through the enemy, 
about the twelfth ship from their rear: he 
would lead through the center, and the ad- 
vanced squadron was to cut off three or 
four ahead of the center. This plan was to 
be adapted to the strength of the enemy, so 
that they should 'always be one-fourth su- 

1 October, 1805. 



perior to those whom they cut off. Nelson 
said, "That his admirals and captains, know- 
ing his precise object to be that of a close 
and decisive action, would supply any de- 
ficiency of signals, and act accordingly. In 
case signals cannot be seen or clearly under- 
stood, no captain can do wrong, if he places 
his ship alongside that of an enemy." One 
of the last orders of this admirable man 
was, that the name and family of every cffi- 
eer, seaman, and marine, who might be killed 
or wounded in action, should be, as soon as 
possible, returned to him, in order to be 
transmitted to the chairman of the Patriotic 
Fund, that the case might be taken into con- 
sideration, for the benefit of the sufferer or 
his family. 

About half -past nine in the morning of 
the 19th, the Mars, being the nearest to the 
fleet of the ships which formed the line of 
communication with the frigates in shore, 
repeated the signal that the enemy were 
coming out of port. The wind was at this 
time very light, with partial breezes, mostly 
from the S. S. W. Nelson ordered the sig- 
nal to be made for a chase in the south-east 
quarter. About two, the repeating ships 
announced that the enemy were at sea. All 
night the British fleet continued under all 
sail, steering to the south-east. At day- 
break they were in the entrance of the 
Straits, but the enemy were not in sight. 
About seven, one of the frigates made sig- 
nal that the enemy were bearing north. 
Upon this the Victory hove to ; and shortly 
afterwards Nelson made sail again to the 
northward. In the afternoon the wind blew 
fresh from the south-west, and the English 
began to fear that the foe might be forced 
to return to port. A little before sunset, 
however, Blackwood, in the Euryalus, tele- 
graphed that they appeared determined to 
go to the westward, — "And that," said the 
admiral in his diary, "they shall not do, if it 
is in the power of Nelson and Bronte to 
prevent them." Nelson had signified to 
Blackwood, that he depended upon him to 
keep sight of the enemy. They were ob- 
served so well, that all their motions were 
made knowm to him ; and, as they wore twice, 
he infei^ed that they were aiming to keep 
the port of Cadiz open, and would retreat 
there as soon as they saw the British fleet : 
for this reason he was very careful not to 
approach near enough to be seen by them 
during the night. At daybreak the com- 
bined fleets were distinctly seen from the 
1 Victory's, deck, formed in 'a close line of 



THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



361 



battle ahead, on the starboard tack, about 
twelve miles to leeward, and standing to the 
south. Our fleet consisted of twenty-seven 
sail of the line and four frigates; theirs of 
thirty-three and seven large frigates. Their 
superiority was greater in size, and weight 
of metal, than in numbers. They had four 
thousand troops on board; and the best 
riflemen who could be procured, many of 
them Tyrolese, were dispersed through the 
ships. Little did the Tyrolese, and little did 
the Spaniards, at that day, imagine what 
horrors the wicked tyrant whom they served 
was preparing for their country ! 

Soon after daylight Nelson came upon 
deck. The 21st of October was a festival 
in his family; because on that day his 
uncle. Captain Sucklhag, in the Dread- 
nought, with two other line of battle ships, 
had beaten off a French squadron of four 
sail of the line and three frigates. Nelson, 
with that sort of superstition from which 
few persons are entirely exempt, had more 
than once expressed his persuasion that this 
was to be the day of his battle also ; and he 
was well pleased at seeing his prediction 
about to be verified. The wind was now 
from the west, — light breezes, with a long 
heavy swell. Signal was made to bear down 
upon the enemy in two lines; and the fleet 
set all sail. CoUingwood, in the Royal Sov- 
ereign, led the lee-line of thirteen ships ; the 
Victory led the weather-line of fourteen. 
Having seen that all was as it should be, 
Nelson retired to his cabin, and wrote this 
prayer : — 

"May the Great God, whom I worship, 
grant to my country, and for the benefit of 
Europe in general, a great and glorious vic- 
tory; and may no misconduct in any one 
tarnish it; and may humanity after victory 
be the predominant feature in the British 
fleet! For myself individually, I commit 
my life to Him that made me, and may His 
blessing alight on my endeavors for serving 
my country faithfully ! To Him I resign 
myself, and the just cause which is intrusted 
to me to defend. Amen, Amen, Amen." . . . 

Blackwood went on board the Victory 
about six. He found him in good spirits, 
but very calm; not in that exhilaration 
which he had felt upon entering into battle 
at Aboukir and Copenhagen; he knew that 
his own life would be particularly aimed at, 
and seems to have looked for death with 
almost as sure an expectation as for victory. 
His whole attention was fixed upon the 
enemy. They tacked to the northward, and 



formed their line on the larboard tack; thus 
bringing the shoals of Trafalgar and St. 
Pedro under the lee of the British, and keep- 
ing the port of Cadiz open for themselves. 
This was judiciously done: and Nelson, 
aware of all the- advantages which it gave 
them, made signal to prepare to anchor. 

Villeneuve was a skillful seaman ; worthy 
of serving a better master and a better 
cause. His plan of defense was as well 
conceived, and as original, as the plan of 
attack. He formed the fleet in a double line, 
every alternate ship being about a cable's 
length to windward of her second ahead and 
astern. Nelson, certain of a triumphant 
issue to the day, asked Blackwood what he 
should consider as a victory. That officer 
answered, that, considering the handsome 
way in which battle was offered by the 
enemy, their apparent determination for a 
fair trial of strength, and the situation of 
the land, he thought it would be a glorious 
result if fourteen were captured. He re- 
plied: "I shall not be satisfied with less 
than twenty." Soon afterwards he asked 
him if he did not think there was a signal 
wanting. Captain Blackwood made answer 
that he thought the whole fleet seemed very 
clearly to understand what they were about. 
These words were scarcely spoken before 
that signal was made, which will be remem- 
bered as long as the language, or even the 
memory, of England shall endure — Nelson's 
last signal: — "England expects every man 
to do his duty!" It was received through- 
out the fleet, with a shout of answering ac- 
clamation, made sublime by the spirit which 
it breathed and the feeling which it ex- 
pressed. "Now," said Lord Nelson, "I can 
do no more. We must trust to the Great 
Disposer of all events, and the justice of our 
cause. I thank God for this great oppor- 
tunity of doing my duty." 

He wore that day, as usual, his admiral's 
frock coat, bearing on the left breast four 
stars of the different orders with which he 
was invested. Ornaments which rendered 
him so conspicuous a mark for the enemy, 
were beheld with ominous apprehensions by 
his officers. It was known that there were 
riflemen on board the French ships, and it 
could not be doubted but that his life would 
be particularly aimed at. They communi- 
cated their fears to each other ; and the sur- 
geon, Mr. Beatty, spoke to the chaplain, 
Dr. Scott, and to Mr. Scott, the public sec- 
retary, desiring that some person would en- 



362 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



treat him to change his dress, or cover the 
stars: but they knew that such a request 
would highly displease him. ''In honor I 
gained them," he had said when such a thing 
had been hinted to him formerly, "and in 
honor I will die with them." Mr. Beatty, 
however, would not have been deterred by 
any fear of exciting his displeasure, from 
speaking to him himself upon a subject in 
which the weal of England as well as the life 
of Nelson was concerned, but he was ordered 
from the deck before he could find an oppor- 
tunity. This was a point upon which Nel- 
"son's officers knew that it was hopeless to 
remonstrate or reason with him; but both 
Blackwood, and his own captain. Hardy, 
represented to him how advantageous to the 
fleet it would be for him to keep out of ac- 
tion as long as possible; and he consented 
at last to let the Leviathan and the Temer aire, 
which were sailing abreast of the Victory, 
be ordered to pass ahead. Yet even here the 
last infirmity of this noble mind was in- 
dulged; for these ships could not pass ahead 
if the Victory continued to carry all her 
sail ; and so far was Nelson from shortening 
sail, that it was evident he took pleasure in 
pressing on, and rendering it impossible for 
them to obey his own orders. A long swell 
was setting into the Bay of Cadiz : our ships, 
crowding all sail, moved majestically before 
it, with light winds from the southwest. The 
sun shone on the sails of the enemy; and 
their well-formed line, with their numerous 
three-deckers, made an appearance which 
any other assailants would have thought for- 
midable; but the British sailors only ad- 
mired the beauty and the splendor of the 
spectacle; and, in full confidence of win- 
ning what they saw, remarked to each other, 
what a fine sight yonder ships would make at 
Spithead ! 

The French admiral, from the Bucentaure, 
beheld the new manner in which his enemy 
was advancing. Nelson and Collingwood 
each leading his line ; and pointing them out 
to his officers, he is said to have exclaimed, 
that such conduct could not fail to be suc- 
cessful. Yet Villeneuve had made his own 
dispositions with the utmost skill, and the 
fleets under his command waited for the at- 
tack with perfect coolness. Ten minutes be- 
fore twelve they opened their fire. Eight or 
nine of the ships immediately ahead of the 
Victory, and across her bows, fired single 
guns at her, to ascertain whether she was 
yet within their range. As soon as Nelson 



perceived that their shot passed over him, 
he desired Blackwood and Captain Prowse, 
of the Sirius, to repair to their respective 
frigates; and, on their way, to tell all the 
captains of the line of battleships that he 
depended on their exertions ; and that, if by 
the prescribed mode of attack they found it 
impracticable to get into action immediately, 
they might adopt whatever they thought 
best, provided it led them quickly and close- 
ly alongside an enemy. As they were stand- 
ing on the front of the poop, Blackwood 
took him by the hand, saying, he hoped soon 
to return and find him in possession of 
twenty prizes. He replied: "God bless you, 
Blackwood! I shall never see you again." 

Nelson's column was steered about two 
points more to the north than CoUingwood's, 
in order to cut off: the enemy's escape into 
Cadiz : the lee-line, therefore, was first en- 
gaged. "See," cried Nelson, pointing to the 
Royal Sovereign, as she steered right for the 
center of the enemy's line, cut through it 
astern of the Santa Anna, three-decker, and 
engaged her at the muzzle of her guns on 
the starboard side : "see how that noble fel- 
low, Collingwood, carries his ship into ac- 
tion !" Collingwood, delighted at being first 
in the heat of the fire, and knowing the feel- 
ings of his commander and old friend, 
turned to his captain, and exclaimed, "Roth- 
erham, what would Nelson give to be here!" 
Both these brave officers, perhaps, at this 
moment thought of Nelson with gratitude, 
for a circumstance which had occurred on 
the preceding day. Admiral Colling'wood, 
with some of the captains, having gone on 
board the Victory to receive instructions, 
Nelson inquired of him where his captain 
was ? and was told, in reply, that they were 
not upon good terms with each other. 
"Terms!" said Nelson; — "good terms with 
each other!" Immediately he sent a boat 
for Captain Rotherham ; led him, as soon as 
he arrived, to Collingwood, and saying, 
"Look, yonder are the enemy !" bade them 
"shake hands like Englishmen." 

The enemy continued to fire a gun at a time 
at the Victory, till they saw that a shot had 
passed through her main-topgallant-sail; 
then they opened their broadsides, aiming 
chiefly at her rigging, in the hope of dis- 
abling her before she could close with them. 
Nelson, as usual, had hoisted several flags, 
lest one should be shot away. The enemy 
showed no colors till late in the action, when 
they began to feel the necessity of having 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCRACY 



363 



them to strike. For this reason, the Santis- 
sima Trinidad, Nelson's old acquaintance, as 
he used to call her, was distinguishable only 
by her four decks; and to the bow of this 
opponent he ordered the Victory to be 
steered. Meantime an incessant raking fire 
was kept up upon the Victory. The ad- 
miral's secretary was one of the first who 
fell: he was killed by a cannon-shot, while 
conversing with Hardy. Captain Adair, of 
the marines, with the help of a sailor, en- 
deavored to remove the body from Nelson's 
sight, who had a great regard for Mr. Scott ; 
but he anxiously asked, "Is that poor Scott 
that's gone?" and being informed that it 
was indeed so, exclaimed, "Poor fellow!" 
Presently a double-headed shot struck a 
party of marines, who were drawn up on the 
poop, and killed eight of them : upon which 
Nelson immediately desired Captain Adair 
to disperse his men round the ship, that 
they might not suffer so much from being 
together. A few minutes afterwards a shot 
struck the fore brace bits on the quarter- 
deck, and passed between Nelson and Hardy, 
a splinter from the bit tearing off Hardy's 
buckle and bruising his foot. Both stopped, 
and looked anxiously at each other, each 
supposing the other to be wounded. Nelson 
then smiled, and said, "This is too warm 
work. Hardy, to last long." 

The Victory had not yet returned a single 
gun : fifty of her men had been by this time 
killed or wounded, and her main-topmast, 
with all her studding sails and their booms, 
shot away. Nelson declared that, in all his 
battles, he had seen nothing which surpassed 
the cool courage of his crew on this occa- 
sion. At four minutes after twelve she 
opened her fire from both sides of her deck. 
It was not possible to break the enemy's line 
without running on board one of their ships : 
Hardy informed him of this, and asked 
which he would prefer. Nelson replied: 
"Take your choice. Hardy, it does not sig- 
nify much." The master was then ordered 
to put the helm to port, and the Victory ran 
on board the Redoubtable, just as her tiller 
ropes were shot away. The French ship re- 
ceived her with a broadside; then instantly 
let down her lower-deck ports, for fear of 
being boarded through them, and never 
afterwards fired a great gun during the ac- 
tion. Her tops, like those of all the enemy's 
ships, were filled with riflemen. Nelson 
never placed musketry in his tops ; he had a 
strong dislike to the practice, not merely 



because it endangers setting fire to the sails, 
but also because it is a murderous sort of 
warfare, by which individuals may suffer 
and a commander, now and then, be picked 
off, but which never can decide the fate of 
a general engagement. 

Captain Harvey, in the Temeraire, fell on 
board the Redoubtable on the other side. 
Another enemy was in like manner on board 
the Temeraire: so that these four ships 
formed as compact a tier as if they had 
been moored together, their heads lying all 
the same way. The lieutenants of the Vic- 
tory, seeing this, depressed their gTins of 
the middle and lower decks, and fired with a 
diminished charge, lest the shot should pass 
through, and injure the Temeraire. And be- 
cause there was danger that the Redoubtable 
might take fire from the lower-deck guns, 
the muzzles of which touched her side when 
they were run out, the fireman of each gun 
stood ready with a bucket of water, which, 
as soon as the gun was discharged, he dashed 
into the hole made by the shot. An inces- 
sant fire was kept up from the Victory from 
both sides ; her larboard guns playing upon 
the Bucentaure and the huge Santissima 
Trinidad. 

It had been part of Nelson's prayer that 
the British fleet might be distinguished by 
humanity in the victory which he expected. 
Setting an example himself, he twice gave 
orders to cease firing upon the Redoubtable, 
supposing that she had struck, because her 
great guns were silent ; for, as she carried 
no flag, there was no means of instantly 
ascertaining the fact. From this ship, which 
he had thus twice spared, he received his 
death. A ball fired from her mizzen-top, 
which, in the then situation of the two ves- 
sels, was not more than fifteen yards from 
that part of the deck where he was stand- 
ing, struck the epaulette on his left shoulder, 
— about a quarter after one, just in the heat 
of the action. He fell upon his face, on 
the spot which was covered with his poor 
secretary's blood. Hardy, who was a few 
steps from him, turning round, saw three 
men raising him up. "They have done for 
me at last. Hardy," said he. "I hope not !" 
cried Hardy. "Yes," he replied ; "my back- 
bone is shot through." Yet even now, not 
for a moment losing his presence of mind, 
he observed, as they were carrying him down 
the ladder, that the tiller ropes, which had 
been shot away, were not yet replaced, and 
ordered that new ones should be rove im- 



364 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



mediately : — then, that he might not be seen 
by the crew, he took out his handkerchief, 
and covered his face and his stars. — Had he 
but concealed these badges of honor from the 
enemy, England, perhaps, would not have 
had cause to receive with sorrow the news of 
the battle of Trafalgar. 

The cockpit was crowded with wounded 
and dying men, over whose bodies he was 
with some difficulty conveyed, and laid 
upon a pallet in the midshipmen's berth. It 
was soon perceived, upon examination, that 
the wound was mortal. This, however, was 
concealed from all, except Captain Hardy, 
the chaplain, and the medical attendants. 
He himself being certain, from the sensa- 
tion in his back, and the gush of blood 
which he felt momently within his breast, 
that no human care could avail him, insisted 
that the surgeon should leave him, and at- 
tend to those to whom he might be useful : 
"For," he said, "you can do nothing for me." 
All that could be done was to fan him with 
paper, and frequently to give him lemonade, 
to alleviate his intense thirst. He was in 
great pain, and expressed much anxiety for 
the event of the action, which now began 
to declare itself. As often as a ship struck, 
the crew of the Victory hurraed; and at 
every hurra a visible expression of joy 
gleamed in the eyes, and marked the counte- 
nance, of the dying hero. But he became 
impatient to see Captain Hardy; and as 
that officer, though often sent for, could 
not leave the deck, Nelson feared that some 
fatal cause prevented him, and repeatedly 
cried: "Will no one bring Hardy to me? 
He must be killed! He is surely dead!" — 
An hour and ten minutes elapsed, from the 
time when Nelson received his wound, be- 
fore Hardy could come to him. They shook 
hands in silence; Hardy in vain struggling 
to suppress the feelings of that most painful 
and yet sublimest moment. "Well, Hardy," 
said Nelson, "how goes the day with us V — 
"Very well," replied Hardy ; "ten ships have 
struck, but five of their van have tacked, 
and show an intention of bearing down upon 
the Victory. I have called two or three of 
our fresh ships round, and have no doubt 
of giving them a drubbing." — "I hope," 
said Nelson, "none of our ships have 
struck?" Hardy answered, "There was no 
fear of that." Then, and not till then. Nel- 
son spoke of himself. "I am a dead man. 
Hardy," said he ; "I am going fast : — it will 
be all over with me soon. Come nearer to 



me. Let my dear Lady Hamilton have my 
hair, and all other things belonging to me." 
Hardy observed, that he hoped Mr. Beatty 
could yet hold out some prospect of life. 
"Oh, no!" he replied; "it is impossible. 
My back is shot through. Beatty will 
tell you so." Captain Hardy then, once 
more, shook hands with him; and, with 
a heart almost bursting, hastened upon 
deck. 

By this time all feeling below the breast 
was gone, and Nelson, having made the sur- 
geon ascertain this, said to him: "You 
know I am gone. I know it. I feel some- 
thing rising in my breast" — putting his hand 
on his left side — "which tells me so." And 
upon Beatty's inquiring whether his pain 
was very great, he replied, "So great, that 
he wished he was dead. Yet," said he, in a 
lower voice, "one would like to live a little 
longer too !" And after a few minutes, in 
the same under-tone, he added : "What 
would become of poor Lady Hamilton if she 
knew my situation !" Next to his country 
she occupied his thoughts. Captain Hardy, 
some fifty minutes after he had left the 
cockpit, returned; and, again taking the 
hand of his dying friend and commander, 
congratulated him on having gained a com- 
plete victory. How many of the enemy 
were taken he did not know, as it was im- 
possible to perceive them distinctly — ^but 
fourteen or fifteen at least. "That's well," 
cried Nelson ; "but I bargained for twenty." 
And then, in a stronger voice, he said, "An- 
chor, Hardy; anchor." Hardy, upon this, 
hinted that Admiral Collingwood would take 
upon himself the direction of affairs. "Not 
while I live. Hardy !" said the dying Nelson, 
ineffectually endeavoring to raise himself 
from the bed : "do you anchor." His previ- 
ous order for preparing to anchor had shown 
how clearly he foresaw the necessity of this. 
Presently, calling Hardy back, he said to 
him, in a low voice, "Don't throw me over- 
board"; and he desired that he might be 
buried l)y his parents, unless it should please 
the king to order otherwise. Then, revert- 
ing to private feelings : "Take care of my 
dear Lady Hamilton, Hardy; take care of 
poor Lady Hamilton. — Kiss me, Hardy," 
said he. Hardy knelt down, and kissed his 
cheek: and Nelson said, "Now I am satis- 
fied. Thank God, I have done my duty." 
Hardy stood over him in silence for a mo- 
ment or two, then knelt again, and kissed 
his forehead. "Who is that?" said Nelson; 
'and being informed, he replied, "God bless 



THE RISE or MODERN DEMOCRACY 



365 



you, Hardy." And Hardy then left him — 
forever. 

Nelson now desired to be turned upon his 
right side, and said: "I wish I had not left 
the deck; for I shall soon be gone." Death 
was, indeed, rapidly approaching. He said 
to the chaplain: "Doctor, I have not been 
a great sinner"; and, after a short pause, 
"Remember that I leave Lady Hamilton, 
and my daughter Horatia, as a legacy to 
my country." His articulation now became 
difficult; but he was distinctly heard to say, 
"Thank God, I have done my duty !" These 
words he had repeatedly pronounced; and 
they were the last words he uttered. He ex- 
pired at thirty minutes after four, — three 
hours and a quarter after he had received 
his wound. . . . 

Once, amidst his sufferings. Nelson had 
expressed a wish that he were dead ; but im- 
mediately the spirit subdued the pains of 
death, and he wished to live a little longer; 
doubtless that he might hear the completion 
of the victory which he had seen so glori- 
ously begun. That consolation — that joy — 
that triumph, was afforded him. He lived 
to know that the victory was decisive; and 
the last guns which were fired at the flying 
enemy were heard a minute or two before 
he expired. The ships which were thus fly- 
ing were four of the enemy's van, all 
French, under Rear-Admiral Dumanoir. 
They had borne no part in the action ; and 
now, when they were seeking safety in flight, 
they fired not only into the Victory and 
Royal Sovereign as they passed, but poured 
their broadsides into the Spanish captured 
ships ; and they were seen to back their top- 
sails, for the purpose of firing with more 
precision. The indignation of the Span- 
iards at this detestable cruelty from their 
allies, for whom they had fought so bravely 
and so profusely bled, may well be con- 
ceived. It was such, that when, two days 
after the action, seven of the ships which 
had escaped into Cadiz came out, in hopes 
of retaking some of the disabled prizes, the 
prisoners in the Argonauta, in a body, of- 
fered their services to the British prize- 
master, to man the guns against any of the 
French ships : saying, that if a Spanish ship 
came alongside, they would quietly go below ; 
but they requested that they might be al- 
lowed to fight the French, in resentment for 
the murderous usage which they had suf- 
fered at their hands. Such was their ear- 
nestness, and such the implicit confidence 
which could be placed in Spanish honor, 



that the offer was accepted, and they were 
factually stationed at the lower-deck guns. 
Dumanoir and his squadron were not more 
fortunate ' than the fleet from whose de- 
struction they fled, — they fell in with Sir 
Richard Strachan, who was cruising for the 
Rochef ort squadron, and were all taken. In 
the better days of France, if such a crime 
could then have been committed, it would 
have received an exemplary punishment 
from the French Government ; under Buona- 
parte, it was sure of impunity, and, perhaps, 
might be thought deserving of reward. But, 
if the Spanish court had been independent, 
it would have become us to have delivered 
Dumanoir and his captains up to Spain, 
that they might have been brought to trial, 
and hanged in sight of the remains of the 
Spanish fleet. 

The total British loss in the battle of 
Trafalgar amounted to 1,587. Twenty of 
the enemy struck, — unhappily the fleet did 
not anchor, as Nelson, almost with his dying 
breath, had enjoined, — a gale came on from 
the south-west; some of the prizes went 
down, some went on shore; one effected its 
escape into Cadiz; others were destroyed; 
four only were saved, and those by the 
greatest exertions. The wounded Spaniards 
were sent ashore, an assurance being given 
that they should not serve till regularly ex- 
changed; and the Spaniards, with a gener- 
ous feeling, which would not, perhaps, have 
been found in any other people, offered the 
use of their hospitals for our wounded, 
pledging the honor of Spain that they 
should be carefully attended there. When 
the storm after the action drove some of the 
prizes upon the coast, they declared that 
the_ English, who were thus thrown into 
their hands, should not be considered as pris- 
oners of war ; and the Spanish soldiers gave 
up their own beds to their shipwrecked ene- 
mies. The Spanish vice-admiral, Alava, died 
of his wounds. Villeneuve was sent to Eng- 
land, and permitted to return to France. 
The French Government say that he de- 
stroyed himself on the way to Paris, dread- 
ing the consequences of a court-martial ; but 
there is every reason to believe that the 
tyrant, who never acknowledged the loss of 
the battle of Trafalgar, added Villeneuve to 
the numerous victims of his murderous' 
policy. 

It is almost superfluous to add that all 
the honors which a grateful country could 
bestow were heaped upon the memory of 
Nelson. His brother was made an earl, with 



366 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



a grant of £6,000 per year; £10,000 were 
voted to each of his sisters; and £100,000 
for the purchase of an estate. A public 
funeral was decreed, and a public monu- 
ment. Statues and monuments also were 
voted by most of our principal cities. The 
leaden coffin, in which he was brought home, 
was cut in pieces, which were distributed as 
relies of Saint Nelson,— so the gunner of 
the Victory called them, — and when, at his 
interment, his flag was about to be lowered 
into the grave, the sailors who assisted at 
the ceremony, with one accord rent it in 
pieces, that each might preserve a fragment 
while he lived. 

The death of Nelson was felt in England 
as something more than a public calamity : 
men started at the intelligence, and turned 
pale, as if they had heard of the loss of a 
dear friend. An object of our admiration 
and affection, of our pride and of our hopes, 
was suddenly taken from us ; and it seemed 
as if we had never, till then, known how 
deeply we loved and reverenced him. What 
the country had lost in its great naval hero 
— the greatest of our own, and of all former 
times — was scarcely taken into the account 
of grief. So perfectly, indeed, liad he per- 
formed his part, that the maritime war, 
after the battle of Trafalgar, was consid- 
ered at an end ; the fleets of the enemy were 
not merely defeated, but destroyed; new 
navies must be built, and a new race of sea- 
men reared for them, before the possibility 
of their invading our shores could again be 
contemplated. It was not, therefore, from 
any selfish reflection upon the magnitude of 
our loss that we mourned for him : the gen- 
eral sorrow was of a higher character. The 
people of England grieved that funeral cer- 
emonies, public monuments, and posthumous 
rewards, were all which they could now be- 
stow upon him, whom the king, the legisla- 
ture, and the nation, would alike have de- 
lighted to honor; whom every tongue would 
have blessed: whose presence in every vil- 
lage through which he might have passed 
would have wakened the church bells, have 
given school-boys a holiday, have drawn chil- 
dren from their sports to gaze upon him, 
and "old men from the chimney corner," to 
look upon Nelson ere they died. The vic- 
tory of Trafalgar was celebrated, indeed, 
with the usual forms of rejoicing, but they 
were without joy; for such already was the 
glory of the British navy, through Nelson's 
surpassing genius, that it scarcely seemed 
to receive any addition from the most signal 



victory that ever was achieved upon the 
seas; and the destruction of this mighty 
fleet, by which all the maritime schemes of 
France were totally frustrated, hardly ap- 
peared to add to our security or strength; 
for, while Nelson was living to watch the 
combined squadrons of the enemy, we felt 
ourselves as secure as now, when they were 
no longer in existence. 

There was reason to suppose from the ap- 
pearances upon opening the body, that, in 
the course of nature, he might have at- 
tained, like his father, to a good old age. 
Yet he cannot be said to have fallen prema- 
turely whose work was done; nor ought he 
to be lamented, who died so full of honors, 
and at the height of human fame. The most 
triumphant death is that of the martyr; the 
most awful, that of the mai'tyred patriot; 
the most splendid, that of the hero in the 
hour of victory : and if the chariot and the 
horses of fire had been vouchsafed for Nel- 
son's translation, he could scarcely have de- 
parted in a brighter blaze of glory. He has 
left us, not indeed his mantle of inspiration, 
but a name and an example, which are at 
this hour inspiring hundreds of the youth 
of England : a name which is our pride, and 
an example which will continue to be our 
shield and our strength. Thus it is that the 
spirits of the great and the wise continue to 
live and to act after them. 



Waterloo 

lord byron 

[Erom Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, 1817.] 



Stop ! — For thy tread is on an Empire's 
dust! 

An Earthquake's spoil is sepulchered 
below ! 

Is the spot mark'd with no colossal bust? 

Nor column trophied for triumphal 
show? 

None; but the moral's truth tells sim- 
pler so. 

As the ground was before, thus let it be ; — 

How that red rain hath made the harvest 



grow 



And is this all the world has gain'd by 
thee. 
Thou first and last of fields! king-making 
Victory? 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCRACY 



367 



And Harold stands upon this place of 

skulls, 
The grave of France, the deadly Water- 
loo; 
How in an hour the power which gave 

annuls 
Its gifts, transferring fame as fleeting 

too! 
In "pride of place" here last the eagle 

flew. 
Then tore with bloody talon the rent plain. 
Pierced by the shaft of banded nations 

through ; 
Ambition's life and labors all were vain; 
He wears the shatter'd links of the world's 

broken chain. 



Fit retribution ! Gaul may champ the bit 

And foam in fetters; — but is Earth more 
free? 

Did nations combat to make One submit; 

Or league to teach all kings true sov- 
ereignty 1 

What! shall reviving Thraldom again be 

The patch'd-up idol of enlighten'd days? 

Shall we, who struck the Lion down, 
shall we 

Pay the Wolf homage? proffering lowly 
gaze 
And servile knees to thrones? No: prove 
.before ye praise! 



If not, o'er one fallen despot boast no 

more! 
In vain fair cheeks were furrow'd with 

hot tears 
For Europe's flowers long rooted up 

before 
The trampler of her vineyards; in vain, 

years 
Of death, depopulation, bondage, fears. 
Have all been borne, and broken by the 

accord 
Of roused-up millions : all that most en- 
dears 
Glory, is when the myi'tle wreaths a sword 
Such as Harmodius drew on Athens' tyrant 

lord. 



There was a sound of revelry by night, 
And Belgium's capital had gather'd then 



Her beauty and her chivalry, and bright 
The lamps shone o'er fair women and 

brave men ; 
A thousand hearts beat happily; and 

when 
Music arose with its voluptuous swell. 
Soft eyes look'd love to eyes which spake 

again. 
And all went merry as a marriage-bell ; 
But hush! hark! a deep sound strikes like 

a rising knell ! 

6 

Did ye not hear it? — No; 'twas but the 
wind, 

Or the car rattling o'er the stony street; 

On with the dance! let joy be uncon- 
fined ; 

No sleep till morn, when Youth and 
Pleasure meet 

To chase the glowing Hours with fly- 
ing feet — 

But, hark! — that heavy sound breaks in 
once more. 

As if the clouds its echo would repeat ; 

And nearer, clearer, deadlier than, be- 
fore! 
Arm ! Arm ! it is — it is — the cannon's open- 
ing roar ! 

7 

Within a window's niche of that high hall 
Sate Brunswick's fated chieftain; he did 

hear 
That sound the first amidst the festival. 
And caught its tone with Death's pro- 
phetic ear ; 
And when they smiled because he deem'd 

it near, 
His heart more truly knew that peal too 

well 
Which stretch'd his father on a bloody 

bier, 
And roused the vengeance blood alone 

could quell: 
He rush'd into the field, and, foremost 

fighting, fell. 

8 

Ah ! then and there was hurrying to and 
fro, 

And gathering tears, and tremblings of 
distress. 

And cheeks all pale, which but an hour 
ago 

Blush'd at the praise of their own love- 
liness ; 



368 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



And there were sudden partings, such 

as press 
The life from out young hearts, and 

choking sighs 
Which ne'er might be repeated; who 

could guess 
If ever more should meet those mutual 

eyes, 
Since upon night so sweet such awful morn 

could rise? 

9 

And there was mounting in hot haste: 
the steed 

The mustering squadron, and the clat- 
tering car, 

Went pouring forward with impetuous 
speed, 

And swiftly forming in the ranks of war ; 

And the deep thunder peal on peal afar. 

And near, the beat of the alarming drum 

Roused up the soldier ere the morning 
star ; 

While throng'd the citizens with terror 
dumb. 
Or whispering, with white lips — "The foe! 
They come ! they come !" 

10 

And wild and high the "Cameron's gath- 
ering" rose! 

The war-note of Lochiel, which Albyn's 
hills 

Have heard, and heard, too, have her 
Saxon foes: 

How in the noon of night that pibroch 
thrills, 

Savage and shrill! But with the breath 
which fills 

Their mountain-pipe, so fill the moun- 
taineers 

With the fierce native daring which in- 
stills 
■ The stirring memory of a thousand years, 
And Evan's, Donald's fame rings in each 
clansman's ears! 



11 

And Ardennes waves above them her 

green leaves 
Dewy with nature's tear-drops, as they 

pass 
Grieving, if aught inanimate e'er grieves, 
Over the unreturning brave, — alas ! 
Ere evening to be trodden like the grass 



Which now beneath them, but above shall 

grow 
In its next verdure, when this fiery mass 
Of living valor, rolling on the foe, 
And burning with high hope, shall moulder 
cold and low. 

12 

Last noon beheld them full of lusty life, 
Last eve in Beauty's circle proudly gay, 
The midnight brought the signal-sound of 

strife, 
The morn the rnarshalling in arms, — the 

day 
Battle's magnificently-stern array! 
The thunder-clouds close o'er it, which 

when rent, 
The earth is covered thick with other 

clay. 
Which her own clay shall cover, heap'd 

and pent. 
Rider and horse, — friend, foe, — in one red 

burial blent! 

13 

Their praise is hymn'd by loftier harps 

than mine; 
Yet one I would select from that proud 

throng, 
Partly because they blend me with his 

line, 
And partly that I did his sire some 

wrong. 
And partly that bright names will hal- 
low song; 
And his was of the bravest, and when ' 

shower'd 
The death-bolts deadliest the thinn'd files 

along, 
Even where the thickest of war's tempest 

lower'd, 
They reach'd no nobler breast than thine, 

young, gallant Howard! 

14 

There have been tears and breaking hearts 
for thee. 

And mine were nothing, had I such to 
give; 

But when I stood beneath the fresh 
green tree. 

Which living waves where thou didst cease 
to live, 

And saw around me the wide field re- 
vive 

With fruits and fertile promise, and the 
Spring 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



369 



Come forth her work of gladness to con- 
trive, 

With all her reckless birds upon the wing, 
I turn'd from all she brought to those she 
could not bring. 



15 



I turn'd to thee, to thousands, of whom 

each 
And one as all a ghastly gap did make 
In his own kind and kindred, whom to 

teach 
Forgetf ulness were mercy for their sake ; 
The Archangel's trump, not Glory's, must 

awake 
Those whom they thirst for; though the 

sound of Fame 
May for a moment soothe, it cannot slake 
The fever of vain longing, and the name 
So honor'd but assumes a stronger, bitterer 

claim. 



16 



They mourn, but smile at length; and, 

smiling, mourn: 
The tree will wither long before it fall; 
The hull drives on, though mast and sail 

be torn; 
The roof -tree sinks, but moulders on the 

hall 
In massy hoariness; the ruin'd wall 
Stands when its wind-worn battlements 

are gone; 
The bars survive the captive they enthral ; 
The day drags through tho' storms keep 

out the sun; 
And thus the heart will break, yet brokenly 

live on. 



17 



Even as a broken mirror, which the glass 
In every f ragTnent multiplies ; and makes 
A thousand images of one that was, 
The same, and still the more, the more it 

breaks; 
And thus the heart will do. which not 

forsakes, 
Living in shatter'd guise, and still, and 

cold. 
And bloodless, with its sleepless sorrow 

aches. 
Yet withers on till all without is old, 
Showing no visible sign, for such things are 

untold. 



18 



There is a very life in our despair, 

Vitality of poison, — a quick root 

Which feeds these deadly branches ; for it 

were 
As nothing did we die; but Life will suit 
Itself to Sorrow's most detested fruit, 
Like to the apples on the Dead Sea's 

shore. 
All ashes to the taste : Did man compute 
Existence by enjoyment, and count o'er 
Such hours 'gainst years of life, — say, would 

he name threescore? 



19 



The Psalmist number'd out the years of 

man: 
They are enough ; and if thy tale be true, 
Thou, who didst grudge him even that 

tieeting span. 
More than enough, thou fatal Waterloo! 
Millions of tongues record thee, and anew 
Their children's lips shall echo them, and 

say— 
"Here, where the sword united nations 

drew, 
Our countrymen were warring on that 

day!" 
And this is much, and all which will not 

pass away. 

20 

There sunk the greatest, nor the worst of 

men. 
Whose spirit antithetically mixt 
One moment of the mightiest, and again 
On little objects with like firmness fixt. 
Extreme in all things! hadst thou been 

betwixt, 
Thy throne had still been thine, or never 

been; 
For daring made thy rise as fall: thou 

seek'st 
Even now to reassume the imperial mien, 
And shake again the world, the Thunderer 

of the scene ! 



21 



Conqueror and captive of the earth art 

thou! 
She trembles at thee still, and thy wild 

name 
Was ne'er more bruited in men's minds 

than now 



370 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



That thou art nothing, save the jest of 
Fame, 

Who woo'd thee once, thy vassal, and be- 
came 

The flatterer of thy fierceness, till thou 
wert 

A god unto thyself; nor less the same 

To the astounded kingdoms all inert. 
Who deem'd thee for a time whate'er thou 
didst assert. 

22 

Oh, more or less than man — in high or 

low. 
Battling with nations, flying from the 

field; 
Now making monarehs' necks thy foot- 
stool, now 
More than thy meanest soldier taught to 

yield ; 
An empire thou couldst crush, commaad, 

rebuild. 
But govern not thy pettiest passion, nor 
However deeply in men's spirits skill'd. 
Look through thine own, nor curb the 

lust of war. 
Nor learn that tempted Fate will leave the 

loftiest star. 

23 

Yet well thy soul hath brook'd the turn- 
ing tide. 

With that untaught innate philosophy. 

Which, be it wisdom, coldness, or deep 
pride. 

Is gall and wormwood to an enemy. 

When the whole host of hatred stood hard 
by, 

To watch and mock thee shrinking, thou 
hast smiled 

With a sedate and all-enduring eye ; — 

When Fortune fled her spoil'd and favor- 
ite child. 
He stood unbow'd beneath the ills upon 
him piled. 

24 

Sager than in thy fortunes; for in them 
Ambition steel'd thee on too far to show 
That just habitual scorn which could con- 
temn 
Men and their thoughts; 'twas wise to 

feel, not so 
To wear it ever on thy lip and brow, 
And spurn the instruments thou wert to 
use, 



Till they were turn'd unto thine over- 
throw : 

'Tis but a worthless world to win or 
lose; 
So hath it proved to thee, and all such lot 
who choose. 

25 

If, like a tower upon a headlong rock, 
Thou hadst been made to stand or fall 

alone. 
Such scorn of man had help'd to brave 

the shock; 
But men's thoughts were the steps which 

paved thy throne. 
Their admiration thy best weapon shone; 
The part of Philip's son was thine, not 

them 
(Unless aside thy purple had been 

thrown) 
Like stern Diogenes to mock at men; 
For sceptered cynics earth were far too wide 

a den! 

26 

But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell, 
And there hath been thy bane; there is a 

fire 
And motion of the soul which will not 

dwell 
In its own narrow being, but aspire 
Beyond the fitting medium of desire; 
And, but once kindled, quenchless ever- 
more 
Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire 
Of aught but rest; a fever at the core, 
Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore. 

27 

This makes the madmen who have made 

men mad 
By their contagion; Conquerors and 

Kings, 
Founders of sects and systems, to whom 

add 
Sophists, Bards, Statesmen, all unquiet 

things 
Which stir too strongly the soul's secret 

springs. 
And are themselves the fools to those 

they fool; 
Envied, yet how unenviable! what stings 
Are theirs! One breast laid open were a 

school 
Which would unteach mankind the lust to 

shine or rule ; 



THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



371 



2b 

Their breath is agitation, and their life 
A storm whereon they ride, to sink at 

last, 
And yet so nursed and bigoted to strife, 
That should their days, surviving perils 

past, 
Melt to calm twilight, they feel overcast 
With sorrow and supineness, and so die; 
Even as a flame unfed, which runs to 

waste 
With its own flickering, or a, sword laid 

Which eats into itself, and rusts inglori- 
ously. 

29 

He who ascends to mountain-tops, shall 

find 
The loftiest peaks most wrapt in clouds 

and snow; 
He who surpasses or subdues mankind, 
Must look down on the hate of those be- 
low. 
Though high above the sun of glory glow, 
And far beneath the earth and ocean 

spread. 
Bound him are icy rocks, and loudly blow 
Contending tempests on his naked head, 
And thus reward the toils which to those 
summits led. 



Waterloo 

william makepeace thackeray 
[From Vanity Fair, 1847-48] 

"Thank Heaven that is over," George 
thought, bounding down the stair, his sword 
under his arm, as he ran swiftly to the 
alarm ground, where the regiment was mus- 
tered, and whither trooped men and officers 
hurrying from their billets; his pulse was 
throbbing and his cheeks flushed : the great 
game of war was going to be played, and 
he one of the players. What a fierce ex- 
citement of doubt, hope, and pleasure! 
What tremendous hazards of loss or gain! 
What were all the games of chance he had 
ever played compared to this one? Into 
all contests requiring athletic skill and 
courage, the young man, from his boyhood 
upwards, had flung himself with all his 
might. The champion of his school and his 
regiment, the bravos of his companions had 



followed him everywhere; from the boys' 
cricket match to the garrison races, he had 
won a hundred of triumphs; and wherever 
he went, women and men had admired and 
envied him. What qualities are there for 
which a man gets so speedy a return of 
applause, as those of bodily superiority, 
activity, and valor? Time out of mind 
strength and courage have been the theme 
of bards and romances ; and from the story 
of Troy down to today, poetry has always 
chosen a soldier for a hero. I wonder is 
it because men are cowards in heart that 
they admire bravery so much, and place 
military valor so far beyond every other 
quality for reward and worship ? 

So, at the sound of that stirring call to 
battle, George jumped away from the gen- 
tle arms in which he had been dallying; 
not without a feeling of shame (although 
his wife's hold on him had been but feeble), 
that he should have been detained there so 
long. The same feeling of eagerness and 
excitement was amongst all those friends of 
his of whom we have had occasional 
glimpses, from the stout senior Major, who 
led the regiment into action, to little Stub- 
ble, the Ensign, who was to bear its colors 
on that day. 

The sun was just rising as the march be- 
gan — it was a gallant sight — the band led 
the column, playing the regimental march 
— then came the Major in command, riding 
upon Py ramus, his stout charger — then 
marched the grenadiers, their captain at 
their head: in the center were the colors, 
borne by the senior and junior Ensigns — 
then George came marching at the head of 
his company. He looked up, and smiled 
at Amelia, and passed on; and even the 
sound of the music died away. 

We of peaceful London City have never 
beheld — and please God never shall wit- 
ness — such a scene of hurry and alarm, as 
that which Brussels presented. Crowds 
rushed to the Namur gate, from which di- 
rection the noise proceeded, and many rode 
along the level chaussee, to be in advance 
of any intelligence from the army. Each 
man asked his neighbor for news ; and even 
great English lords and ladies condescended 
to speak to persons whom they did not 
know. The friends of the French went 
abroad, wild with excitement, and prophesy- 
ing the triumph of their Emperor. The mer- 
chants closed their shops, and came out to 
SAvell the general chorus of alarm and 



372 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



clamor. "Women rushed to the churches, 
and crowded the chapels, and knelt and 
prayed on the flags and steps. The dull 
sound of the cannon went on rolling, roll- 
ing. Presently carriages with travelers be- 
gan to leave the town, galloping away by 
the Ghent barrier. The prophecies of the 
French partisans began to pass for facts. 
*'He has cut the armies in two," it was said. 
"He is marching straight on Brussels. He 
will overpower the English, and be here 
tonight." "He will overpower the Eng- 
lish," shrieked Isidor to his master, "and 
will be here tonight." The man bounded 
in and out from the lodgings to the street, 
always returning with some fresh particu- 
lars of disaster. Jos's face grew paler and 
paler. Alarm began to take entire pos- 
session of the stout civilian. All the cham- 
pagne he drank brought no courage to him. 
Before sunset he was worked up to such a 
pitch of nervousness as gratified his friend 
Isidor to behold, who now counted surely 
upon the spoils of the owner of the laced 
coat. 

The women were away all this time. After 
hearing the firing for a moment, the stout 
Major's wife bethought her of her friend 
in the next chamber, and ran in to watch, 
and if possible to console Amelia. The 
idea that she had that helpless and gentle 
creature to protect, gave additional strength 
to the natural courage of the honest Irish- 
woman. She passed five hours by her 
friend's side, sometimes in remonstrance, 
sometimes talking cheerfully, oftener in si- 
lence, and terrified mental supplication. "I 
never let go her hand once," said the stout 
lady afterwards, "until after sunset, when 
the firing was over." Pauline, the tonne, 
was on her knees at church hard by, pray- 
ing for son homme a elle. 

When the noise of the cannonading was 
over, Mrs. O'Dowd issued out of Amelia's 
room into the parlor adjoining, where Jos 
sate with two emptied fiasks, and courage 
entirely gone. Once or twice he had ven- 
tured into his sister's bedroom, looking very 
much alarmed, and as if he would say some- 
thing. But the Major's wife kept her place, 
and he went away without disburthening 
himself of his speech. He was ashamed 
to tell her that he wanted to fly. But when 
she made her appearance in the dining- 
room, where he sate in the twilight in the 
cheerless company of his empty champagne 
bottles, he began to open his mind to her. 



"Mrs. O'Dowd," he said, "hadn't you bet- 
ter get Amelia ready?" 

"Are you going to take her out for a 
walk?" said the Major's lady; "sure she's 
too weak to stir." 

"I — I've ordered the carriage," he said, 
"and — and post-horses; Isidor is gone for 
them," Jos continued. 

"What do you want with driving to- 
night !" answered the lady. "Isn't she better 
on her bed? I've just got her to lie down." 

"Get her up," said Jos; "she must get 
up, I say" : and he stamped his foot ener- 
getically. "I say the horses are ordered — 
yes, the horses are ordered. It's all over, 
and" 

"And what?" asked Mrs. O'Dowd. 

"I'm off for Ghent," Jos answered. 
"Everybody is going; there's a place for 
you! We shall start in half-an-hour." 

The Major's wife looked at him with in- 
finite scorn. "I don't move till O'Dowd 
gives me the route," said she. "You may 
go if you like, Mr. Sedley ; but faith, Amelia 
and I stop here." 

"She sJiall go," said Jos, with another 
stamp of his foot. Mrs. O'Dowd put herself 
with arms akimbo before the bedroom door. 

"It is her mother you're going to take 
her to?" she said; "or do you want to go 
to Mamma, yourself, Mr. Sedley? Good 
marning — a pleasant journey to ye, sir. 
Bon voyage, as they say, and take my coun- 
sel, and shave off them mustachios, or they'll 
bring you into mischief." 

"D n!" yelled out Jos, wild with fear, 

rage, and mortification ; and Isidor came in 
at this juncture, swearing in his turn. "Pas 
de chevaux, sacrehleu!" hissed out the furi- 
ous domestic. All the horses were gone. 
Jos was not the only man in Brussels seized 
with panic that day. 

But Jos's fears, great and cruel as they 
were already, were destined to increase to 
an almost frantic pitch before the night 
was over. It has been mentioned how 
Pauline, the bonne, had son homme a elle 
also in the ranks of the army that had gone 
out to meet the Emperor Napoleon. This 
Jover was a native of Brussels, and a Belgian 
hussar. The troops of his nation signalized 
themselves in this war for anything but 
courage, and young Van Cutsum, Pauline's 
admirer, was too good a soldier to disobey 
his Colonel's orders to run away. Whilst 
in garrison at Brussels young Regulus (he 
had been born in the revolutionary times) 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



373 



found his great comfort, and passed almost 
all his leisure moments, in Pauline's kitchen ; 
and it was with pockets and holsters 
crammed full of good things from her lar- 
der, that he had taken leave of his weep- 
ing sweetheart, to proceed ujoon the cam- 
paign a few days before. 

As far as his regiment was concerned, this 
campaign was over now. They had formed 
a part of the division under the command 
of his sovereign apparent, the Prince of 
Orange, and as respected length of swords 
and mustachios, and the richness of uniform 
and equijDments, Regulus and his comrades 
looked to be as gallant a body of men as 
ever trumpet sounded for. 

When Ney dashed upon the advance of 
the allied troops, carrying one position 
after the other, until the arrival of the 
great body of the British army from Brus- 
sels changed the aspect of the combat of 
Quatre Bras, the squadrons among which 
Regulus rode showed the greatest activity 
in retreating before the French, and were 
dislodged from one post after another 
which they occupied with perfect alacrity on 
their part. Their movements were only 
checked by the advance of the British in 
their rear. Thus forced to halt, the enemy's 
cavalry (whose bloodthirsty obstinacy can- 
not be too severely reprehended) had at 
length an opportunity of coming to close 
quarters with the brave Belgians before 
them; who preferred to encounter the 
British rather than the French, and at once 
turning tail rode through the English regi- 
ments that were behind them, and scattered 
in all directions. The regiment in fact did 
not exist any more. It was nowhere. It 
had no headquarters. Regulus found him- 
self galloping many miles from the field of 
action, entirely alone; and whither should 
he fly for refuge so naturally as to that 
kitchen and those faithful arms in which 
Pauline had so often welcomed him ! 

At some ten o'clock the clinking of a 
saber might have been heard up the stair 
of the house where the Osbornes occupied 
a story in the Continental fashion. A 
knock might have been heard at the kitchen 
door; and poor Pauline, come back from 
church, fainted almost with terror as she 
opened it and saw before her her haggard 
hussar. He looked as pale as the midnight 
dragoon who came to disturb Leonora. 
Pauline would have screamed, but that her 
cry would have called her masters, and dis- , 



covered her friend. She stifled her scream, 
then, and leading her hero into the kitchen, 
gave him beer, and the choice bits from the 
dinner, which Jos had not had the heart 
to taste. The hussar showed he was no 
ghost by the prodigious quantity of flesh 
and beer which he devoured — and during 
the mouthfuls he told his tale of disaster. 

His regiment had performed prodigies of 
courage, and had withstood for a while the 
onset of the whole French army. But they 
were overwhelmed at last, as was the whole 
British army by this time. Ney destroyed 
each regiment as it came up. The Belgians 
in vain interposed to prevent the butchery 
of the English. The Brunswiekers were 
routed and had fled — their Duke was killed. 
It was a general debacle. He sought to 
drown his sorrow for the defeat in floods of 
beer. 

Isidor, who had come into the kitchen, 
heard the conversation, and rushed out to 
inform his master. "It is all over," he 
shrieked to Jos. ''Milor Duke is a prisoner ; 
the Duke of Brunswick is killed ; the British 
army is in full flight ; there is only one man 
escaped, and he is in the kitchen now — 
come and hear him." So Jos tottered into 
that apartment, where Regulus still sat on 
the kitchen table, and clung fast to his flagon 
of beer. In the best French which he could 
muster, and which was in sooth of a very 
ungrammatical sort, Jos besought the hus- 
sar to tell his tale. The disasters deepened 
as Regulus sjDoke. He was the only man 
of his regiment not slain on the field. He 
had seen the Duke of Brunswick fall, the 
black hussars fly, the Eeossais pounded 
down by the cannon. 

"And the— th?" gasped Jos. 

"Cut in pieces," said the hussar — upon 
which Pauline cried out, "0 my mistress, 
ma bonne petite dame," went off fairly into 
hysterics, and filled the house with her 
screams. 

Wild with terror, Mr. Sedley knew not 
how or where to seek for safety. He rushed 
from the kitchen back to the sitting-room, 
and cast an appealing look at Amelia's 
door, which Mrs. O'Dowd had closed and 
locked in his face; but he remembered how 
scornfully the latter had received him, and 
after pausing and listening for a brief space 
at the door, he left it, and resolved to go 
into the street, for the first time that day. 
So, seizing a candle, he looked about for 
his gold-laced cap, and found it lying in 



374 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



its usual place, on a console-table, in the 
anteroom, placed before a mirror at which 
Jos used to coquet, always giving his side- 
locks a twirl, and his cap the proper cock 
over his eye, before he went forth to make 
appearance in public. Such is the force of 
habit, that even in the midst of his terror 
he began mechanically to twiddle with his 
hair, and arrange the cock of his hat. Then 
he looked amazed at the pale face in the 
glass before him, and esiDecially at his 
mustachios, which had attained a rich 
growth in the course of near seven weeks, 
since they had come into the world. They 
will mistake me for a military man, thought 
he, remembering Isidor's warning, as to the 
massacre with which all the defeated Brit- 
ish army was threatened; and staggering 
back to his bed-chamber, he began wildly 
pulling the bell which summoned his valet. 

Isidor answered that summons. Jos had 
sunk in a chair — he had torn off his neck- 
cloths, and turned down his collars, and was 
sitting with both his hands lifted to his 
throat. 

"Coupez-moi, Isidor," shouted he: "vite! 
Coupez-moi!" 

Isidor thought for a moment he had gone 
mad, and that he wished his valet to cut 
his throat. 

"Les moustaches/' gasped Jos ; ^'les mous- 
taches — coupy, rasy, vite!" — his French was 
of this sort — voluble, as we have said, but 
not remarkable for grammar. 

Isidor swept off the mustachios in no 
time with the razor, and heard with inex- 
pressible delight his master's orders that he 
should fetch a hat and a plain coat. "Ne 
porty ploo — habit militair — honny — honny 
a voo, prenny dehors" — were Jos's words, — 
the coat and cap were at last his property. 

This gift being made, Jos selected a plain 
black coat and waistcoat from his stock, and 
put on a large white neckcloth, and a 
plain beaver. If he could have got a shovel- 
hat he would have worn it. As it was, you 
would have fancied he was a flourishing, 
large parson of the Church of England. 

"Venny maintenong," he continued, 
"sweevy — ally — party — dong la roo." And 
so having said, he plunged swiftly down 
the stairs of the house, and passed into the 
street. 

Although Regulus had vowed that he was 
the only man of his regiment, or of the 
allied army, almost, who had escaped be- 
ing cut to pieces by Ney, it appeared that 



his statement was incorrect, and that a 
good number more of the supposed vic- 
tims had survived the massacre. Many 
scores of Regulus's comrades had found 
their way back to Brussels, and — all agree- 
ing that they had run away — filled the whole 
town with an idea of the defeat of the allies. 
The arrival of the French was expected 
hourly; the panic continued, and prepara- 
tions for flight went on everywhere. No 
horses ! thought Jos, in terror. He made 
Isidor inquire of scores of persons, whether 
they had any to lend or sell, and his heart 
sank within him, at the negative answers 
returned everywhere. Should he take the 
journey on foot? Even fear could not ren- 
der that ponderous body so active. 

Almost all the hotels occupied by the 
English in Brussels face the Pare, and Jos 
wandered irresolutely about in this quarter, 
with crowds of other people, oppressed as 
he was by fear and curiosity. Some families 
he saw more happy than himself, having 
discovered a team of horses, and rattling 
through the streets in retreat; others again 
there were whose ease was like his own, and 
who could not for any bribes or entreaties 
procure the necessary means of flight. 
Amongst these would-be fugitives, Jos re- 
marked the Lady Bareacres and her daugh- 
ter, who sat in their carriage in the porte- 
cochere of their hotel, all their imperials 
packed, and the only drawback to whose 
flight was the same want of motive power 
which kept Jos stationary. 

Rebecca Crawley occupied apartments in 
this hotel; and had before this period had 
sundry hostile meetings with the ladies of 
the Bareacres family. My Lady Bareacres 
cut Mrs. Crawley on the stairs when they 
met by chance; and in all places where the 
latter's name was mentioned, spoke per- 
severingly ill of her neighbor. The Countess 
was shocked at the familiarity of General 
Tufto with the aide-de-camp's wife. The 
Lady Blanche avoided her as if she had been 
an infectious disease. Only the Earl him- 
self kept up a sly occasional acquaintance 
with her, when out of the jurisdiction of 
his ladies. 

Rebecca had her revenge now upon these 
insolent enemies. It became known in the 
hotel that Captain Crawley's horses had 
been left behind, and when the panic be- 
gan. Lady Bareacres condescended to send 
her maid to the Captain's wife her Lady- 
ship's compliments, and a desire to know 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



375 



the price of Mrs. Crawley's horses. Mrs. 
Crawley returned a note with her compli- 
ments, and an intimation that it was not her 
custom to transact bargains with the ladies' 
maids. 

This curt reply brought the Earl in per- 
son to Becky's apartment; but he could 
get no more success than the first ambas- 
sador. "Send a lady's maid to me/" Mrs. 
Crawley cried in great anger; "why didn't 
my Lady Bareacres tell me to go and sad- 
dle the horses ! Is it her Ladyship that 
wants to escape, or her Ladyship's femme de 
chambre?" And this was all the answer 
that the Earl bore back to his Countess. 

What will not necessity do ! The Countess 
herself actually came to wait upon Mrs, 
Crawley on the failure of her second envoy. 
She entreated her to name her own price; 
she even offered to invite Becky to Bareacres 
House, if the latter would but give her the 
means of returning to that residence. Mrs. 
Crawley sneered at her. 

"I don't want to be waited on by bailiffs 
in livery," she said; "you will never get 
back though most probably — at least not 
you and your diamonds together. The 
French will have those. They will be here 
in two hours, and I shall be half-way to 
Ghent by that time. I would not sell you 
my horses, no, not for the two largest dia- 
monds that your Ladyship wore at the ball." 
Lady Bareacres trembled with rage and 
terror. The diamonds were sewed into her 
habit, and secreted in my Lord's padding 
and boots. "Woman, the diamonds are at 
the banker's, and I will have the horses," 
she said. Rebecca laughed in her face. The 
infuriate Countess went below, and sate in 
her carriage ; her maid, her courier, and her 
husband, were sent once more through the 
town, each to look for cattle; and woe be- 
tide those who came last! Her ladyship 
was resolved on departing the very instant 
the horses arrived from any quarter — ^with 
her husband or without him. 

Rebecca had the pleasure of seeing her 
Ladyship in the horseless carriage, and 
keeping her eyes fixed upon her, and be- 
wailing, in the loudest tone of voice, the 
Countess's perplexities. "Not to be able 
to get horses !" she said, "and to have all 
those diamonds sewed into the carriage 
cushions ! What a prize it will be for the 
French when they come! — the carriage and 
the diamonds, I mean; not the lady!" She 
gave this information to the landlord, to 



the servants, to the guests, and the innu- 
merable stragglers about the courtyard. 
Lady Bareacres could have shot her from 
the carriage window. It was while enjoy- 
ing the humiliation of her enemy that Re- 
becca caught sight of Jos, who made towards 
her directly he perceived her. 

That altered, frightened, fat face, told his 
secret well enough. He too wanted to fly, 
and was on the look-out for the means of 
escape. ''He shall buy my horses," thought 
Rebecca, "and I'll ride the mare." 

Jos walked up to his friend, and put the 
question for the hundredth time during the 
past hour, "Did she know where horses were 
to be hadf 

"What, you fly?" said Rebecca, with a 
laugh. "I thought you were the champion 
of all the ladies, Mr. Sedley." 

"I — I'm not a military man," gasped he. 

"And Amelia? — Who is to protect that 
poor little sister of yours?" asked Rebecca. 
"You surely would not desert her ?" 

"What good can I do her, suppose — sup- 
pose the enemy arrive?" Jos answered. 
"They'll spare the women; but my man tells 
me that they have taken an oath to give 
no quarter to the men — the dastardly cow- 
ards." 

"Horrid!" cried Rebecca, enjoying his 
perplexity. 

"Besides, I don't want to desert her," 
cried the brother. "She shan't be deserted. 
There is a seat for her in my carriage, and 
one for you, dear Mrs. Crawley, if you 
will come; and if we can get horses" — 
sighed he — 

"I have two to sell," the lady said. Jos 
could have flung himself into her arms at 
the news. "Get the carriage, Isidor," he 
cried; "we've found them — we have found 
them !" 

"My horses never were in harness," added 
the lady. "Bullfinch would kick the car- 
riage to pieces, if you put him in the traces." 

"But he is quiet to ride?" asked the ci- 
vilian. 

"As quiet as a lamb, and as fast as a 
hare," answered Rebecca. 

"Do you think he is up to my weight?" 
Jos said. He was already on his back, in 
imagination, without ever so much as a 
thought for poor Amelia, What person who 
loved a horse-speculation could resist such 
a temptation? 

In reply, Rebecca asked him to come into 
her room, whither he followed her quite 



376 



THE OEEAT TRADITION 



breathless to conclude the bargain. Jos 
seldom spent a half -hour in his life which 
cost him so much money. Rebecca, meas- 
uring the value of the goods which she had 
for sale by Jos's eagerness to purchase as 
well as by the scarcity of the article, put 
upon her horses a price so prodigious as 
to make even the civilian draw back. ''She 
would sell both or neither," she said reso- 
lutely. Rawdon had ordered her not to part 
with them for a price less than that which 
she specified. Lord Bareacres below would 
give her the same money — and with all her 
love and regard for the Sedley family, her 
dear Mr. Joseph must conceive that poor 
people must live — nobody, in a word, could 
be more affectionate, but more' firm about 
the matter of business. 

Jos ended by agreeing, as might be sup- 
posed of him. The sum he had to give her 
was so large that he was obliged to ask 
for time: so large as to be a little fortune 
to Rebecca, who rapidly calculated that with 
this sum and the sale of the residue of 
Rawdon's effects, and her pension as a 
widow should he fall, she would now be 
absolutely independent of the world, and 
might look her weeds steadily in the face. 

Once or twice in the day she certainly 
had herself thought about flying. But her 
reason gave her better counsel. "Suppose 
the French do come," thought Becky, "what 
can they do to a poor officer's widow ? Bah ! 
The times of sacks and sieges are over. We 
shall be let to go home quietly, or I may 
live pleasantly abroad with a snug little in- 
come." 

Meanwhile Jos and Igidor went off to the 
stables to inspect the newly purchased cat- 
tle. Jos bade his man saddle the horses 
at once. He would ride away that very 
night, that very hour. And he left the 
valet busy in getting the horses ready, and 
went homewards himself to prepare for his 
departure. It must be secret. He would 
go to his chamber by the back entrance. He 
did not care to face Mrs. O'Dowd and 
Amelia and own to them that he was about 
to run. 

By the time Jos's bargain with Rebecca 
was completed, and his horses had been vis- 
ited and examined, it was almost morning 
once more. But though midnight was long 
past, there was no rest for the city: the 
people were up, the lights in the houses 
flamed, crowds were still about the doors, 
and the stffeets were busy. Rumors of vari- 



ous natures went still from mouth to mouth : 
one report averred that the Prussians had 
been utterly defeated; another that it was 
the English who had been attacked and 
conquered; a third that the latter had held 
their ground. This last rumor gradually 
got strength. No Frenchmen had made 
their appearance. Stragglers had come in 
from the army bringing reports more and 
more favorable : at last an aide-de-camp ac- 
tually reached Brussels with dispatches for 
the Commandant of the place, who pla- 
carded presently through the town an offi- 
cial announcement of the success of the al- 
lies at Quatre Bras, and the entire repulse 
of the French under Ney after a six hours' 
battle. The aide-de-camp must have ar- 
rived some time while Jos and Rebecca were 
making their bargain together, or the lat- 
ter was inspecting his purchase. When he 
reached his own hotel, he found a score 
of its numerous inhabitants on the threshold 
discoursing of the news ; there was no doubt 
as to its truth. And he went up to com- 
municate it to the ladies under his charge. 
He did not think it was necessary to tell 
them how he had intended to take leave of 
them, how he had bought horses, and what 
a price he had paid for them. 

But success or defeat was a minor mat- 
ter to them, who had only thought for the 
safety of those they loved. Amelia, at the 
news of the victory, became still more agi- 
tated even than before. She was for going 
that mornent to the army. She besought her 
brother with tears to conduct her thither. 
Her doubts and terrors had reached their 
paroxysm ; and the poor girl, who for many 
hours had been plunged into stupor, raved 
and ran hither and thither in hysteric in- 
sanity — a piteous sight. No man writhing 
in pain on the hard-fought field fifteen 
miles off, where lay, after their struggles, 
so many of the brave — no man suffered 
more keenly than this poor harmless vic- 
tim of the war. Jos could not bear the 
sight of her pain. He left his sister in the 
charge of her stouter female companion, 
and descended once more to the threshold 
of the hotel, where everybody still lingered, 
and talked, and waited for more news. 

It grew to be broad daylight as they 
stood here, and fresh news began to arrive 
from the war, brought by men who had 
been actors in the scene. Wagons and 
long country carts laden with wounded 
came rolling into the town; ghastly groans 



THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCEAOY 



377 



came from within them, and haggard faces 
looked up sadly from out of the straw. Jos 
Sedley was looking at one of these car- 
riages with a painful curiosity — the moans 
of the i3eople within were frightful — the 
wearied horses could hardly pull the cart. 
"Stop ! Stop !" a feeble voice cried from the 
straw, and the carriage stopped opposite 
Mr. Sedley's hotel. 

"It is George, I know it is !" cried Amelia, 
rushing in a moment to the balcony, with 
a pallid face and loose flowing hair. It 
was not George, however, but it was the 
next best thing: it was news of him. It 
was poor Tom Stubble, who had marched 
out of Brussels so gallantly twenty-four 
hours before, bearing the colors of the regi- 
ment, which he had defended very gallantly 
upon the field. A French lancer had speared 
the young Ensign in the leg, who fell, still 
bravely holding to his flag. At the con- 
clusion of the engagement, a place had been 
found for the poor boy in a cart, and he 
had been brought back to Brussels, 

"Mr, Sedley, Mr. Sedley!" cried the boy 
faintly, and Jos came up almost frightened 
at the appeal. He had not at first dis- 
tinguished who it was that called him. 

Little Tom Stubble held out his hot and 
feeble hand. "I'm to be taken in here," 
he said. "Osborne — and — and Dobbin said 
I was; and you are to give the man two 
Napoleons : my mother will pay you." This 
young fellow's thoughts during the long 
feverish hours passed in the cart, had been 
wandering to his father's parsonage, which 
he had quitted only a few months before, 
and he had sometimes forgotten his pain in 
that delirium. 

The hotel was large, and the people kind, 
and "all the inmates of the cart were taken 
in and placed on various couches. The 
young Ensign was conveyed upstairs to Os- 
borne's quarters. Amelia and the Major's 
wife had rushed down to him, when the 
latter had recognized him from the balcony. 
You may fancy the feelings of these women 
when they were told that the day was over, 
and both their husbands were safe ; in what 
mute rapture Amelia fell on her good 
friend's neck, and embraced her; in what 
grateful passion of prayer she fell on her 
knees, and thanked the Power which had 
saved her husband. 

Our young lady, in her fevered and 
nervous condition, could have had no more 
salutary medicine prescribed for her by any 



physician than that which chance put in her 
way. She and Mrs. O'Dowd watched in- 
cessantly by the wounded lad, whose pains 
were very severe, and in the duty thus forced 
upon her, Amelia had not time to brood over 
her personal anxieties, or to give herself 
up to her own fears and forebodings after 
her wont. The young patient told in his 
simple fashion the events of the day, and the 
actions of our friends of the gallant — th. 
They had suffered severely. They had lost 
very many officers and men. The Major's 
horse had been shot under him as the regi- 
ment charged, and they all thought that 
O'Dowd was gone, and that Dobbin had got 
his majority, until on their return from the 
charge to their old gTOund, the Major was 
discovered seated on Pyramus's carcase, re- 
freshing himself from a ease-bottle. It was 
Captain Osborne that cut down the French 
lancer who had speared the Ensign. Amelia 
turned so pale at the notion, that Mrs. 
O'Dowd stopped the young Ensign in his 
story. And it was Captain Dobbin who at 
the end of the day, though wounded him- 
self, took up the lad in his arms and car- 
ried him to the surgeon, and thence to the 
cart which was to bring him back to Brus- 
sels. And it was he who promised the driver 
two louis if he would make his way to Mr. 
Sedley's hotel in the city; and tell Mrs. 
Captain Osborne that the action was over, 
and that her husband was unhurt and well. 

"Indeed, but he has a good heart that 
William Dobbin," Mrs. O'Dowd said, 
"though he is always laughing at me." 

Young Stubble vowed there was not such 
another officer in the army, and never ceased 
his praises of the senior captain, his mod- 
esty, his kindness, and his admirable cool- 
ness in the field. To these parts of the con- 
versation, Amelia lent a very distracted at- 
tention: it was only when George was 
spoken of that she listened, and when he 
was not mentioned, she thought about him. 

In tending her patient, and in thinking of 
the wonderful escapes of the day before, 
her second day passed away not too slowly 
with Amelia. There was only one man in 
the army for her : and as long as he was 
well, it must be owned that its movements 
interested her little. All the reports which 
Jos brought from the streets fell very vague- 
ly on her ears; though they were sufficient 
to give that timorous gentleman, and many 
other people then in Brussels, every disquiet. 
The French had been repulsed certainly, but 



378 



THE GKEAT TEADITION 



it was after a severe and doubtful struggle, 
and with only a division of the French army. 
The Empei-or, with the main body, was 
away at Ligny, where he had utterly an- 
nihilated the Prussians, and was now free 
to bring his whole force to bear upon the 
allies. The Duke of Wellington was re- 
treating upon the capital, and a great bat- 
tle must be fought under its walls probably, 
of which the chances were more than doubt- 
ful. The Duke of Wellington had but 
twenty thousand British troops on whom he 
could rely, for the Germans were raw militia, 
the Belgians disaffected ; and with this hand- 
ful his Grace had to resist a hundred and 
fifty thousand men that had broken into Bel- 
gium under Napoleon. Under Napoleon! 
What warrior was there, however famous 
and skillful, that could fight at odds with 
him? 

Jos thought of all these things, and trem- 
bled. So did all the rest of Brussels — where 
people felt that the fight of the day before 
was but the prelude to the greater combat 
which was imminent. One of the armies 
opposed to the Emperor was scattered to the 
winds already. The few English that could 
be brought to resist him would perish at 
their posts, and the conqueror would pass 
over their bodies into the city. Woe be to 
those whom he found there ! Addresses were 
prepared, public functionaries assembled 
and debated secretly, apartments were got 
ready, and trieolored banners and triumphal 
emblems manufactured, to welcome the ar- 
rival of His Majesty the Emperor and King. 

The emigration still continued, and 
wherever families could find means of de- 
parture, they fled. When Jos, on the after- 
noon of the 17th of June, went to Rebecca's 
hotel, he found that the great Bareacres car- 
riage had at length rolled away from the 
porte-cochere. The Earl had procured a 
pair of horses somehow, in spite of Mrs. 
Crawley, and was rolling on the road to 
Ghent. Louis the Desired was getting ready 
his portmanteau in that city too. It seemed 
as if Misfortune was never tired of worry- 
ing into motion that unwieldly exile. 

Jos felt that the delay of yesterday had 
been only a respite, and that his dearly 
bought horses must of a surety be put into 
requisition. His agonies were very severe 
all this day. As long as there was an Eng- 
lish army between Brussels and Napoleon, 
there was no need of immediate flight; but 
he had his horses brought from their distant 



stables, to the stables in the court-yard of 
the hotel where he lived ; so that they might 
be under his own eyes, and beyond the risk 
of violent abduction. Isidor watched the 
stable-door constantly, and had the horses 
saddled, to be ready for the start. He 
longed intensely for that event. 

After the reception of the previous day, 
Rebecca did not care to come near her dear 
Amelia. . She clipped the bouquet which 
George had brought her, and gave fresh 
water to the flowers, and read over the let- 
ter which he had sent her. "Poor wretch," 
she said, twirling round the little bit of 
paper in her fingers, "how I could crush her 
with this! — And it is for a thing like this 
that she must break her heart, forsooth — 
for a man who is stupid — a coxcomb — and 
who does not care for her. My poor good 
Rawdon is worth ten of this creature." And 
then she fell to thinking what she should do 
if — if anything happened to poor good Raw- 
don, and what a great piece of luck it was 
that he had left his horses behind. 

In the course of this day too, Mrs. Craw- 
ley, who saw not without anger the Bare- 
acres party drive off, bethought her of the 
precaution which the Countess had taken, 
and did a little needlework for her own ad- 
vantage; she stitched away the major part 
of her trinkets, bills, and banknotes about 
her person, and so prepared, was ready for 
any event — to fly if she thought flt, or to 
stay and welcome the conqueror, were he 
Englishman or Frenchman. And I am not 
sure that she did not dream that night of 
becoming a duchess and Madame la Mare- 
chale, while Rawdon, wrapped in his cloak, 
and making his bivouac under the rain at 
Mount Saint John, was thinking, with all 
the force of his heart, about the little wife 
whom he had left behind him. 

The next day was a Sunday. And Mrs. 
Major O'Dowd had the satisfaction of see- 
ing both her patients refreshed in health 
and spirits by some rest which they had 
taken during the night. She herself had 
slept on a great chair in Amelia's room, 
ready to wait upon her poor friend or the 
Ensign, should either need her nursing. 
When morning came, this robust woman 
went back to the house where she and her 
Major had their billet ; and here performed 
an elaborate and splendid toilet, befitting 
the day. And it is very possible that whilst 
alone in that chamber, which her husband 
had inhabited, and where his cap still lay on 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOGEACY 



379 



the pillow, and his cane stood in the corner, 
one prayer at least was sent up to Heaven 
for the welfare of the brave soldier, Michael 
O'Dowd. 

When she returned she brought her 
prayer-book with her, and her uncle the 
Dean's famous book of sermons, out of 
which she never failed to read every Sab- 
bath ; not understanding all, haply, not pro- 
nouncing many of the words aright, which 
were long and abstruse — for the Dean was 
a learned man, and loved long Latin words — • 
but with great gravity, vast emphasis, and 
with tolerable correctness in the main. How 
often has my Mick listened to these sermons, 
she thought, and me reading in the cabin of 
a calm ! She proposed to resume this exer- 
cise on the present day, with Amelia and 
the wounded Ensign for a congregation. 
The same service was read on that day in 
twenty thousand churches at the same hour ; 
and millions of British men and women, on 
their knees, implored protection of the 
Father of all. 

They did not hear the noise which dis- 
turbed our little congregation at Brussels. 
Much louder than that which had inter- 
rupted them two days previously, as Mrs. 
O'Dowd was reading the service in her best 
voice, the cannon of Waterloo began to roar. 

When Jos heard that dreadful ^ound, he 
made up his mind that he would bear this 
perpetual recurrence of terrors no longer, 
and would fly at once. He rushed into the 
sick man's room, where our three friends 
had paused in their prayers, and further 
interrupted them by a passionate appeal to 
Amelia. 

"I can't stand it any more, Emmy," he 
said ; "I won't stand it ; and you must come 
with me. I have bought a horse for you 
— never mind at what price — and you must 
dress and come with me, and ride behind 
Isidor." 

"God forgive me, Mr. Sedley, but you 
are no better than a coward," Mrs. O'Dowd 
said, laying down the book. 

"I say come, Amelia," the civilian went 
on ; "never mind what she says ; why are we 
to stop here and be butchered by the French- 
men?" 

"You forget the -^ — th, my boy," said the 
little Stubble, the wounded hero, from his 
bed — "and— and you won't leave me, will 
you, Mrs. O'Dowd?" 

"No, my dear fellow," said she, going up 
and kissing the boy. "No harm shall come 



to you while I stand by. I don't budge till 
I get the word from Mick. A pretty figure 
I'd be, wouldn't I, stuck behind that chap 
on a pillion?" 

This image caused the young j^atient to 
burst out laughing in his bed, and even 
made Amelia smile. "I don't ask her," Jos 
shouted out — "I don't ask that — that Irish- 
woman, but you, Amelia; once for all, will 
you come?" 

"Without my husband, Joseph?" Amelia 
said, with a look of wonder, and gave her 
hand to the Major's wife. Jos's patience 
was exhausted. 

"Good-bye, then," he said, shaking his fist 
in a rage, and slamming the door by which 
he retreated. And this time he really gave 
his order for march: and mounted in the 
courtyard. Mrs. O'Dowd heard the clat- 
tering hoofs of the horses as they issued 
from the gate; and looking on, made many 
scornful remarks on poor Joseph as he rode 
down the street with Isidor after him in the 
laced cap. The horses, which had not been 
exercised for some days, were lively, and 
sprang about the street. Jos, a clumsy and 
timid horseman, did not look to advantage 
in the saddle. "Look at him, Amelia dear, 
driving into the parlor window. Such a 
bull in a china-shop I never saw." And 
presently the pair of riders disappeared at 
a canter down the street leading in the direc- 
tion of the Ghent road, Mrs. O'Dowd pur- 
suing them with a fire of sarcasm so long 
as they were in sight. 

All that day, from morning until past 
sunset, the cannon never ceased to roar. It. 
was dark when the cannonading stopped all 
of a sudden. 

All of us have read of what occurred dur- 
ing that interval. The tale is in every 
Englishman's mouth: and you and I, who 
were children when the great battle was won 
and lost, are never tired of hearing and re- 
counting the history of that famous action. 
Its remembrance rankles still in the bosoms 
of millions of the countrymen of those brave 
men who lost the day. They pant for an 
opportunity of revenging that humiliation; 
and if a cdhtest, ending in a victory on their 
part, should ensue, elating them in their 
turn, and leaving its cursed legacy of hatred 
and rage behind to us, there is no end to 
the so-called glory and shame, and to the 
alternations of successful and unsuccessful 
murder, in which two high-spirited nations 
might engage. Centuries hence, we French- 



380 



^HE GREAT TRADITION 



men and Englishmen might be boasting and 
killing each other still, carrying out bravely 
the Devil's code of honor. 

All our friends took their share and fought 
like men in the great field. All day long, 
whilst the women were praying ten miles 
away, the lines of the dauntless English in- 
fantry were receiving and repelling the 
furious charges of the French horsemen. 
Guns which were heard at Brussels were 
plowing up their ranks, and comrades 
falling, and the resolute survivors closing in. 
Towards evening, the attack of the French, 
repeated and resisted so bravely, slackened 
in its fury. They had other foes besides the 
British to engage, or were preparing for a 
final onset. It came at last : the columns of 
the Imperial Guard marched up the hill of 
Saint Jean, at length and at once to sweep 
the English from the height which they had 
maintained all day, and spite of all: un- 
scared by the thunder of the artillery, which 
hurled death from the English line — the dark 
rolling column pressed on and up the hill. 
It seemed almost to crest the eminence, when 
it began to wave and falter. Then it stopped, 
still facing the shot. Then at last the Eng- 
lish troops rushed from the post from 
which no enemy had been able to dislodge 
them, and the Guard turned and fled. 

No more firing was heard at Brussels — 
the pursuit rolled miles away. Darkness 
came down on the field and city ; and Amelia 
was praying for George, who was lying on 
his face, dead, with a bullet through his 
heart. 

Waterloo 

william wordsworth 



The Bard — whose soul is meek as dawning 

day, 
Yet trained to judgments righteously severe, 
Fervid, yet conversant with holy fear. 
As recognizing one Almighty sway : 
He — ^whose experienced eye can pierce the 

array 
Of past events ; to whom, in vision clear, 
The aspiring heads of future things appear. 
Like mountain-tops whose mists have rolled 

away — 
Assoiled from all encumbrance of our time, 
He only, if such breathe, in strains devout 
Shall comprehend this victory sublime ; 
Shall worthily rehearse the hideous rout, 



The triumph hail, which from their peaceful 

clime 
Angels might welcome with a choral shout! 

[1816] 



II 



OCCASIONED BY THE BATTLE OF WATERLOO 

(The last six lines intended for an Inscrip- 
tion.) 

Intrepid sons of Albion ! not by you 
Is life despised ; ah no, the spacious earth 
Ne'er saw a race who held, by right of birth, 
So many objects to which love is due : 
Ye slight not life — to God and Nature true ; 
But death, becoming death, is dearer far. 
When duty bids you bleed in open war : 
Hence hath your prowess quelled that 

impious crew. 
Heroes ! — for instant sacrifice prepared ; 
Yet filled with ardor and on triumph bent 
'Mid direst shocks of mortal accident — 
To you who fell, and you whom slaughter 

spared 
To guard the fallen, and consummate the 

event. 
Your Country rears this sacred Monument ! 

[1816] 



Moscow 

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 

By Moscow self -devoted to a blaze 
Of dreadful sacrifice ; by Russian blood 
Lavished in fight with desperate hardihood; 
The unfeeling Elements no claim shall raise 
To rob our Human-nature of just praise 
For what she did and suffered. Pledges sure 
Of a deliverance absolute and pure 
She gave, if Faith might tread the beaten 

ways 
Of Providence. But now did the Most High 
Exalt his still small voice; — to quell that 

Host 
Gathered his power, a manifest ally ; 
He, whose heaped waves confounded the 

proud boast 
Of Pharoah, said to Famine, Snow, and 

Frost, 
"Finish the strife by deadliest victory!" 

[1822] 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



381 



Political Greatness 

percy bysshe shelley 

Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame. 

Nor peace, nor strength, nor skill in arms 

or arts, 
Shepherd those herds whom tyranny makes 

tame ; 
Verse echoes not one beating of their hearts, 
History is but the shadow of their shame. 
Art veils her glass, or from the pageant 

starts 
As to oblivion their blind millions fleet. 
Staining that Heaven with obscene imagery 
Of their own likeness. What are numbers 

knit 
By force or custom ? Man who man would be. 
Must rule the empire of himself ; in it 
Must be supreme, establishing his throne 
On vanquished will, quelling the anarchy 
Of hopes and fears, being himself alone. 

[1821] 



OZYMANDIAS 
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 

I met a traveler from an antique land 
Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of 

stone 
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand, 
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose 

frown, 
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold com- 
mand, 
Tell that its sculptor well those passions 

read 
Which yet survive (stamped on these life- 
less things), 
The hand that mocked them and the heart 

that fed : 
And on the pedestal these words appear: 
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings : 
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair !" 
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay 
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare 
The lone and level sands stretch far away. 

[1819] 



III. THE FAILUEE OF REVOLUTION: SOLUTIONS OF THE 

SPIRITUAL PROBLEIVCS 



1. THE RETURN TO NATURE 



The Poet 



WILLIAM WORDSWORTH 



If thou indeed derive thy light from Heaven, 
Then, to the measure of that heaven-born 

light. 
Shine, Poet ! in thy place, and be content : — 
The stars pre-eminent in magnitude. 
And they that from the zenith dart their 

beams, 
(Visible though they be to half the earth, 
Though half a sphere be conscious of their 

brightness) 
Are yet of no diviner origin, 
No purer essence, than the one that burns. 
Like an untended watch-fire, on the ridge 
Of some dark mountain: or than those 

which seem 
Humbly to hang, like twinkling winter 

lamps, 
Among the branches of the leafless trees ; 
All are the undying offspring of one Sire: 



Then, to the measure of the light vouch- 
safed. 
Shine, Poet ! in thy place, and be content. 

n 

A Poet! — He hath put his heart to school. 
Nor dares to move unpropped upon the 

staff 
Which Art hath lodged within his hand — 

must laugh 
By precept only, and shed tears by rule. 
Thy Art be Nature; the live current quaff. 
And let the groveller sip his stagnant pool, 
In fear that else, when Critics grave and 

cool 
Have killed him, Scorn should write his 

epitaph. 
How does the Meadow-flower its bloom un- 
fold? 
Because the lovely little flower is free 
Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold ; 
And so the grandeur of the Forest-tree 
Comes not by casting in a formal mould. 
But from its own divine vitality. 



382 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



The Poet's Mission 

william wordsworth 

[From The Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, 
1798, 1815] 

Taking up the subject, then, upon gen- 
eral grounds, let me ask what is meant by 
the word "poet"? What is a poet? To 
whom does he address himself? And what 
language is to be expected from him? He 
is a man speaking to men : a man, it is true, 
endowed with more lively sensibility, more 
enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a 
greater knowledge of human nature, and a 
more comprehensive soul, than are sup- 
posed to be common among mankind ; a man 
pleased with his own passions and volitions, 
and who rejoices more than other men in 
the spirit of life that is in him; delighting 
to contemplate similar volitions and pas- 
sions as manifested in the goings-on of the 
universe, and habitually impelled to create 
them where he does not find them. To these 
qualities he has added, a disposition to be 
affected more than other men by absent 
things as if they were present; an ability 
of conjuring up in himself passions, which 
are indeed far from being the same as those 
produced by real events, yet (especially in 
those parts of the general sympathy which 
are pleasing and delightful) do more nearly 
resemble the passions produced by real 
events, than anything which, from the mo- 
tions of their own minds merely, other men 
are accustomed to feel in themselves; 
whence, and from practice, he has acquired 
a greater readiness and power in express- 
ing what he thinks and feels, and especially 
those thoughts and feelings which, by his 
own choice, or from the structure of his 
own mind, arise in him without immediate 
external excitement. 

But, whatever portion of this faculty we 
may suppose even the greatest poet to pos- 
sess, there cannot be a doubt but that the 
language which it will suggest to him must 
often, in liveliness and truth, fall far short 
of that which is uttered by men in real life, 
under the actual pressure of those passions, 
certain shadows of which the poet thus pro- 
duces, or feels to be produced, in himsel£ 

However exalted a notion we would wish 
to cherish of the bharaeter of a poet, it is 
obvious, that, while he describes and imi- 
tates passions, his employment is in some 
degree mechanical, compared with the free- 



dom and power of real and substantial ac- 
tion and suffering. So that it will be the 
wish of the poet to bring his feelings near 
to those of the persons whose feelings he 
describes, nay, for short spaces of time, per- 
haps, to let himself slip into an entire de- 
lusion, and even confound and identify his 
own feelings with theirs ; modifying only the 
language which is thus suggested to him 
by a consideration that he describes for 
a particular purpose, that of giving pleas- 
ure. Here, then, he will apply the prin- 
ciple of selection which has been already 
insisted upon. He will depend upon this 
for removing what would otherwise be pain- 
ful or disgusting in the passion; he will 
feel that there is no necessity to trick out 
or to elevate nature: and, the more indus- 
triously he applies this principle, the deeper 
will be his faith that no words, which his 
fancy or imagination can suggest, will be 
to be compared with those which are the 
emanations of reality and truth. 

But it may be said by those who do not 
object to the general spirit of these remarks, 
that, as it is impossible for the poet to pro- 
duce upon all occasions language as ex- 
quisitely fitted for the passion as that which 
the real passion itself suggests, it is proper 
that he should consider himself as in the 
situation of a translator, who does not 
scruple to substitute excellencies of another 
kind for those which are unattainable by 
him; and endeavors occasionally to surpass 
his original in order to make some amends 
for the general inferiority to which he feels 
that he must submit. But this would be to 
encourage idleness and unmanly despair. 
Further, it is the language of men who speak 
of what they do not understand; who talk 
of poetry as of a matter of amusement 
and idle pleasure; who will converse with 
us as gravely about a taste for poetry, as 
they express it, as if it were a thing as in- 
different as a taste for rope-dancing, or 
Frontiniae or Sherry. Aristotle, I have been 
told, has said that poetry is the most philo- 
sophic of all writing; it is so: its object is 
truth, not individual and local, but general, 
and operative; not standing upon external 
testimony, but carried alive into the heart 
by passion ; truth which is its own testimony, 
which gives competence and confidence to 
the tribunal to which it appeals, and re- 
ceives them from the same tribunal. Poetry 
is the image of man and nature. The ob- 
stacles which stand in the way of the fidel- 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



383 



ity of the biographer and historian and of 
their consequent utility, are incalculably 
greater than those which are to be encoun- 
tered by the poet who comprehends the dig- 
nity of his art. The poet writes under one 
restriction only, namely, that of the neces- 
sity of giving immediate pleasure to a hu- 
man being possessed of that information 
which may be expected from him, not as 
a lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an astron- 
omer, or a natural philosopher, but as a 
man. Except this one restriction, there is 
no object standing between the poet and 
the image of things; between this, and the 
biographer and historian there are a thou- 
sand. 

Nor let this necessity of producing im- 
mediate pleasure be considered as a degra- 
dation of the poet's art. It is far otherwise. 
It is an acknowledgment of the beauty of 
the universe, an acknowledgTQent the more 
sincere, because not formal, but indirect; 
it is a task light and easy to him who looks 
at the world in the spirit of love: further, 
it is a homage paid to the native and naked 
dignity of man, to the grand elementary 
principle of pleasure, by which he knows, 
and feels, and lives, and moves. We have 
no sympathy but what is propagated by 
pleasure : I would not be misunderstood ; 
but wherever we symjDathize with pain, it 
will be found that the symjDathy is produced 
and carried on by subtle combinations with 
pleasure. We have no knowledge, that is, 
no general principles drawn from the con- 
templation of particular facts, but what has 
been built up by pleasure, and exists in us 
by pleasure alone. The man of science, the 
chemist and mathematician, whatever diffi- 
culties and disgusts they may have had to 
struggle with, know and feel this. How- 
ever painful may be the objects with which 
the anatomist's knowledge is connected, he 
feels that his knowledge is pleasure; and 
where he has no pleasure he has no knowl- 
edge. What then does the poet? He con- 
siders man and the objects that surround 
him as acting and reacting upon each other, 
so as to produce an infinite complexity of 
pain and pleasure; he considers man in his 
own nature and in his ordinary life as 
contemplating this with a certain quan- 
tity of immediate knowledge, with certain 
convictions, intuitions, and deductions, 
which from habit acquire the quality of in- 
tuitions; he considers him as looking upon 
this complex scene of ideas and sensations. 



and finding everywhere objects that immedi- 
ately excite in him sympathies which, from 
the necessities of his nature, are accompa- 
nied by an overbalance of enjoyment. 

To this knowledge which all men carry 
about with them, and to these sympathies in 
which without any other discipline than that 
of our daily life, we are fitted to take delight, 
the poet principally directs his attention. 
He considers man and nature as essentially 
adapted to each other, and the mind of 
man as naturally the mirror of the fairest 
and most interesting qualities of nature. 
And thus the poet, prompted by this feel- 
ing of pleasure which accompanies him 
through the whole course of his studies, con- 
verses with general nature with affections 
akin to those, which, through labor and 
length of time, the man of science has raised 
up in himself, by conversing with those par- 
ticular parts of nature which are the ob- 
jects of his studies. The knowledge both 
of the poet and the man of science is pleas- 
ure; but the knowledge of the one cleaves 
to us as a necessary jDart of our existence, 
our natural and inalienable inheritance ; the 
other is a personal and individual acquisi- 
tion, slow to come to us, and by no habitual 
and direct sympathy connecting us with our 
fellow-beings. The man of science seeks 
truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; 
he cherishes and loves it in his solitude : the 
poet, singing a song in which all human 
beings join with him, rejoices in the presence 
of truth as our visible friend and hourly 
companion. Poetry is the breath and finer 
spirit of all knowledge ; it is the impassioned 
expression which is in the countenance of 
all science. Emphatically may it be said 
of the poet, as Shakspere hath said of man, 
"that he looks before and after." He is the 
rock of defence of human nature; an up- 
holder and preserver, carrying everywhere 
with him relationship and love. In spite of 
difference of soil and climate, of language 
and manners, of laws and customs, in spite 
of things silently gone out of mind, and 
things violently destroyed, the poet binds 
together by passion and knowledge the vast 
empire of human society, as it is spread over 
the whole earth, and over all time. The 
objects of the poet's thoughts are every- 
where; though the eyes and senses of man 
are, it is true, his favorite guides, yet he 
will follow wheresoever he can find an at- 
mosphere of sensation in which to move his 
wings. Poetry is the first and last of all 



384 



THE GREAT TEADITION 



knowledge — it is as immortal as the heart 
of man. If the labors of men of science 
should ever create any material revolution, 
direct or indirect, in our condition, and in 
the impressions which we habitually receive, 
the poet will sleep then no more than at 
present, but he will be ready to follow the 
steps of the man of science, not only in those 
general indirect effects, but he will be at his 
side, carrying sensation into the midst of 
the objects of the science itself. The re- 
motest discoveries of the chemist, the botan- 
ist, or mineralogist, will be as proper ob- 
jects of the poet's art as any upon which 
it can be employed, if the time should ever 
come when these things shall be familiar 
to us, and the relations under which they 
are contemplated by the followers of these 
respective sciences shall be manifestly and 
palpably material to us as enjoying and suf- 
fering beings. If the time should ever 
come when what is now called science, thus 
familiarized to men, shall be ready to put 
on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, 
the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid 
the transfiguration, and will welcome the 
being thus produced, as a dear and genuine 
inmate of the household of man. — It is not, 
then, to be supposed that any one, who 
holds that sublime notion of poetry which 
I have attempted to convey, will break in 
upon the sanctity and truth of his pictures 
by transitory and accidental ornaments, and 
endeavor to excite admiration of himself by 
arts, the necessity of which must manifestly 
depend upon the assumed meanness of his 
subject. 

The Divine Life in Man and Nature 

william wordsworth 

Expostulation and Reply 

"Why, William, on that old gray stone, 
Thus for the length of half a day, 
Why, William, sit you thus alone, 
And dream your time away? 

"Where are your books'? — that light be- 
queathed 
To Beings else forlorn and blind! 
Up ! up ! and drink the spirit breathed 
From dead men to their kind. 

"You look round on your Mother Earth, 
As if she for no purpose bore you; 
As if you were her first-born birth, 
And none had lived before you!" 



One morning thus, by Esthwaite lake. 
When life was sweet, I know not why. 
To me my good friend Matthew spake, 
And thus I made reply : 

"The eye — it cannot choose but see; 
We cannot bid the ear be still; 
Our bodies feel, where'er they be, 
Against or with our will. 

"Nor less I deem that there are Powers 
Which of themselves our minds impress; 
That we can feed this mind of ours 
In a wise passiveness. 

"Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum 
Of things for ever speaking, 
That nothing of itself will come. 
But we must still be seeking? 

" — Then ask not wherefore, here, alone. 
Conversing as I may, 
I sit upon this old gray stone. 
And dream my time away." 

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above 
TiNTERN Abbey 

Five years have past; five summers, with 

the length 
Of five long winters ! and again I hear 
These waters, rolling from their mountain- 
springs 
With a soft, inland murmur. — Once again 
Do I behold these steep and lofty cliffs, ^ 
That on a wild secluded scene impress 
Thoughts of more deep seclusion; and con- 
nect 
The landscape with the quiet of the sky. 
The day is come when I again repose 
Here, under this dark sycamore, and view i*^ 
These plots of cottage-ground,, these or- 
chard tufts. 
Which at this season, with their unripe 

fruits, 
Are clad in one green hue, and lose them- 
selves 
'Mid groves and copses. Once again I see 
These hedgerows, hardly hedgerows, little 
lines -^^ 

Of sportive wood run wild: these pastoral 

farms. 
Green to the very door; and wreaths of 

smoke 

Sent up, in silence, from among the trees! 

With some uncertain notice, as might seem 

Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless 

woods, ^^ 



THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



385 



Or of some hermit's cave, where by his fire 
The hermit sits alone. 

These beauteous forms, 
Through a long absence, have not been 

to me 
As is a landscape to a blind man's eye: 
But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din 25 
Of towns and cities, I have owed to them 
In hours of weariness, sensations sweet, 
Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; 
And passing even into my purer mind, 
With tranquil restoration : — feelings too 30 
Of unremembered pleasure : such, perhaps, 
As have no slight or trivial influence 
On that best portion of a good man's life. 
His little, nameless, unremembered acts 
Of kindness and of love. Nor less, I trust, 35 
To them I may have owed another gift. 
Of aspect more sublime ; that blessed mood, 
In which the burthen of the mystery. 
In which the heavy and the weary weight 
Of all this unintelligible world, ^0 

Is lightened : — that serene and blessed mood 
In which the affections gently lead us on, — 
Until, the breath of this corporeal frame 
And even the motion of our human blood 
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep ^5 
In body, and become a living soul : 
While with an eye made quiet by the power 
Of harmony, and the deep power of joy. 
We see into the life of things. 

If this 
Be but a vain belief, yet, oh ! how oft — 50 
In darkness and amid the many shapes 
Of joyless daylight; when the fretful stir 
Unprofitable, and the fever of the world. 
Have hung upon the beatings of my heart — 
How oft, in spirit, have I turned to thee, 55 

sylvan Wye! thou wanderer thro' the 

woods, 
How often has my spirit turned to thee ! 
And now, with gleams of half-extin- 
guished thought. 
With many recognitions dim and faint. 
And somewhat of a sad perplexity, ^o 

The picture of the mind revives again: 
While here I stand, not only with the sense 
Of present pleasure, but with pleasing 

thoughts 
That in this moment there is life and food 
For future years. And so I dare to hope, ^5 
Though changed, no doubt, from what I was 
when first 

1 came among these hills; when like a roe 
I bounded o'er the mountains, by the sides 
Of the deep rivers, and the lonely streams, 
Wherever nature led : more like a man "^^ 



Flying from something that he dreads, than 

one 
Who sought the thing he loved. For nature 

then 
(The coarser pleasures of my boyish days. 
And their glad animal movements all gone 

by) 
To me was all in all. — I cannot paint '5 
What then I was. The sounding cataract 
Haunted me like a passion; the tall rock. 
The mountain, and the deep and gloomy 

wood, 
Their colors, and their forms, were then to 

me 
An appetite; a feeling and a love, ^o 

That had no need of a remoter charm. 
By thought supplied, nor any interest 
Unborrowed from the eye. — That time is 

past. 
And all its aching joys are now no more. 
And all its dizzy raptures. Not for this ^^ 
Faint I, nor mourn, nor murmur; other 

gifts 
Have followed; for such loss, I would be- 
lieve. 
Abundant recompense. For I have learned 
To look on nature, not as in the hour 
Of thoughtless youth; but hearing often- 
times 90 
The still, sad music of humanity. 
Nor harsh nor grating, though of ample 

power 
To chasten and subdue. And I have felt 
A presence that disturbs me with the joy 
Of elevated thoughts ; a sense sublime, 95 
Of something far more deeply interfused. 
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns. 
And the round ocean and the living air. 
And the blue sky, and in the mind of man ; 
A motion and a spirit, that impels lOO 

All thinking things, all objects of all 

thought. 
And rolls through all things. Therefore am 

I still 
A lover of the meadows and the woods. 
And mountains ; and of all that we behold 
From this green earth; of all the mighty 
world 105 

Of eye, and ear, — ^both what they half cre- 
ate. 
And what perceive; well pleased to recog- 
nize 
In nature and the language of the sense. 
The anchor of my purest thoughts, the 

nurse. 
The guide, the guardian of my heart, and 
soul 



386 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



111 



Of all my moral being. 

Nor perchance, 
If it were not thus taught, should I the more 
Suffer my genial spirits to decay: 
For thou art with me here upon the banks 
Of this fair river; thou my dearest 

friend, ^^^ 

My dear, dear friend; and in thy voice I 

catch 
The language of my former heart, and read 
My former pleasures in the shooting lights 
Of thy wild eyes. Oh! yet a little while 
May I behold in thee what I was once, ^^o 
My dear, dear sister! and this, prayer I 

make, 
Knowing that Nature never did betray 
The heart that loved her ; 'tis her privilege. 
Through all the years of this our life, to 

lead 
From joy to joy : for she can so inform ^25 
The mind that is within us, so impress 
With quietness and beauty, and so feed 
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil 

tongues. 
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish 

men, 
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor 

all _ _ 130 

The dreary intercourse of daily life, 
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb 
Our cheerful faith, that all which we be- 
hold 
Is full of blessings. Therefore let the moon 
Shine on thee in thy solitary walk; ^^° 

And let the misty mountain-winds be free 
To blow against thee: and, in after years. 
When these wild ecstasies shall be matured 
Into a sober pleasure; when thy mind 
Shall be a mansion for all lovely forms, i^ 
Thy memory be as a dwelling-place 
For all sweet sounds and harmonies; oh! 

then. 
If solitude, or fear, or pain, or grief. 
Should be thy portion, with what healing 

thoughts 
Of tender joy wilt thou remember me, 1^5 
And these my exhortations ! Nor, per- 
chance — 
If I should be where I no more can hear 
Thy voice, nor catch from thy wild eyes 

these gleams 
Of past existence — wilt thou then forget 
That on the banks of this delightful 

stream i^° 

We stood together; and that I, so long 
A worshiper of Nature, hither came 
Unwearied in that service: rather say 



With warmer love — oh! with far deeper 
zeal 

Of holier love. Nor wilt thou then for- 
get, 15^ 

That after many wanderings, many years 

Of absence, these steep woods and lofty 
cliffs, 

And this green pastoral landscape, were to 
me 

More dear, both for themselves and for thy 
sake ! 

ODE 

Intimations of Immortality 

"The Child is father of the Man ; 
And I could wish my days to be 
Bound each to each by natural piety." 



There was a time when meadow, grove, and 

stream, 
The earth, and every common sight. 
To me did seem 
Apparelled in celestial light. 
The glory and the freshness of a dream. 
It is not now as it hath been of yore ; — 
Turn wheresoe'er I may. 
By night or day, 
The things which I have seen I now can 



see no more. 



II 



The Rainbow comes and goes. 
And lovely is the Rose; 
The Moon doth with delight 
Look round her when the heavens are bare ; 
Waters on a starry night 
Are beautiful and fair; 
The sunshine is a glorious birth ; 
But yet I knoAv, where'er I go. 
That there hath past away a glory from the 
earth. 

Ill 

Now, while the birds thus sing a joyous 
song, 
And while the young Iambs bound 

As to the tabor's sound, , 

To me alone there came a thought of grief; 
A timely utterance gave that thought relief, 

And I again am strong : 
The cataracts blow their trumpets from the 

steep ; 
No more shall grief of mine the season 
wrong ; 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOCEACY 



387 



I hear the echoes through the mountains 

throng, 
The winds come to me from the fields of 
sleep, 

And all the earth is gay; 
Land and sea 
Give themselves up to jollity, 

And with the heart of May 
Doth every beast keep holiday; — 
Thou child of joy. 
Shout round me, let me hear thy shouts, 
thou happy shepherd-boy! 

IV 

Ye blessed creatures, I have heard the call 

Ye to each other make ; I see 
The heavens laugh with you in your ju- 
bilee : 
My heart is at your festival, 
My head hath its coronal. 
The fullness of your bliss, I feel — I feel it 
all. 
Oh evil day ! if I were sullen 
While Earth herself is adorning, 

This sweet May-morning, 
And the children are culling 

On every side. 
In a thousand valleys far and wide. 
Fresh flowers ; while the sun shines warm. 
And the babe leaps up on his mother's 
arm: — 
I hear, I hear, with joy I hear ! 
—But there's a tree, of many, one, 
A single field which I have looked upon. 
Both of them speak of something that is 
gone: 
The pansy at my feet 
Doth the same tale repeat : 
Whither is fled the visionary gleam? 
Where is it now, the glory and the dream? 

V 

Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting: 
The Soul that rises with us, our life's Star, 

Hath had elsewhere its setting. 
And Cometh from afar: 

Not in entire forgetfulness. 

And not in utter nakedness. 
But trailing clouds of glory do we come 

From God, who is our home : 
Heaven lies about us in our infancy ! 
Shades of the prison-house begin to close 

Upon the growing boy, 
But he beholds the light, and whence it 
flows, 



He sees it in his joy ; 
The Youth, who daily farther from the east 

Must travel, still is Nature's priest, 

And by the vision splendid 

Is on his way attended; 
At length the Man perceives it die away. 
And fade into the light of common day. 

VI 

Earth fills her lap with pleasures of her 

own; 
Yearnings she hath in her own natural kind, 
And, even with something of a mother's 
mind, 

And no unworthy aim, 

The homely nurse doth all she can 
To make her foster-child, her inmate Man, 

Forget the glories he hath known. 
And that imperial palace whence he came. 

vii 

Behold the Child among his new-born 

blisses, 
A six years' darling of a pigmy size! 
See, where 'mid work of his own hand he 

lies, 
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses. 
With light upon him from his father's 

eyes! 
See, at his feet, some little plan or chart, 
Some fragment from his dream of human 

life, 
Shaped by himself with newly-learned art; 
A wedding or a festival, 
A mourning or a funeral ; 

And this hath now his heart. 
And unto this he frames his song : 
Then will he fit his tongue 
To dialogues of business, love, or strife ; 
But it will not be long 
Ere this be thrown aside. 
And with new joy and pride 
The little Actor eons another part; 
Filling from time to time his "humorous 

stage" 
With all the Persons, down to palsied Age, 
That Life brings with her in her equipage; 
As if his whole vocation 
Were endless imitation. 

VIII 

Thou, whose exterior semblance doth belie 

Thy soul's immensity; 
Thou best philosopher, who yet dost keep 
Thy heritage, thou eye among the blind, 



388 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



That, deaf and silent, read'st the eternal 

deep, 
Haunted forever by the eternal mind, — 
Mighty prophet ! Seer blest ! 
On whom those truths do rest, 
Which we are toiling all our lives to find, 
In darkness lost, the darkness of the grave ; 
Thou, over whom thy immortality 
Broods like the day, a master o'er a slave, 
A presence which is not to be put by; 
Thou little Child, yet glorious in the might 
Of heaven-born freedom on thy being's 

height, 
Why with such earnest pains dost thou 

provoke 
The years to bring the inevitable yoke, 
Thus blindly with thy blessedness at strife? 
Full soon thy Soul shall have her earthly 

freight 
And custom lie upon thee with a weight, 
Heavy as frost, and. deep almost as life! 

IX 

joy! that in our embers 
Is something that doth live, 
That nature yet remembers 
What was so fugitive ! 
The thought of our past years in me doth 

breed 
Perpetual benediction: not indeed 
For that which is most worthy to be blest — 
Delight and liberty, the simple creed 
Of childhood, whether busy or at rest, 
With new-fledged hope still fluttering in his 
breast : — 
Not for these I raise 
The song of thanks and praise; 
But for those obstinate questionings 
Of sense and outward things. 
Fallings from us, vanishings; 
Blank misgivings of a Creature 
Moving about in worlds not realized, 
High instincts before which our mortal na- 
ture 
Did tremble like a guilty thing surprised : 
But for those first affections, 
Those shadowy recollections, 
Which, be they what they may. 
Are yet the fountain light of all our day. 
Are yet a master light of all our seeing; 
Uphold us, cherish, and have power to make 
Our noisy years seem moments in the being 
Of the eternal Silence: truths that wake. 

To perish never; 
Which neither listlessness, nor mad en- 
deavor. 
Nor Man nor Boy, 



Nor all that is at enmity with joy. 
Can utterly abolish or destroy! 

Hence in a season of calm weather 

Though inland far we be, 
Our Souls have sight of that immortal sea 

Which brought us hither, ■ 

Can in a moment travel thither, 
And see the Children sport upon the shore. 
And hear the mighty waters rolling ever- 
more. 



Then sing, ye Birds, sing, sing a joyous 
song! 

And let the young lambs bound 

As to the tabor's sound! 
We in thought will join your throng, 

Ye that pipe and ye that play, 

Ye that through your hearts today 

Feel the gladness of the May! 
What though the radiance which was once 

so bright 
Be now forever taken from my sight, 

Though nothing can bring back the hour 
Of splendor in the grass, of glory in the 
flower ; 

Vv^e will grieve not, rather find 

Strength in what remains behind; . 

In the primal sympathy 

Which having been must ever be; 

In the soothing thoughts that spring 

Out of human suffering; 

In the faith that looks through death, 
In years that bring the philosophic mind. 

XI 

And ye Fountains, Meadows, Hills, and 
Groves, 

Forebode not any severing of our loves! 

Yet in my heart of hearts I feel your might ; 

I only have relinquished one delight 

To live beneath your more habitual SAvay. 

I love the Brooks which down their chan- 
nels fret, 

Even more than when I tripped lightly as 
they; 

The innocent brightness of a new-born Day 
Is lovely yet ; 

The Clouds that gather round the setting 
sun 

Do take a sober coloring from an eye 

That hath kept watch o'er man's mortality ; 

Another race hath been, and other palms 
are won. 

Thanks to the human heart by which we 
live, 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



389 



Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and fears, 
To me the meanest flower that blows can 

give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for 

tears. 

The World Is Too Much With Us 

The world is too much with us; late and 

soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our 

powers : 
Little we see in Nature that is ours; 
We have given our hearts away, a sordid 

boon ! 
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon ; 
The winds that will be howling at all hours, 
And are up-gathered now like sleeping 

flowers ; 
For this, for everything, we are out of tune ; 
It moves us not. — Great God ! I'd rather be 
A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn; 
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, 
Have glimpses that would make me less 

forlorn ; 
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea; 
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn. 

To TOUSSAINT L'OUVERTURE 

Toussaint, the most unhappy man of men! 
Whether the whistling rustic tend his plow 
Within thy hearing, or thy head be now 
Pillowed in some deep dungeon's earless 
den; — 

miserable chieftain ! where and when 
Wilt thou find patience? Yet die not; do 

thou 
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow : 
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again, 
Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left be- 
hind 
Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, 

and skies; 
There's not a breathing of the common 

wind 
That will forget thee ; thou hast great allies ; 
Thy friends are exultations, agonies, 
And love, and man's unconquerable mind. 

Elegiac Stanzas 

Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle, in a 
Storm, Painted by Sir George Beaumont 

1 was thy neighbor once, thou rugged Pile ! 
Four summer weeks I dwelt in sight of 

thee: 



I saw thee every day; and all the while 
Thy Form was sleeping on a glassy sea. 

So pure the sky, so quiet was the air! 
So like, so very like, was day to day! 
Whene'er I looked, thy Image still was 

there ; 
It trembled, but it never passed away. 

How perfect was the calm! it seemed no 

sleep ; 
No mood, which season takes away, or 

brings : 
I could have fancied that the mighty Deep 
Was even the gentlest of all gentle Things. 

Ah! then, if mine had been the Painter's 

hand, 
To express what then I saw; and add the 

gleam. 
The light that never was, on sea or land, 
The consecration, and the Poet's dream; 

I would have planted thee, thou hoary Pile 
Amid a world how different from this ! 
Beside a sea that could not cease to smile; 
On tranquil land, beneath a sky of bliss. 

Thou shouldst have seemed a treasure-house 

divine 
Of peaceful years ; a chronicle of heaven ; — 
Of all the sunbeams that did ever shine 
The very sweetest had to thee been given. 

A Picture had it been of lasting ease, 
Elysian quiet, without toil or strife ; 
No motion but the moving tide, a breeze, 
Or merely silent Nature's breathing life. 

Such, in the fond illusion of my heart. 
Such Picture would I at that time have 

made : 
And seen the soul of truth in every part, 
A steadfast peace that might not be be- 
trayed. 

So once it would have been, — 'tis so no 

more ; 
I have submitted to a new control : 
A power is gone, which nothing can restore ; 
A deep distress hath humanized my Soul. 

Not for a moment could I now behold 
A smiling sea, and be what I have been: 
The feeling of my loss will ne'er be old; 
This, which I know, I speak with mind 
serene. 

Then, Beaumont, Friend! who would have 
been the Friend, 



390 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



If he had lived, of Him whom I deplore, 
This work of thine I blame not, but com- 
mend; 
This sea in anger, and that dismal shore. 

'tis a passionate Work! — yet wise and 

well, 
Well chosen is the spirit that is here; 
That Hulk which labors in the deadly swell. 
This rueful sky, this pageantry of fear! 

And this huge Castle, standing here sub- 
lime, 

1 love to see the look with which it braves. 
Cased in the unfeeling armor of old time, 
The lightning, the fierce wind, and tramp- 
ling waves. 

Farewell, farewell the heart that lives alone, 
Housed in a dream, at distance from the 

Kind! 
Such happiness, wherever it be known, 
Is to be pitied; for 'tis surely blind. 

But welcome fortitude, and patient cheer. 
And frequent sights of what is to be borne ! 
Such sights, or worse, as are before me 

here. — 
Not without hope we suffer and we mourn. 



Ode to Duty 

Stern Daughter of the Voice of God! 
Duty! if that name thou love, 
Who art a light to guide, a rod 
' To check the erring, and reprove ; 
Thou who art victory and law 
When empty terrors overawe; 
From vain temptations dost set free; 
And calm'st the weary strife of frail 
humanity ! 

There are who ask not if thine eye 
Be on them ; who, in love and truth, 
Where no misgiving is, rely 
Upon the genial sense of youth; 
Glad Hearts ! without reproach or blot ; 
Who do thy work, and know it not : 
Oh! if through confidence misplaced 
They fail, thy saving arms dread Power! 
around them cast. 

Serene will be our days and bright 
And happy will our nature be, 
When love is an unerring light, 
And joy its own security. 
And they a blissful course may hold 
Even now, who, not unwisely bold, 



Live in the spirit of this creed; 
Yet seek thy firm support, according to 
their need. 

I, loving freedom, and untried, 
No sport of every random gust. 
Yet being to myself a guide. 
Too blindly have reposed my tr ist : 
And oft, when in my heart was heard 
Thy timely mandate, I deferred 
The task, in smoothe- walks to st^ay; 
But thee I now would parve more strictly, 
if I may. 

Through no disturbance of my soul, 

Or strong compunction in me wrought, 

I supplicate for thy control; 

But in the quietness of thought : 

Me this unchartered freedom tires; 

I feel the weight of chance-desires : 

My hopes no more must change their name, 

I long for a repose that ever is the same. 

Stern Lawgiver! yet thou dost wear 
The Godhead's most benignant grace; 
Nor know we anything so fair 
As is the smile upon thy face: 
Flowers laugh before thee on their beds 
And fragrance in thy footing treads ; 
Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong; 
And the most ancient heavens, through 
Thee, are fresh and strong. 

To humbler functions, awful Power! 
I call thee: I myself commend 
Unto thy guidance from this hour; 
Oh, let my weakness have an end' 
Give unto me, made lowly wise. 
The spirit of self-sacrifice ; 
The confidence of reason give; 
And in the light of truth thy Bondman let 
me live! 



The Mountain Echo 

Yes, it was the mountain Echo, 
Solitary, clear, profound. 
Answering to the shouting Cuckoo, 
Giving to her sound for sound ! 

Unsolicited reply 

To a babbling wanderer sent; 

Like her ordinary cry, 

Like — but oh, how different! 

Hears not also mortal Life? 
Hear not we, unthinking Creatures! 



THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



391 



Slaves of folly, love, or strife — 
Voices of two different natures? 

Have not we too? — yes, we have 
Answers, and we know not whence; 
Echoes from beyond the grave, 
Recognized intelligence! 

Such rebounds our inward ear 
Catches sometimes from afar — 
Listen, ponder, hold them dear; 
For of God, — of God they are. 

To A Skylark 

Ethereal minstrel! pilgrim of the sky! 
Dost thou despise the earth where cares 

abound ? 
Or, while the wings aspire, are heart and 

eye 
Both with thy nest upon the dewy ground? 
Thy nest which thou canst drop into at will, 
Those quivering wings composed, that music 

still ! 

Leave to the nightingale her shady wood; 
A privacy of glorious light is thine ; 
Whence thou dost pour upon the world a 

flood 
Of harmony, with instinct more divine ; 
Type of the wise who soar, but never roam ; 
True to the kindred points of Heaven and 

Home! 

Laodamia 

"With sacrifice before the rising morn 
Vows have I made by fruitless hope in- 
spired ; 
And from the infernal Gods, 'mid shades 

forlorn 
Of night, my slaughtered Lord have I re- 
quired : 
Celestial pity I again implore; — 
Restore him to my sight — great Jove, re- 
store !" 

So speaking, and by fervent love endowed 
With faith, the Suppliant heavenward lifts 

her hands; 
While, like the sun emerging from a cloud, 
Her countenance brightens — and her eye ex- 
pands ; 10 
Her bosom heaves and spreads, her stature 

grows ; 
And she expects the issue in repose. 

terror! what hath she perceived? — joy! 



What doth she look on? — ^whom doth she 

behold? 
Her Hero slain upon the beach of Troy ? ^^ 
His vital presence ? his corporeal mold ? 
It is — if sense deceive her not — 'tis He ! 
And a God leads him, winged Mercury ! 



Mild Hermes spake — and touched her with 

his wand 
That calms all fear: "Such grace hath 

crowned thy prayer, ^0 

Laodamia ! that at Jove's command 
Thy Husband walks the paths of upper air : 
He comes to tarry with thee three hours' 

space ; 
Accept the gift, behold him face to face !" 



Forth sprang the impassioned Queen her 
Lord to clasp ; ^5 

Again that consummation she essayed ; 
But unsubstantial Form eludes her grasp 
As often as that eager grasp was made. 
The Phantom parts — but parts to re-unite, 
And reassume his place before her sight. ^^ 

"Protesilaus, lo ! thy guide is gone ! 
Confirm, I pray, the vision with thy voice: 
This is our palace, — yonder is thy throne ; 
Speak, and the floor thou tread'st on will 

•rejoice. 
Not to appal me have the gods bestowed ^5 
This precious boon ; and blest a sad abode." 

"Great Jove, Laodamia ! doth not leave 
His gifts imperfect : — Specter though I be, 
I am not sent to scare thee or deceive ; 
But in reward of thy fidelity. '^ 

And something also did my worth obtain ; 
For fearless virtue bringeth boundless gain. 

"Thou knowest, the Delphic oracle foretold 
That the first Greek who touched the Trojan 

strand 
Should die; but me the threat could not 

withhold : 45 

A generous cause a victim did demand ; 
And forth I leapt upon the sandy plain; 
A self -devoted chief — by Hector slain." 

"Supreme of Heroes — bravest, noblest, best! 
Thy matchless courage I bewail no more, ^ 
Which then, when tens of thousands were 

deprest 
By doubt, propelled thee to the fatal shore ; 
Thou found'st — and I forgive thee — here 

thou art — 
A nobler counselor than my poor heart. 



392 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



"But thou, though capable of sternest deed, ^5 
Wert kind as resolute, and good as brave ; 
And he, whose power restores thee, hath 

decreed 
Thou shouldst elude the malice of the grave : 
Redundant are thy locks, thy lips as fair 
As when their breath enriched Thessalian 



air. 



60 



"No Specter greets me, — no vain Shadow 

this; 
Come, blooming Hero, place thee by my 

side ! 
Give, on this well-known couch, one nuptial 

kiss 
To me, this day, a second time thy bride!" 
Jove frowned in heaven: the conscious 

Pareee threw ^^ 

Upon those roseate lips a Stygian hue. 

"This visage tells thee that my doom is past : 
Nor should the change be mourned, even if 

the joys 
Of sense were able to return as fast 
And surely as they vanish. Earth destroys ^o 
Those raptures duly — Erebus disdains : 
Cahn pleasures there abide — majestic pains. 

"Be taught, faithful Consort, to control 
Rebellious passion : for the Gods approve 
The depth, and not the tumult, of the soul ; '^ 
A fervent, not ungovernable, love. 
Thy transports moderate ; and meekly mourn 
When I depart, for brief is my sojourn — " 

"Ah wherefore ? — Did not Hercules by force 
Wrest from the guardian Monster of the 

tomb 80 

Alcestis, a reanimated corse. 
Given back to dwell on earth in vernal 

bloom ? 
Medea's spells dispersed the weight of years, 
And -35son stood a youth 'mid youthful 

peers. 

"The Gods to us are merciful — and they ^^ 
Yet further may relent : for mightier far 
Than strength of nerve and sinew, or the 

sway 
Of magic potent over sun and star, 
Is love, though oft to agony distrest. 
And though his favorite seat be feeble 

woman's breast. ^o 

"But if thou goest, I follow—" "Peace !" 

he said, — 
She looked upon him and was calmed and 

cheered ; 



The ghastly color from his lips had fled ; 

In his deportment, shape, and mien, ap- 
peared 

Elysian beauty, melancholy grace, ^5 

Brought from a pensive though a happy 
place. 

He spake of love, such love as Spirits feel 
In worlds whose course is equable and pure ; 
No fears to beat, away — no strife to heal — 
The past unsighed for, and the future sure ; 
Spake of heroic arts in graver mood 1^1 
Revived, with finer harmony pursued ; 

Of all that is most beauteous — imaged there 
In happier beauty; more pellucid streams. 
An ampler ether, a diviner air, 105 

And fields invested with purpureal gleams; 
Climes which the sun, who sheds the bright- 
est day 
Earth knows, is all unworthy to survey. 

Yet there the Soul shall enter which hath 

earned 
That privilege by virtue. — "111," said he, 
"The end of man's existence I discerned. 
Who from ignoble games and revelry 112 
Could draw, when we had parted, vain 

delight. 
While tears were thy best pastime, day and 

night ; 

"And while my youthful peers before my 
eyes us 

(Each hero following his peculiar bent) 
Prepared themselves for glorious enterprise 
By martial sports, — or, seated in the tent, 
Chieftains and kings in council were de- 
tained ; 
What time the fleet at Aulis lay enchained. 

"The wished-for wind was given: — I then 
revolved 121 

The oracle, upon the silent sea; 
And, if no worthier led the way, resolved 
That, of a thousand vessels, rnine should be 
The foremost prow in pressing to the 
strand, — 125 

Mine the first blood that tinged the Trojan 
sand. 

"Yet bitter, oft-times bitter, was the p&ng 
When of thy^ loss I thought, beloved Wife ! 
On thee too fondly did my memory hang. 
And on the joys we shared in mortal life, — 
The paths which we had trod — these foun- 
tains, flowers ; 131 



THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



393 



My new-planned cities, and unfinished tow- 
ers. 

"But should suspense permit the Foe to cry, 
'Behold they tremble ! — haughty their array, 
Yet of their number no one dares to die"?' 
In soul I swept the indignity away : l^^ 

Old frailties then recurred: — but lofty 

thought. 
In act embodied, my deliverance wrought. 

"And Thou, though strong in love, art all 

too weak 
In reason, in self-government too slow; i*o 
I counsel thee by fortitude to seek 
Our blest re-union in the shades below. 
The invisible world with thee hath sym- 
pathized ; 
Be thy affections raised and solemnized. 

"Learn, by a mortal yearning, to ascend — 
Seeking a higher object. Love was given, 
Encouraged, sanctioned, chiefly for that 

end; "7 

For this the passion to excess was driven — 
That self might be annulled : her bondage 

prove 
The fetters of a dream opposed to love." — 

Aloud she shrieked! for Hermes reap- 
pears ! 151 

Round the dear Shade she would have clung 
— 'tis vain: 

The hours are past — too brief had they been 
years ; 

And him no mortal effort can detain: 

Swift, toward the realms that know not 
earthly day, 155 

He through the portal takes his silent way, 
.And on the palace-floor a lifeless corse she 
lay. 

Thus, all in vain exhorted and reproved, 
She perished ; and, as for a wilful crime, 
By the just gods whom no weak pity 

moved, 160 

Was doomed to wear out her appointed time, 
Apart from happy ghosts, that gather 

flowers 
Of blissful quiet 'mid unfading bowers. 

— Yet tears to human suffering are due; 
And mortal hopes defeated and o'erthrown 
Are mourned by man, and not by man 
alone, 1^6 

As fondly he believes. — Upon the side 
Of Hellespont (such faith was entertained) 



A knot of spiry trees for ages grew 

From out the tomb of him for whom she 

died ; 170 

And ever, when such stature they had gained 
That Ilium's walls were subject to their 

view. 
The trees' tall summits withered at the sight ; 
A constant interchange of growth and 

blight! 

Character of the Happy Warrior 

Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he 
That every man in arms should wish to be? 
It is the generous Spirit, who, when brought 
Among the tasks of real life, hath wrought 
Upon the plan that pleased his boyish 
thought : 5 

Whose high endeavors are an inward light 
That makes the path before him always 

bright : 
Who, with a natural instinct to discern 
What knowledge can perform, is diligent 

to learn; 
Abides by this resolve, and stops not there, l*^ 
But makes his moral being his prime care; 
Who doomed tc go in company with Pain, 
And Fear, and Bloodshed,- miserable train! 
Turns his necessity to glorious gain; 
In face of these doth exercise a power 15 
Which is our human nature's highest dower ; 
Controls them and subdues, transmutes, be- 
reaves. 
Of their bad influence, and their good re- 
ceives ; 
By objects, which might force the soul to 

abate 
Her feeling, rendered more compassionate; 
Is placable — because occasions rise ^i 

So often that demand such sacrifice; 
More skillful in self-knowledge, even more 

pure, 
As tempted more ; more able to endure. 
As more exposed to suffering and distress; 25 
Thence, also, more alive to tenderness. 
'T is he whose law is reason ; who depends 
Upon that law as on the best of friends ; 
Whence, in a state where men are tempted 

still 
To evil for a guard against worse ill, ^^ 

And what in quality or act is best 
Doth seldom on a right foundation rest, 
He labors good on good to fix, and owes 
To virtue every triumph that he knows; 
Who, if he rise to station of command, ^5 
Rises by open means; and there will stand 
On honorable terms, or else retire, 
And in himself possess his own desire; 



394 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



Who comprehends his trust, and to the 

same 
Keeps faithful with a singleness of aim ; 4u 
And therefore does not stoop, nor lie in 

wait 
For wealth, or honors, or for worldly state ; 
Whom they must follow; on whose head 

must fall. 
Like showers of manna, if they come at 

all: 
Whose powers shed round him in the com- 
mon strife, ^ 
Or mild concerns of ordinary life, 
A constant influence, a peculiar grace; 
But who, if he be called upon to face 
Some awful moment to which Heaven has 

joined 
Great issues, good or bad for human kind, 50 
Is happy as a Lover; and attired 
With sudden brightness, like a Man in- 
spired ; 
And, through the heat of conflict keeps the 

law 
In calmness made, and sees what he fore- 
saw; 
Or if an unexpected call succeed, ^^ 

Come when it will, is equal to the need : 
He who, though thus endued as with a sense 
And faculty for storm and turbulence. 
Is yet a Soul whose master-bias leans 
To homef elt pleasures and to gentle scenes ; ^o 
Sweet images ! which, wheresoe'er he be, 
Are at his heart ; and such fidelity 
It is his darling passion to approve; 
More brave for this, that he hath much to 

love : — 
'T is, finally, the Man, who, lifted high 65 
Conspicuous object in a Nation's eye. 
Or left unthought-of in obscurity, — • 
Who, with a toward or untoward lot. 
Prosperous or adverse, to his wish or not, 
Plays, in the many games of life, that one '^^ 
Where what he most doth value must be 

won: 
Whom neither shape of danger can dismay, 
Nor thought of tender happiness betray ; 
Who, not content that former worth stand 

fast, 
Looks forward, persevering to the last, '^^ 
From well to better, daily self-surpast : 
Who, whether praise of him must walk the 

earth 
For ever, and to noble deeds give birth. 
Or he must fall, to sleep without his fame. 
And leave a dead unprofitable name, ^^ 

Finds comfort in himself and in his cause; 
And, while the mortal mist is gathering, 
draws 



His breath in confidence of Heaven's ap- 
plause : 
This is the happy Warrior ; this is He 
That every Man in arms should wish to 
be. 85 



On Universal Education 

[From The Excursion, Book IX, 1815] 

"0 for the coming of that glorious time 
When, prizing knowledge as her noblest 

wealth 
And best protection, this imperial Realm, 
While she exacts allegiance, shall admit 
An obligation, on her part, to teach 5 

Them who are born to serve her and obey; 
Binding herself by statute to secure 
For all the children whom her soil maintains 
The rudiments of letters, and inform 
The mind with moral and religious truth, ^o 
Both understood and practiced, — so that 

none, 
However destitute, be left to droop 
By timely culture unsustained ; or run 
Into a wild disorder; or be forced 
To drudge through a weary life without the 

help -15 

Of intellectual implements and tools; 
A savage horde among the civilized, 
A servile band among the lordly free ! 
This sacred right, the lisping babe proclaims 
To be inherent in him, by Heaven's will, 20 
For the protection of his innocence; 
And the rude boy — who, having overpast 
The sinless age, by conscience is enrolled, 
Yet mutinously knits his angry brow. 
And lifts his wilful hand on mischief bent, ^6 
Or turns the godlike faculty of speech 
To impious use — by process indirect 
Declares his due, while he makes known his 

need. 
— This sacred right is fruitlessly announced, 
This universal plea in vain addressed, 30 
To eyes and ears of parents who themselves 
Did, in the time of their necessity. 
Urge it in vain ; and, therefore, like a prayer 
That from the humblest flooir ascends to 

heaven, ^^ 

It mounts to reach the State's parental ear ; 
Who, if indeed she own a mother's heart. 
And be not most unfeelingly devoid 
Of gratitude to Providence, will grant 
The unquestionable good — which, England, 

safe 
From interference of external force, ^ 
May grant at leisure ; without risk incurred 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



395 



That what in wisdom for herself she doth, 
Others shall e'er be able to undo. 

"Look ! and behold, from Calpe's sunburnt 
cliffs 
To the flat margin of the Baltic sea, ^^ 

Long-reverenced titles cast away as weeds; 
Laws overturned; and territory split. 
Like fields of ice rent by the polar wind, 
And forced to join in less obnoxious shapes ^9 
Which, ere they gain consistence, by a gust 
Of the same breath are shattered and de- 
stroyed. 
Meantime the sovereignty of these fair Isles 
Remains entire and indivisible : 
And, if that ignorance were removed, which 

breeds 
Within the compass of their several shores ^^ 
Dark discontent, or loud commotion, each 
Might still preserve the beautiful repose 
Of heavenly bodies shining in their spheres. 
— The discipline of slavery is unknown 
Among us, — hence the more do we require 60 
The discipline of virtue ; order else 
Cannot subsist, nor confidence, nor peace. 
Thus, duties rising out of good possest 
And prudent caution needful to avert 
Impending evil, equally require ^^ 

That the whole people should be taught and 

trained. 
So shall licentiousness and black resolve 
Be rooted out, and virtuous habits take 
Their place ; and genuine piety descend. 
Like an inheritance, from age to age. '^o 

"With such foundations laid, avaunt the 

fear 
Of numbers crowded on their native soil, 
To the prevention of all healthful growth 
Through mutual injury! Rather in the 

law 
Of increase and the mandate from above "^^ 
Rejoice ! — and ye have special cause for joy. 
— For, as the element of air affords 
An easy passage to the industrious bees 
Fraught with their burthens ; and a way as 

smooth 
For those ordained to take their sounding 

flight 80 

From the thronged hive, and settle where 

they list 
In fresh abodes — their labor to renew ; 
So the wide waters, open to the power, 
The will, the instincts, and appointed needs 
Of Britain, do invite her to cast off ^^ 

Her swarms, and in succession send them 

forth ; 



Bound to establish new communities 
On every shore whose aspect favors hope 
Or bold adventure; promising to skill 
And perseverance their deserved reward.' ^o 

"Yes," he continued, kindling as he spake, 
"Change wide, and deep, and silently per- 
formed. 
This Land shall witness ; and as days roll on, 
Earth's universal frame shall feel the effect ; 
Even till the smallest habitable rock. 
Beaten by lonely billows, hear the songs ^6 
Of humanized society; and bloom 
With civil arts, that shall breathe forth their 

fragrance, 
A grateful tribute to all-ruling Heaven. 
From culture, unexclusively bestowed i*"^ 
On Albion's noble Race in freedom born, 
Expect these mighty issues : from the pains 
And faithful care of unambitious schools 
Instructing simple childhood's ready ear : 
Thence look for these magnificent results! 
— Vast the circumference of hope — and ye 
Are at its center, British Lawgiyers; 1^7 
Ah! sleep not there in shame! Shall Wis- 
dom's voice 
From out the bosom of these troubled times 
Repeat the dictates of her calmer mind, ^^^ 
And shall the venerable halls ye fill 
Refuse to echo the sublime decree ? 
Trust not to partial care a general good ; 
Transfer not to futurity a work 
Of urgent need. — Your Country must com- 
plete 115 
Her glorious destiny. Begin even now. 
Now, when oppression, like the Egyptian 

plagnie 
Of darkness, stretched o'er guilty Europe, 

makes ' 
The brightness more conspicuous that in- 
vests 
The happy Island where ye think and act; 
Now, when destruction is a prime pursuit. 
Show to the wretched nations for what end 
The powers of civil polity were given." 

Propagakda and Poetry 

samuel taylor coleridge 

[From Biographia Literaria, 1817] 

Toward the close of the first year from the 
time, that in an inauspicious hour I left the 
friendly cloisters and the happy grove of 
quiet, ever honored Jesus College, Cam- 
bridge, I was persuaded by sundry philan- 
thropists and Anti-polemists to set on foot a 



396 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



periodical work, entitled The Watchman, 
that according to the general motto of the 
work, all might know the truth, and that the 
truth might make us free! In order to 
exempt it from the stamp-tax, and likewise 
to contribute as little as possible to the sup- 
posed guilt of a war against freedom, it was 
to be published on every eighth day, thirty- 
two pages, large octavo, closely printed, and 
price only four-pence. Accordingly with a 
flaming prospectus,- — "Knowledgeis power," 
"To cry the state of the political atmos- 
phere," — and so forth, I set off on a tour to 
the North from Bristol to Sheffield, for the 
purpose of procuring customers, preaching 
by the way in most of the great towns, as a 
hireless volunteer, in a blue coat and white 
waistcoat, that not a rag of the woman of 
Babylon might be seen on me. For I was at 
that time and long after, though a Trini- 
tarian (that is ad normam Platonis) in 
philosophy, yet a zealous Unitarian in re- 
ligion ; more accurately, I was a Psilan- 
thropist, one of those who believe our Lord 
to have been the real son of Joseph, and who 
lay the main stress on the resurrection rather 
than on the crucifixion. ! never can I re- 
member those days with either shame or re- 
gret. For I was most sincere, most disinter- 
ested. My opinions were indeed in many 
and most important points erroneous; but 
my heart was single. Wealth, rank, life it- 
self, then seemed cheap to me, compared with 
the interests of what I believed to be the 
truth, and the will of my Maker. I cannot 
even accuse myself of having been actuated 
by vanity; for in the expansion of my en- 
thusiasm I did not think of myself at all. 

My campaign commenced at Birmingham ; 
and my first attack was on a rigid Calvinist, 
a tallow-chandler by trade. He was a tall, 
dingy man, in whom length was so predomi- 
nant over breadth, that he might almost have 
been borrowed for a foundry poker. that 
face! a face /^ar' 'iix^aaivl I have it before 
me at this moment. The lank, black, twine- 
like hair, pingui-nitescent, cut in a straight 
line along the black stubble of his thin gun- 
powder eye-brows, that looked like a scorched 
aftermath from a last week's shaving. His 
coat collar behind in perfect unison, both of 
color and luster, with the coarse yet glib 
cordage, which I suppose he called his hair, 
and which with a bend inward at the nape 
of the neck, — the only approach to flexure j 
in his whole figure, — slunk in behind his 
waistcoat ; while the countenance lank, dark, 



very hard, and with strong perpendicular 
furrows, gave me a dim notion of some one 
looking at me through a used gridiron, all 
soot, grease, and iron! But he was one of 
the thoroughbred, a true lover of liberty, 
and, as I was informed, had proved to the 
satisfaction of many, that Mr. Pitt was one 
of the horns of the second beast in The Reve- 
lations, that spake as a dragon. A person 
to whom one of my letters of recommenda- 
tion had been addressed was my introducer. 
It was a new event in my life, my first stroke 
in the new business I had undertaken of an 
author, yea, and of an author trading on his 
own account. My companion after some im- 
perfect sentences and a multitude of hum's 
and ha's abandoned the cause of his client; 
and I commenced an harangue of half an 
hour to Phileleutheros, the tallow-chandler, 
varying my notes, through the whole gamut 
of eloquence, from the ratiocinative to the 
declamatory, and in the latter from the 
pathetic to the indignant. I argued, I de- 
scribed, I promised, I prophesied; and be- 
ginning with the captivity of nations I ended 
with the near approach of the millennium, 
finishing the whole with some of my own 
verses describing that glorious state out of 
the Religious Musings : 

Such delights 
As float to earth, permitted visitants ! 
When in some hour of solemn jubilee 
The massive gates of Paradise are thrown 
Wide open, and forth come in fragments 

wild 
Sweet echoes of unearthly melodies, 
And odors snatched from beds of amaranth, 
And they, that from the crystal river of life 
Spring up on freshened wing, ambrosial 

gales ! 

My taper man of lights listened with 
perseverant and praiseworthy patience, 
though, as I was afterwards told, on com- 
plaining of certain gales that were not alto- 
gether ambrosial, it was a melting day with 
him. "And what. Sir," he said, after a short 
pause, "might the cost be?" "Only four- 
pence," — (0 ! how I felt the anti-climax, the 
abysmal bathos of that four-pence!) — "Only 
four-pence. Sir, each number, to be pub- 
lished on every eighth day." — "That comes 
to a deal of money at the end of a year. 
And how much, did you say, there was to be 
for the money?" — "Thirty-two pages. Sir, 
large octavo, closely printed." — "Thirty and 
two pages? Bless me! why except what I 



THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



397 



does in a family way on the Sabbath, that's 
more than I ever reads, Sir! all the year 
round. I am as great a one, as any man in 
Brummagem, Sir ! for liberty and truth and 
all them sort of things, but as to this, — no 
offense, I hope, sir, — I must beg to be ex- 
cused." 

So ended my first canvass : from causes 
that I shall presently mention, I made but 
one other application in person. This took 
place at Manchester to a stately and opulent 
wholesale dealer in cottons. He took my let- 
ter of introduction, and, having perused it, 
measured me from head to foot and again 
from foot to head, and then asked if I had 
any bill or invoice of the thing. I presented 
my prospectus to him. He rapidly skimmed 
and hummed over the first side, and still 
more rapidly the second and concluding 
page; crushed it within his fingers and the 
palm of his hand; then most deliberately 
and significantly rubbed and smoothed one 
part against the other ; and lastly putting it 
into his pocket turned his back on me with 
an ^'overrun with these articles !" and so 
without another syllable retired into his 
counting-house. And, I can truly say, to my 
unspeakable amusement. 

This, I have said, was my second and last 
attempt. On returning baffled from the first, 
in which I had vainly essayed to repeat the 
miracle of Orpheus with the Brummagem 
patriot, I dined with the tradesman who had 
introduced me to him. After dinner he im- 
portuned me to smoke a pipe with him, and 
two or three other illuminati of the same 
rank. I objected, both because I was en- 
gaged to spend the evening with a minister 
and his friends, and because I had never 
smoked except once or twice in my lifetime, 
and then it was herb tobacco mixed with 
Oronooko. On the assurance, -however, that 
the tobacco was equally mild, and seeing too 
that it was of a yellow color; — not for- 
getting the lamentable difficulty I have al- 
ways experienced, in saying, "No," and in 
abstaining from what the people about me 
were doing, — I took half a pipe, filling the 
lower half of the bowl with salt. I was soon, 
however, compelled to resign it, in conse- 
quence of a giddiness and distressful feel- 
ing in my eyes, which, as I had drunk but 
a single glass of ale, must, I knew, have been 
the effect of the tobacco. Soon after, deem- 
ing myself recovered, I sallied forth to my 
engagement ; but the walk and the fresh air 
brought on all the symptoms again, and, I 



had scarcely entered the minister's drawing- 
room, and opened a small packet of letters, 
which he had received from Bristol for me, 
ere I sank back on the sofa in a sort of 
swoon rather than sleep. Fortunately I had 
found just time enough to inform him of the 
confused state of my feelings, and of the 
occasion. For here and thus I lay, my face 
like a wall that is white-washing, deathly 
pale and with the cold drops of perspiration 
running down it from my forehead, while 
one after another there dropjDed in the dif- 
ferent gentlemen, who had been invited to 
meet, and spend the evening with me, to the 
number of froui fifteen to twenty. As the 
poison of tobacco acts but for a short time, 
I at length awoke from insensibility, and 
looked around on the party, my eyes dazzled 
by the candles which had been lighted in 
the interim. By way of relieving my em- 
barrassment one of the gentlemen began the 
conversation, with "Have you seen a paper 
today, Mr. Coleridge?" "Sir," I replied, 
rubbing my eyes, "I am far from convinced 
that a Christian is permitted to read either 
newspapers or any other works of merely 
political and temporary interest." This re- 
mark, so ludicrously inapposite to, or rather, 
incongruous with, the purpose for which I 
was known to have visited Birmingham, and 
to assist me in which they were all then met, 
produced an involuntary and general burst 
of laughter; and seldom indeed have I 
passed so many delightful hours as I en- 
joyed in that room from the moment of that 
laugh till an early hour the next morning. 
Never, perhaps, in so mixed and numerous a 
party have I since heard conservation sus- 
tained with such animation, enriched with 
such variety of information, and enlivened 
with such a flow of anecdote. Both then and 
afterwards they all joined in dissuading me 
from proceeding with my scheme; assiared 
me in the most friendly and yet most flat- 
tering expressions, that neither was the em- 
ployment fit for me, nor I fit for the em- 
ployment. Yet, if I determined on perse- 
vering in it, they promised to exert them- 
selves to the utmost to procure subscribers, 
and insisted that I should make no more ap- 
plications in person, but carry on the can- 
vass by proxy. The same hosi^itable recep- 
tion, the same dissuasion, and, that failing, 
the same kind exertions in my behalf, I met 
with at Manchester, Derby, Nqttingham, 
Sheffield, — indeed, at every place in which I 
took up my sojourn. I often recall with 



398 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



affectionate pleasure the many respectable 
men who interested themselves for me, a 
perfect stranger to them, not a few of whom 
I can still name among my friends. They 
will bear witness for me how opposite even 
then my principles were to those of 
Jacobinism or even of democracy, and can 
attest the strict accuracy of the statement 
which I have left on record in the tenth and 
eleventh numbers of The Friend. 

From this rememberable tour I returned 
with nearly a thousand names on the sub- 
scription list of The Watchman; yet more 
than half convinced that prudence dictated 
the abandonment of the scheme. But for 
this very reason I persevered in it ; for I was 
at that period of my life so completely hag- 
ridden by the fear of being influenced by 
selfish motives, that to know a mode of con- 
duet to be the dictate of prudence was a sort 
of presumptive proof to my feelings that 
the contrary was the dictate of duty. Ac- 
cordingly, I commenced the work, which was 
announced in London by long bills in letters 
larger than had ever been seen before, and 
which, I have been informed, for I did not 
see them myself, eclipsed the glories even of 
the lottery puffs. But alas! the publication 
of the very first number was delayed beyond 
the day announced for its appearance. In 
the second number an essay against fast 
days, with a most censurable application of 
a text from Isaiah for its motto, lost me 
near five hundred of my subscribers at one 
blow. In the two following numbers I made 
enemies of all my Jacobin and democratic 
patrons; for, disgusted by their infidehty, 
and their adoption of French morals with 
French psilosophy; and perhaps thinking 
that charity ought to begin nearest home; 
instead of abusing the government and the 
Aristocrats chiefly or entirely, as had been 
expected of me, I leveled my attacks at 
"modern patriotism," and even ventured to 
declare my belief that whatever the motives 
of ministers might have been for the sedi- 
tion, or as it was then the fashion to call 
them, the gagging bills, yet the bills them- 
selves would produce an effect to be desired 
by all the true friends of freedom, as far as 
they should contribute to deter men from 
openly declaiming on subjects, the principles 
of which they had never bottomed and from 
"pleading to the poor and ignorant, instead 
of pleading for them." At the same time I 
avowed my conviction that national educa- 
tion and a concurring spread of the Gospel 



were the indispensable condition of any true 
political melioration. Thus by the time the 
seventh number was published, I had the 
mortification — (but why should I say this, 
when in truth I cared too little for anything 
that concerned my worldly interests to be 
at all mortified about it?) — of seeing the 
preceding numbers exposed in sundry old 
iron shops for a penny apiece. At the ninth 
number I dropped the work. But from the 
London publisher I could not obtain a shill- 
ing; he was a and set me at defiance. 

From other places I procured but little, and 
after such delays as rendered that little 
worth nothing ; and I should have been 
inevitably thrown into jail by my Bristol 
printer, who refused to wait even for a 
month, for a sum between eighty and ninety 
pounds, if the money had not been paid for 
me by a man by no means affluent, a dear 
friend, who attached himself to me from my 
first arrival at Bristol, who has continued 
my friend with a fidelity unconquered by 
time or even by my own apparent neglect ; a 
friend from whom I never received an advice 
that was not wise, nor a remonstrance that 
was not gentle and affectionate. 

Conscientiously an opponent of the first 
revolutionary war, yet with my eyes thor- 
oughly opened to the true character and im- 
potence of the favorers of revolutionary 
principles in England, principles which I 
held in abhorrence, — (for it was part of my 
political creed, that whoever ceased to act 
as an individual by making himself a mem- 
ber of any society not sanctioned by his 
Government, forfeited the rights of a citi- 
zen) — a vehement Anti-Ministerialist, but 
after the invasion of Switzerland, a more 
vehement Anti-Gallican, and still more in- 
tensely an Anti-Jacobin, I retired to a cot- 
tage at Stowey, and provided for my scanty 
maintenance by writing verses for a London 
morning paper. I saw plainly that litera- 
ture was not a profession by which I could 
expect to live ; for I could not disguise from 
myself that, whatever my talents might or 
might not be in other respects, yet they were 
not of the sort that could enable me to be- 
come a popular writer, and that whatever 
my opinions might be in themselves, they 
were almost equidistant from all the three 
prominent parties, the Pittites, the Fox- 
ites, and the Democrats. Of the unsaleable 
nature of my writings I had an amusing 
memento one morning from our own servant 
girl. For happening to rise at an earlier 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



399 



hour than usual, I observed her putting an 
extravagant quantity of paper into the grate 
in order to light the fire, and mildly checked 
her for her wastefulness; "La, Sir!" (re- 
plied poor Nanny) "why, it is only Watch- 
men." 

I now devoted myself to poetry and to 
the study of ethics and psychology; and so 
profound was my admiration at this time of 
Hartley's Essay on Man, that I gave his 
name to my first-born. In addition to the 
gentleman, my neighbor, whose garden 
joined on to my little orchard, and the cul- 
tivation of whose friendship had been my 
sole motive in choosing Stowey for my resi- 
dence, I was so fortunate as to acquire, 
shortly after my settlement there, an in- 
valuable blessing in the society and neigh- 
borhood of one to whom I could look up 
with equal reverence, whether I regarded 
him as a poet, a philosopher, or a man. His 
conversation extended to almost all subjects, 
except physics and polities; with the latter 
he never troubled himself. Yet neither my 
retirement nor my utter abstraction from all 
the disputes of the day could secure me in 
those jealous times from suspicion and 
obloquy, which did not stop at me, but ex- 
tended to my excellent friend, whose perfect 
innocence was even adduced as a proof of 
his guilt. One of the many busy sycophants 
of that day, — (I here use the word sycophant 
in its original sense, as a wretch who flatters 
the prevailing party by informing against 
his neighbors, under pretence that they are 
exporters of prohibited figs or fancies, — for 
the moral application of the term it matters 
not which) — one of these sycophantic law- 
mongrels, discoursing on the politics of the 
neighborhood, uttered the following deep re- 
mark : "As to Coleridge, there is not so much 
harm in him, for he is a whirl-brain that 
talks whatever comes uppermost; but that 

! he is the dark traitor. You never hear 

HIM say a syllable on the subject." . . . 

The dark guesses of some zealous Quid- 
nunc met with so congenial a soil in the 
grave alarm of a titled Dogberry of our 
neighborhood, that a spy was actually sent 
down from the government pour surveillance 
of myself and friend. There must have been 
not only abundance, but variety of those 
"honorable men" at the disposal of Min- 
isters ; for this proved a very honest fellow. 
After three weeks' truly Indian perseverance 
in tracking us, (for we were commonly to- 
gether,) during all which time seldom were 



we out of doors, but he contrived to be with- 
in hearing, — and all the while utterly un- 
suspected; how indeed could such a suspicion 
enter our fancies? — he not only rejected Sir 
Dogberry's request that he would try yet a 
little longer, but declared to him his belief 
that both my friend and myself were as good 
subjects, for aught he could discover to the 
contrary, as any in His Majesty's dominions. 
He had repeatedly hid himself, he said, for 
hours together behind a bank at the seaside, 
(our favorite seat,) and overheard our con- 
versation. At first he fancied, that we were 
aware of our danger ; for he often heard me 
talk of one Spy Nozy, which he was inclined 
to interpret of himself, and of a remarkable 
feature belonging to him ; but he was speed- 
ily convinced that it was the name of a man 
who had made a book and lived long ago. 
Our talk ran most upon books, and we were 
perpetually desiring each other to look at 
this, and to listen to that; but he could not 
catch a word about politics. Once he had 
joined me on the road; (this occurred as I 
was returning home alone from my friend's 
house, which was about three miles from my 
own cottage,) and, passing himself off as a 
traveler, he had entered into conversation 
with me, and talked of purpose in a demo- 
crat way in order to draw me out. The 
result, it appears, not only convinced him 
that I was no friend of Jacobinism ; but, (he 
added,) I had "plainly made it out to be 
such a silly as well as wicked thing, that he 
felt ashamed though he had only put it on." 
I distinctly remembered the occurrence, and 
had mentioned it immediately on my return, 
repeating what the traveler with his Bar- 
dolph nose had said, with my own answer; 
and so little did I suspect the true object of 
my "tempter ere accuser," that I expressed 
with no small pleasure my hope and belief 
that the conversation had been of some ser- 
vice to the poor misled malcontent. This 
incident therefore prevented all doubt as to 
the truth of the report, which through a 
friendly medium came to me from the master 
of the village inn, who had been ordered to 
entertain the Government gentleman in his 
best manner, but above all to be silent con- 
cerning such a person being in his house. At 
length he received Sir Dogberry's commands 
to accompany his guest at the final inter- 
view; and, after the absolving suffrage of 
the gentleman honored with the confidence of 
Ministers, answered, as follows, to the fol- 
lowing queries : D. Well, landlord ! and what 



400 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



do you know of the person in question 1 L. 

I see him often pass by with maister 

my landlord, {that is, the owner of the 
house,) and sometimes with the newcomers 
at Holf ord ; but I never said a word to him 
or he to me. D. But do you not know, that 
he has distributed papers and handbills of a 
seditious nature among the common people? 
L. No, your Honor ! I never heard of such a 
thing. D. Have you not seen this Mr. Cole- 
ridge, or heard of his haranguing and talk- 
ing to knots and clusters of the inhabitants f 
— What are you grinning at, sir? L. Beg 
your Honor's pardon ! but I was only think- 
ing, how they'd have stared at him. If what 
I have heard be true, your Honor! they 
would not have understood a word he said. 
When our Vicar was here, Dr. L., the master 
of the great school and Canon of Windsor, 
there was a great dinner party at maister 

's ; and one of the farmers, that was 

there, told us that he and the Doctor talked 
real Hebrew Greek at each other for an hour 
together after dinner. D. Answer the ques- 
tion, sir ! does he ever harangue the people ? 
L. I hope your Honor ain't angry with me. 
I can say no more than I know. I never 
saw him talking with anyone but my land- 
lord, and our curate, and the strange gentle- 
man. D. Has he not been seen wandering 
on the hills towards the Channel, and along 
the shore, with books and papers in his hand, 
taking charts and maps of the country ? L. 
Why, as to that, your Honor ! I own, I have 
heard; I am sure, I would not wish to say 
ill of anybody ; but it is certain, that I have 
heard — D. Speak out, man ! don't be afraid, 
you are doing your duty to your King and 
Government. What have you heard? L. 
Why, folks do say, your Honor ! as how that 
he is a Poet, and that he is going to put 
Quantoek and all about here in print; and 
as they be so much together, I suppose that 
the strange gentleman has some consarn in 
the business.— So ended this formidable in- 
quisition, the latter part of which alone re- 
quires explanation, and at the same time 
entitles the anecdote to a place in my literary 
life. I had considered it as a defect in the 
admirable poem of The Task, that the sub- 
ject which gives the title to the work was 
not, and indeed could not be, carried on 
beyond the three or four first pages, and 
that, throughout the poem, the connections 
are frequently awkward, and the transitions 
abrupt and arbitrary. I sought for a sub- 
ject that should give equal room and free- 



dom for description, incident, and impas- 
sioned reflections on men, nature, and so- 
ciety, yet supply in itself a natural connec- 
tion to the parts, and unity to the whole. 
Such a subject I conceived myself to have 
found in a stream, traced from its source in 
the hills among the yellow -red moss and coni- 
cal glass-shaped tufts of bent, to the first 
break or fall, where its drops become audi- 
ble, and it begins to form a channel ; thence 
to the peat and turf barn, itself built of the 
same dark squares as it sheltered; to the 
sheepfold; to the first cultivated plot of 
ground; to the lonely cottage and its bleak 
garden won from the heath; to the hamlet, 
the villages, the market-town, the manufac- 
tories, and the seaport. My walks therefore 
were almost daily on top of Quantoek, and 
among its sloping coombes. With my pen- 
cil and memorandum-book in my hand, I was 
making studies, as the artists call them, and 
often molding my thoughts into verse, with 
the objects and imagery immediately before 
my senses. Many circumstances, evil and 
good, intervened to prevent the completion 
of the poem, which was to have been entitled 
The Brook. Had I finished the work, it was 
my purpose in the heat of the moment to 
have dedicated it to our then committee of 
public safety as containing the charts and 
maps, with which I was to have supplied the 
French Government in aid of their plans of 
invasion. And these too for a tract of coast 
that, from Clevedon to Minehead, scarcely 
permits the approach of a fishing-boat ! 

During the first year that Mr. Wordsworth 
and I were neighbors, our conversations 
turned frequently on the two cardinal points 
of poetry, the power of exciting the sym- 
pathy of the reader by a faithful adherence 
to the truth of nature, and the power of 
giving the interest of novelty by the modify- 
ing colors of imagination. The sudden 
charm which accidents of light and shade, 
which moonlight or sunset diffused over a 
known and familiar landscape, appeared to 
represent the practicability of combining 
both. These are the poetry of nature. The 
thought suggested itself (to which of us I 
do not recollect) that a series of poems might 
be composed of two sorts. In the one, the 
incidents and agents were to be, in part at 
least, supernatural ; and the excellence aimed 
at was to consist in the interesting of the 
affections by the dramatic truth of such 
emotions as would naturally accompany 
such situations, supposing them real. And 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



401 



real in this sense they have been to every 
human being who, from whatever source of 
delusion, has at any time believed himself 
under supernatural agency. For the second 
class, subjects were to be chosen from 
ordinary life; the characters and incidents 
were to be such as will be found in every 
village and its vicinity where there is a 
meditative and feeling mind to seek after 
them, or to notice them when they present 
themselves. 

In this idea originated the plan of the 
Lyrical Ballads; in which it was agreed that 
my endeavors should be directed to persons 
and characters supernatural, or at least 
romantic; yet so as to transfer from our 
inward nature a human interest and a 
semblance of truth sufficient to procure for 
these shadows of imagination that willing 
suspension of disbelief for the moment 
which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Words- 
worth, on the other hand, was to propose to 
himself as his object, to give the charm of 
novelty to things of every day, and to excite 
a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by 
awakening the mind's attention from the 
lethargy of custom, and directing it to the 
loveliness and the wonders of the world 
before us ; an inexhaustible treasure, but for 
which, in consequence of the film of 
familiarity and selfish solicitude, we have 
eyes, yet see not, ears that hear not, and 
hearts that neither feel nor understand. 

With this view I wrote the Ancient 
Mariner, and was preparing, among other 
poems, the Dark Ladie, and the Christabel, 
in which I should have more nearly realized 
my ideal than I had done in my first at- 
tempt. But Mr. Wordsworth's industry had 
proved so much more successful, and the 
number of his poems so much greater, that 
my compositions, instead of forming a bal- 
ance, appeared rather an interpolation of 
heterogeneous matter. Mr. Wordsworth 
added two or three jDoems written in his own 
character, in the impassioned, lofty, and sus- 
tained diction which is characteristic of his 
genius. 

Christabel: Part the First 

samuel taylor coleridge 

[From Christabel, 1797] 

'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock. 
And the owls have awaken'd the crowing 

cock; 
Tu-whit !— Tu-whoo ! 



And hark, again ! the crowing cock. 

How drowsily it ci^ew. 

Sir Leoline, the Baron rich, 

Hath a toothless mastiff bitch; 

From her kennel beneath the rock 

She maketh answer to the clock. 

Four for the quarters, and twelve for the 

hour ; 
Ever and aye, by shine and shower, 
Sixteen short howls, not over loud ; 
Some say, she sees my lady's shroud. 

Is the night chilly and dark? 
The night is chilly, but not dark. 
The thin gray cloud is spread on high, 
It covers but not hides the sky. 
The moon is behind, and at the full ; 
And yet she looks both small and dull. 
The night is chill, the cloud is gray : 
'Tis a month before the month of May, 
And the Spring comes slowly up this way. 

The lovely lady, Christabel, 

Whom her father loves so well. 

What makes her in the wood so late, 

A furlong from the castle gatef 

She had dreams all yesternight 

Of her own betrothed knight; 

And she in the midnight wood will pray 

For the weal of her lover that's far away. 

She stole along, she nothing spoke. 
The sighs she heaved were soft and low. 
And naught was green v;pon the oak. 
But moss and rarest misletoe : 
She kneels beneath the huge oak tree, 
And in silence prayeth she. 

The lady sprang up suddenly. 

The lovely lady, Christabel ! 

It moan'd as near, as near can be, 

But what it is she cannot tell. — 

On the other side it seems to be, 

Of the huge, broad-breasted, old oak tree. 

The night is. chill; the forest bare; 
Is it the wind that moaneth bleak? 
There is not wind enough in the air 
To move away the ringlet curl 
From the lovely lady's cheek — 
There is not wind enough to twirl 
The one red leaf, the last of its clan. 
That dances as often as dance it can. 
Hanging so light, and hanging so high. 
On the topmost twig that looks up at the 
sky. 



402 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Hush, beating heart of Christabel ! 
Jesu, Maria, shield her well! 
She folded her arms beneath her cloak. 
And stole to the other side of the oak. 
What sees she there *? 

There she sees a damsel bright, 
Drest in a silken robe of white. 
That shadowy in the moonlight shone: 
The neck that made that white robe wan, 
Her stately neck, and arms were bare ; 
Her blue-vein'd feet unsandal'd were; 
And wildly glitter'd here and there 
The gems entangled in her hair. 
I guess, 'twas frightful there to see 
A lady so richly clad as she — 
Beautiful exceedingly ! 

"Mary mother, save me now !" 

Said Christabel, "and who art thou?" 

The lady strange made answer meet. 
And her voice was faint and sweet : — 
"Have pity on my sore distress, 
I scarce can speak for weariness : 
Stretch forth thy hand, and have no fear !" 
Said Christabel, "How earnest thou here*?" 
And the lady, whose voice was faint and 

sweet 
Did thus pursue her answer meet: — 
"My sire is of a noble line. 
And my name is Geraldine : 
Five warriors seized me yestermorn, 
Me, even me, a maid forlorn: 
They choked my cries with force and fright, 
And tied me on a palfrey white. 
The palfrey was as fleet as wind, 
And they rode furiously behind. 
They spurr'd amain, their steeds were white : 
And once we cross'd the shade of night. 
As sure as Heaven shall rescue me, 
I have no thought what men they be; 
Nor do I know how long it is 
(For I have lain entranced, I wis) 
Since one, the tallest of the five, 
Took me from the palfrey's back, 
A weary woman, scarce alive. 
Some mutter'd words his comrades spoke : 
He placed me underneath this oak; 
He swore they would return with haste; 
Whither they went I cannot tell — 
I thought I heard, some minutes past. 
Sounds as of a castle bell. 
Stretch forth thy hand," thus ended she, 
"And help a wretched maid to flee." 

Then Christabel stretch'd forth her hand, 
And comforted fair Geraldine : 



"0 well, bright dame, may you command 

The service of Sir Leoline; 

And gladly our stout chivalry 

Will he send forth, and friends withal, 

To guide and guard you safe and free 

Home to your noble father's hall." 

She rose: and forth with steps they pass'd 

That strove to be, and were not, fast. 

Her gracious stars the lady blest, 

And thus spake on sweet Christabel: 

"All our household are at rest, 

The hall as silent as the cell; 

Sir Leoline is weak in health, 

And may not well awaken'd be, 

But we will move as if in stealth ; 

And I beseech your courtesy. 

This night, to share your couch with me." 

They cross'd the moat, and Christabel 

Took the key that fitted well; 

A little door she open'd straight. 

All in the middle of the gate ; 

The gate that was iron'd within and with- 
out, 

Where an army in battle array had march'd 
out. 

The lady sank, belike through pain. 

And Christabel with might and main 

Lifted her up, a weary weight. 

Over the threshold of the gate: 

Then the lady rose again. 

And moved, as she were not in pain. 

So, free from danger, free from fear, 
They cross'd the court: right glad they 

were. 
And Christabel devoutly cried 
To the lady by her side : 
"Praise we the Virgin all divine, 
Who hath rescued thee from thy distress!" 
"Alas, alas!" said Geraldine, 
"I cannot speak for weariness." 
So, free from danger, free from fear, 
They cross'd the court : right glad they were. 

Outside her kennel the mastitf old 
Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold. 
The mastiff old did not awake, 
Yet she an angry moan did make. 
And what can ail the mastiff bitch? 
Never till now she utter'd yell 
Beneath the eye of Christabel. 
Perhaps it is the owlet's scritch : 
For what can ail the mastiff bitch ? 

They pass'd the hall, that echoes still. 
Pass as lightly as you will. 



THE RISE or MODERN DEMOCRACY 



403 



The brands were flat, the brands were 

dying, 
Amid their own white ashes lying; 
But when the lady pass'd, there eame 
A tongue of light, a fit of flame; 
And Christabel saw the lady's eye. 
And nothing else saw she thereby, 
Save the boss of the shield of Sir Leoline 

tall. 
Which hung in a murky old niche in the 

wall. 

"0 softly tread," said Christabel, 
"My father seldom sleepeth well." 
Sweet Christabel her feet doth bare. 
And, jealous of the listening air, 
They steal their way from stair to stair. 
Now in glimmer, and now in gloom, 
And now they pass the Baron's room. 
As still as death, with stifled breath ! 
And now have reach'd her chamber door ; 
And now doth Geraldine press down 
The rushes of the chamber floor. 

The moon shines dim in the open air. 

And not a moonbeam enters here. 

But they without its light can see 

The chamber carved so curiously. 

Carved with figures strange and sweet, 

All made out of the carver's brain. 

For a lady's chamber meet : 

The lamp with twofold silver chain 

Is fasten'd to -an angel's feet. 

The silver lamp burns dead and dim; 

But Christabel the lamp will trim. 

She trimm'd the lamp, and made it bright, 

And left it swinging to and fro. 

While Geraldine, in wretched plight. 

Sank down upon the floor below. 

"0 weary lady, Geraldine, 

I pray you, drink this cordial wine ! 

It is a wine of virtuous powers ; 

My mother made it of wild flowers." 

"And will your mother pity me. 
Who am a maiden most forlorn*?" 
Christabel answer'd— "Woe is me! 
She died the hour that I was born. 
I have heard the gray-hair'd friar tell, 
How on her death-bed she did say. 
That she should hear the castle-bell 
Strike twelve upon my wedding-day. 
mother dear ! that thou wert here !" 
"I would," said Geraldine, "she were!" 

But soon, with alter'd voice, said she — 
"Off, wandering mother! Peak and pine! 



I have power to bid thee flee." 
Alas! what ails poor Geraldine? 
Why stares she with unsettled eye? 
Can she the bodiless dead espy ? 
And why with hollow voice cries she, 
"Off, woman, off! this hour is mine — 
Though thou her guardian spirit be. 
Off, woman, off ! 'tis given to me." 

Then Christabel knelt by the lady's side, 
And raised to heaven her eyes so blue — 
"Alas !" said she, "this ghastly ride — 
Dear lady! it hath wilder'd you!" 
The lady wiped her moist cold brow, 
And faintly said, " 'Tis over now !" 

Again the wild-flower wine she drank: 
Her fair large eyes 'gan glitter bright, 
And from the floor, whereon she sank, 
The lofty lady stood upright : 
She was most beautiful to see. 
Like a lady of a far countree. 

And thus the lofty lady spake — 
"All they, who live in the upper sky. 
Do love you, holy Christabel! 
And you love them, and for their sake, 
ALnd for the good which me befell, 
Even I in my degree will try. 
Fair maiden, to requite you well. 
But now unrobe yourself; for I 
Must pray, ere yet in bed I lie." 

Quoth Christabel, "So let it be!" 

And as the lady bade, did she. 

Her gentle limbs did she undress, 

And lay down in her loveliness. 

But through her brain, of weal and woe. 

So many thoughts moved to and fro. 

That vain it were her lids to close; 

So half-way from the bed she rose, 

And on her elbow did recline. 

To look at the lady Geraldine. 

Beneath the lamp the lady bow'd. 
And slowly roU'd her eyes around; 
Then drawing in her breath aloud. 
Like one that shudder'd, she unbound 
The cincture from beneath her breast : 
Her silken robe, and inner vest, 
Dropt to her feet, and full in view. 
Behold ! her bosom and half her side — 
A sight to dream of, not to tell ! 
shield her ! shield sweet Christabel ! 

Yet Geraldine nor speaks nor stirs : 
Ah! what a stricken look was hers! 



404 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Deep from within she seems half-way 
To lift some weight with sick assay, 
And eyes the maid and seeks delay; 
Then suddenly, as one defied, 
Collects herself in scorn and pride. 
And lay down by the maiden's side ! — 
And in her arms the maid she took, 

Ah wel-a-day ! 
And with low voice and doleful look 
These words did say : 

"In the touch of this bosom there work- 

eth a spell, 
Which is lord of thy utterance, Christabel ! 
Thou knowest tonight, and wilt know to- 
morrow, 
This mark of my shame, this seal of my 

sorrow ; 
But faintly thou warrest, 

For this is alone in 
Thy power to declare, 

That in the dim forest 
Thou heard'st a low moaning, 
And found'st a bright lady, surpassingly 

fair : 
And didst bring her home with thee, in love 

and in charity. 
To shield her and shelter her from the 

damp air." 

Dejection.: An Ode 

samuel taylor coleridge 

[1802] 

1 

Well ! If the Bard v/as weather-wise, who 

made 

The grand old ballad of Sir Patrick Spens, 

This night, so tranquil now, will not go 

hence 

Unroused by winds, that ply a busier trade 

Than those which mold yon cloud in lazy 

flakes. 
Or the dull sobbing draft, that moans and 
rakes 
Upon the strings of this ^olian lute, 
Which better far were mute; 
For lo ! the new-moon winter bright ! 
And overspread with phantom light, 
(With swimming phantom light o'er- 

spread 
But rimmed and circled by a silver thread) 
I see the old moon in her lap, foretelling 

The coming-on of rain and squally blast. 
And oh ! that even now the gust were swell- 
ing, 



And the slant night-shower driving loud 
and fast ! 
Those sounds which oft have raised me, 
v/hilst they awed, 
And sent my soul abroad. 
Might now perhaps their wonted impulse 

give. 
Might startle this dull pain, and make it 
live ! 



A grief without a pang, void, dark, and 
drear, 
A stifled, drowsy, unimpassioned grief, 
Which finds no natural outlet, no relief. 
In word, or sigh, or tear — 

Lady! in this wan and heartless mood. 
To other thoughts by yonder throstle wooed, 

All this long eve, so balmy and serene, 

Have I been gazing on the western sky, 
And its peculiar tint of yellow green. 

And still I gaze — and with how blank an 
eye ! 

And those thin clouds above, in flakes and 
bars. 

That give away their motion to the stars ; 

Those stars, that glide behind them or be- 
tween, 

Now sparkling, now bedimmed, but always 
seen: 

Yon crescent moon, as fixed as if it grew 

In its own cloudless, starless lake of blue; 

1 see them all so excellently fair, 

I see, not feel, how beautiful they are ! 



My genial spirits fail ; 

And what can these avail 
To lift the smothering weight from off my 

breast? 
It were a vain endeavor, 
Though I should gaze for ever 
On that green light that lingers in the west : 
I may not hope from outward forms to 

win 
The passion and the life, whose fountains 

are within. 



Lady, we receive but what we give, 
And in our life alone does Nature live: 
Ours is her wedding garment, ours her 

shroud ! 
And would we aught behold, of higher 

worth. 
Than that inanimate cold world allowed 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



405 



To the poor loveless ever-anxious crowd, 
Ah! from the soul itself must issue forth 

A light, a glory, a fair luminous cloud 
Enveloping the earth — 

And from the soul itself must there be sent 
A sweet and potent voice, of its own 
birth. 

Of all sweet sounds the life and element! 



pure of heart ! thou need'st not ask of me 
What this strong music in the soul may be ! 
What, and wherein it doth exist. 
This light, this glory, this fair luminous 

mist. 
This beautiful and beauty-making power. 
Joy, virtuous Lady! Joy that ne'er was 

given, 
Save to the pure, and in their purest hour. 
Life, and Life's effluence, cloud at once and 

shower, 
Joy, Lady! is the spirit and the power, 
Which wedding Nature to us gives in dower, 

A new earth and new heaven. 
Undreamt of by the sensual and the proud — 
Joy is the sweet voice, Joy the luminous 

cloud — 
We in ourselves rejoice! 
And thence flows all that charms or ear 

or sight, 
All melodies the echoes of that voice. 
All colors a suffusion from that light. 

6 

There was a time when, though my path 
was rough. 
This joy within me dallied with distress. 
And all misfortunes were but as the stuff 
Whence Fancy made me dreams of happi- 
ness : 
For hope grew round me, like the twining 

vine. 
And fruits, and foliage, not my own, seemed 

mine. 
But now afflictions bow me down to earth : 
Nor care I that they rob me of my mirth; 

But oh ! each visitation 
Suspends what Nature gave me at my birth. 

My shaping spirit of Imagination. 
For not to think of what I needs must feel, 

But to be still and patient, all I can; 
And haply by abstruse research to steal 
From my own nature all the natural 

man — 
This was my sole resource, my only plan : 



Till that which suits a part infects the 

whole, 
And now is almost grown the habit of my 

soul. 



Hence, viper thoughts, that coil around my 
mind 
Reality's dark dream! 
I turn from you, and listen to the wind, 
Which long has raved unnoticed. 
What a scream 
Of agony by torture lengthened out 
That lute sent forth! Thou wind, that 
ravest without. 
Bare crag, or mountain-tarn, or blasted 
tree, 
Or pine-grove whither woodman never 

clomb. 
Or lonely house, long held the witches' 
home, 
Methinks were fitter instruments for thee, 
Mad Lutanist! who in this month of show- 
ers. 
Of dark-brown gardens, and of peeping 

flowers, 
Makest Devils' Yule, with worse than win- 
try song. 
The blossoms, buds, and timorous leaves 
among. 
Thou Actor, perfect in all tragic sounds! 
Thou mighty Poet, even to frenzy bold ! 
What tell'st thou now about? 
'Tis of the rushing of an host in rout. 
With groans of trampled men, with smart- 
ing wounds — 
At once they groan with pain, and shudder 

with the cold! 
But hush! there is a pause of deepest si- 
lence ! 
And all that noise, as of a rushing crowd. 
With groans and tremulous shudderings — 
all is over — 
It tells another tale, with sounds less deep 

and loud ! 
A tale of less affright. 
And tempered with delight. 
As Otway's self had framed the tender 
lay; 
'Tis of a little child 
Upon a lonesome wild, 
Not far from home, but she hath lost her 

way: 
And now moans low in bitter grief and 

fear. 
And now screams loud, and hopes to make 
her mother hear. 



406 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



8 



'Tis midnight, but small thoughts have I 
of sleep : 

Full seldom may my friend such vigils keep ! 

Visit her, gentle Sleep ! with wings of heal- 
ing, 
And may this storm be but a mountain 
birth. 

May all the stars hang bright above her 
dwelling, 



Silent as though they watched the sleep- 
ing Earth! 

With light heart may she rise, 

Gay fancy, cheerful eyes, 

Joy lift her spirit, joy attune her voice; 
To her may all things live, from pole to 

pole, 
Their life the eddying of her living soul! 

simple spirit, guided from above, 
Dear Lady! friend devoutest of my choice. 
Thus mayest thou ever, evermore rejoice. 



2. THE FREE PERSONALITY 



Prometheus 
lord byron 

I 

Titan ! to whose immortal eyes 

The sufferings of mortality, 

Seen in their sad reality, 
Were not as things that gods despise; 
What was thy pity's recompense? 
A silent suffering, and intense ; 
The rock, the vulture, and the chain, 
All that the proud can feel of pain, 
The agony they do not show, 
The suffocating sense of woe, 

Which speaks but in its loneliness, 
And then is jealous lest the sky 
Should have a listener, nor will sigh 

Until its voice is echoless. 

II 

Titan ! to thee the strife was given 
Between the suffering and the will, 
Which torture where they cannot kill ; 
And the inexorable Heaven, 
And the deaf tyranny of Fate, 
The ruling principle of Hate, 
Which for its pleasure doth create 
The things it may annihilate. 
Refused thee even the boon to die : 
The wretched gift eternity 
Was thine — and thou hast borne it well. 
All that the Thunderer wrung from thee, 
Was but the menace which flung back 
On him the torments of thy rack; 
The fate thou didst so well foresee. 
But would not to appease him tell; 
And in thy Silence was his Sentence, 
And in his Soul a vain repentance. 
And evil dread so ill dissembled 
That in his hand the lightnings trembled. 



III. 

Thy Godlike crime was to be kind. 

To render with thy precepts less 
The sum of human wretchedness. 
And strengthen man with his own mind ; 
But baffled as thou wert from high. 
Still in thy patient energy, 
In the endurance, and repulse 

Of thine impenetrable Spirit, 
Which Earth and Heaven could not con- 
vulse, 
A mighty lesson we inherit: 
Thou art a symbol and a sign 

To mortals of their fate and force ; 
Like thee, Man is in part divine, 

A troubled stream from a pure source ; 
And Man in portions can foresee 
His own funereal destiny; 
His wretchedness, and his resistance. 
And his sad unallied existence: 
To which his Spirit may oppose 
Itself — an equal to all woes. 

And a firm will, and a deep sense, 
Which even in torture can descry 

Its own concenter'd recompense, 
Triumphant where it dares defy, 
And making Death a Victory. 



Sonnet on Chillon 

lord byron 

Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind ! 

Brightest in dungeons. Liberty! thou art, 
For there thy habitation is the heart — 
The heart which love of thee alone can bind ; 
And when thy sons to fetters are con- 
signed — 
To fetters, and the damp vault's . dayless 
gloom. 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



407 



Their country conquers with their mar- 
tyrdom, 
And Freedom's fame finds wings on every 

wind. 
Chillon ! thy prison is a holy place, 

And thy sad floor an altar — for 'twas trod, 
Until his very steps have left a trace 

Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a 
sod, 
By Bonnivard ! May none those marks 
efface ! 
For they appeal from tyranny to God. 



Solitude 

lord byeon 

[From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto 

III, 1817] 

Lake Leman woos me with its crystal face, 
The mirror where the stars and mountains 

view 
The stillness of their aspect in each trace 
Its clear depth yields of their far height 

and hue; 
There is too much of man here, to look 

through 
With a fit mind the might which I be- 
hold; 
But soon in me shall Loneliness renew 
Thoughts hid, but not less cherish'd than 
of old, 
Ere mingling with the herd had penn'd me 
in their fold. 

To fly from, need not be to hate, man- 
kind; 
All are not fit with them to stir and toil, 
Nor is it discontent to keep the mind 
Deep in its fountain, lest it overboil 
In the hot throng, where we become the 

spoil 
Of our infection, till too late and long 
We may deplore and struggle with the 

coil. 
In wretched interchange of wrong for 
wrong 
'Midst a contentious world, striving where 
none are strong. 

There, in a moment, we may plunge our 

years 
In fatal penitence, and in the blight 
Of our own soul turn all our blood to 

tears. 



And color things to come with hues of 

Night : 
The race of life becomes a hopeless flight 
To those that walk in darkness; on the 

sea 
The boldest steer but where their ports 

invite. 
But there are wanderers o'er Eternity 
Whose bark drives on and on, and anchor'd 

ne'er shall be. 

Is it not better, then, to be alone, 
And love Earth only for its earthly sake'? 
By the blue rushing of the arrowy Rhone, 
Or the pure bosom of its nursing lake, 
Which feeds it as a mother who doth make 
A fair but froward infant her own care. 
Kissing its cries away as these awake; — 
Is it not better thus our lives to wear. 
Than join the crushing crowd, doom'd to 
inflict or bear ? 

I live not in myself, but I become 
Portion of that around me: and to me. 
High mountains are a feeling, but the 

hum 
Of human cities torture; I can see 
Nothing to loathe in Nature, save to be 
A link reluctant in a fleshly chain, 
Class'd among creatures, when the soul 

can flee. 
And with the sky, the peak, the heaving 

plain 
Of ocean, or the stars, mingle, and not in 

vain. 

And thus I am absorb'd, and this is life : 
I look upon the peopled desert past, 
As on a place of agony and strife. 
Where, for some sin, to Sorrow I was 

cast, 
To act and suffer, but remount at last 
With a fresh pinion; which I feel to 

spring. 
Though young, yet waxing vigorous as the 

blast 
Which it would cope with, on delighted 

wing, 
Spurning the clay-cold bonds which round 

our being cling. 

And when, at length, the mind shall be 

all free 
From what it hates in this degraded form. 
Reft of its carnal life, save what shall be 
Existent ^bfippier in the fly and worm, — 
When elements to elements conform, 



408 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



And dust is as it should be, shall I not 
Feel all I see, less dazzling, but more 

warm ? 
The bodiless thought? the Spirit of each 

spot? 
Of which, even now, I share at times the 

immortal lot? 

Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, 
a part 

Of me and of my soul, as I of them ? 

Is not the love of these deep in my heart 

With a pure passion? should I not con- 
temn 

All objects, if compared with these? and 
stem 

A tide of suffering rather than forego 

Such feelings for the hard and worldly 
phlegm 

Of those whose eyes are only turn'd be- 
low, 
Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts 
which dare not glow ? 

It is the hush of night, and all between 
Thy margin and the mountains, dusk, yet 

clear, 
Mellow'd and mingling, yet distinctly 

seen. 
Save darken'd Jura, whose capt heights 

appear 
Precipitously steep ; and drawing near. 
There breathes a living fragrance from 

the shore, 
Of flowers yet fresh with childhood; on 

the ear 
Drops the light drip of the suspended 

oar, 
Or chirps the grasshopper one good-night 

carol more ; 

He is an evening reveller, who makes 
His life an infancy, and sings his fill; 
At intervals, some bird from out the 

brakes 
Starts into voice a moment, then is still. 
There seems a floating whisper on the 

hill, 
But that is fancy, for the starlight dews 
All silently their tears of love instil, 
Weeping themselves away, till they in- 
fuse 
Deep into Nature's breast the spirit of her 
hues. 

Ye stars ! which are the poetry of heaven ! 
If in your bright leaves we would read 
the fate 



Of men and empires, — 'tis to be for- 
given. 
That in our aspirations to be great. 
Our destinies o'erleap their mortal state. 
And claim a kindred with you ; for ye are 
A beauty and a mystery, and create 
In us such love and reverence from afar. 
That fortune, fame, power, life, have named 
themselves a star. 

All heaven and earth are still — though not 
in sleep. 

But breathless, as we grow when feeling 
most; 

And silent, as we stand in thoughts too 
deep : — 

All heaven and eai'th are still: from the 
high host 

Of stars, to the lull'd lake and mountain- 
coast. 

All is concenter'd in a life intense, 

Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is 
lost, 

But hath a part of being, and a sense 
Of that which is of all Creator and Defense. 

Then stirs the feeling infinite, so felt 
In solitude, where we are least alone ; 
A ti'uth which through our being then 

doth melt. 
And purifies from self: it is a tone. 
The soul and source of music, which makes 

known 
Eternal harmony, and sheds a charm, 
Like to the fabled Cytherea's zone. 
Binding all things with beauty; — 'twould 

disarm 
The specter Death, had he substantial power 

to harm. 

Not vainly did the early Persian make 
His altar the high places and the peak 
Of earth-o'ergazing mountains, and thus 

take 
A fit and unwall'd temple, there to seek 
The Spirit, in whose honor shrines are 

weak, 
Uprear'd of human hands. Come, and 

compare 
Columns and idol dwellings, Goth or 

Greek, 
With Nature's realms of worship, earth 

and air. 
Nor fix on fond abodes to circumscribe thy 



prayer 



Thy sky is changed ! — and such a change ! 
O night. 



THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



409 



And storm, and darkness, ye are won- 
drous strong, 
Yet lovely in your strength, as is the 

light 
Of a dark eye in woman! Far along, 
From peak to peak, the rattling crags 

among 
Leaps the live thunder! Not from one 

lone cloud. 
But every mountain now hath found a 

tongue. 
And Jura answers, through her misty 

shroud. 
Back to the Joyous Alps, who call to her 

aloud ! 



The Onwaed March of Freedom 

lord byron 

[From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage^ Canto 

IV, 1818] 

Can tyrants but by tyrants eonquer'd be, 
And Freedom find no champion and no 

child 
Such as Columbia saw arise when she 
Sprung forth a Pallas, arm'd and un- 

defiled? 
Or must such minds be nourish'd in the 

wild, 
Deep in the unpruned forest, 'midst the 

roar 
Of cataracts, where nursing Nature smiled 
On infant Washington? Has Earth no 

more 
Such seeds within her breast, or Europe no 

such shore? 

But France got drunk with blood to vomit 

crime, 
And fatal have her Saturnalia been 
To Freedom's cause, in every age and 

clime ; 
Because the deadly days which we have 

seen, 
And vile Ambition, that built up between 
Man and his hopes an adamantine wall, 
And the base pageant last upon the scene, 
Are grown the pretext for the eternal 

thrall 
Which nips life's tree, and dooms man's 

worst — his second fall. 

Yet, Freedom! yet thy banner, torn, but 

flying. 
Screams like the thunder-storm against 

the wind; 



Thy trumpet voice, though broken now 
and dying. 

The loudest still the tempest leaves be- 
hind ; 

Thy tree hath lost its blossoms, and the 
rind, 

Chopp'd by the axe, looks rough and lit- 
tle worth, 

But the sap lasts, — and still the seed we 
find 

Sown deep, even in the bosom of the 
North ; 
So shall a better spring less bitter fruit 
bring forth. 

The Ocean 

lord byron 

[From Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, Canto 

IV, 1818] 

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods, 
There is a rapture on the lonely shore. 
There is society, where none intrudes. 
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar : 
I love not Man the less, but Nature more. 
From these our interviews, in which I 

steal 
From all I may be, or have been before, 
To mingle with the Universe, and feel 
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all 

conceal. 

Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean — 

roll! 
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in 

vain; 
Man marks the earth with ruin — his con- 
trol 
Stops with the shore; — ^upon the watery 

plain 
The wrecks are all thy deed, nor dotli 

remain 
A shadow of man's ravage, save his own, 
When, for a moment, like a drop of rain. 
He sinks into thy depths with bubbling 

groan. 
Without a grave, unknell'd, uncoffin'd, and 

unknown. 

His steps are not upon thy paths, — thy 
fields 

Are not a spoil for him, — thou dost arise 

And shake him from thee: the vile 
strength he wields 

For earth's destruction thou dost all de- 
spise, 



410 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



Spurning him from tliy bosom to the 
skies, 

And send'st him, shivering in thy play- 
ful spray 

And howling, to his gods, where haply 
lies 

His petty hope in some near port or 
bay. 
And dashest him again to earth : — there let 
him lay. 

The armaments which thunderstrike the 

walls 
Of rock-built cities, bidding nations 

quake. 
And monarchs tremble in their capitals, 
The oak leviathans, whose huge ribs make 
Their clay creator the vain title take 
Of lord of thee, and arbiter of war : 
These are thy toys, and, as the snowy 

flake, 
They melt into thy yeast of waves, which 

mar 
Alike the Armada's pride, or spoils of 

Trafalgar. 

Thy shores are empires, changed in all 

save thee — 
Assyria, Greece, Rome, Carthage, what 

are they? 
Thy waters wasted them while they were 

free, 
And many a tyrant since; their shores 

obey 
The stranger, slave, or savage; their de- 
cay 
Has dried up realms to deserts: — not so 

thou. 
Unchangeable save to thy wild waves' 

play- 
Time writes no wrinkle on thy azure 

brow — 
Such as creation's dawn beheld, thou rollest 

now. 

Thou glorious mirror, where the Al- 
mighty's form 
Glasses it-self in tempests : in all time. 
Calm or convulsed — in breeze, or gale, or 

storm. 
Icing the pole, or in the torrid clime 
Dark-heaving ; — ^boundless, endless, and 

sublime — 
The image of Eternity — the throne 
Of the Invisible ; even from out thy slime 
The monsters of the deep are made ; each 
zone 



Obeys thee; thou goest forth, dread, fath 
omless, alone. 

And I have loved thee, Ocean ! and my joj 
Of youthful sports was on thy breast to be 
Borne, like thy bubbles, onward: from a 

boy 
I wanton'd with thy breakers — ^they to me 
Were a delight ; and if the freshening sea 
Made them a terror — 'twas a pleasing 

fear. 
For I was as it were a child of thee, 
And trusted to thy billows far and near, 
And laid my hand upon thy mane — as I do 

here. 

The Renegade Poets ^ 

lord byron 

[From Don Juan, 1819] 

Bob Southey ! You're a poet — Poet laure- 
ate. 
And representative of all the race. 
Although 'tis true that you turned out a 
Tory at 
Last, — yours has lately been a common 
case, — 
And now, my Epic Renegade! what are ye 
at? 
With all the Lakers, in and out of place? 
A nest of tuneful persons, to my eye 
Like "four and twenty Blackbirds in a pye ! 

"Which pye being open'd they began to 
sing," 
(This old song and new simile holds 
good,) 
"A dainty dish to set before the King," 
Or Regent, who admires such kind of 
food ; — 
And Coleridge, tpo, has lately taken wing, 
But like a hawk encumber'd with his 
hood, — 
Explaining metaphysics to the nation — 
I wish he would explain his Explanation. 

You, Bob ! are rather insolent, you know, 
At being disappointed in your wish 

To supersede all warblers here below, 
And be the only Blackbird in the dish ; 

* This scornful dedication was prompted by 
Byroa's hatred of what he regarded as the apos- 
tasy of the Lake poets from the cause of freedom, 
also by his critical disapproval of their poetry, and 
finally by personal animosity toward Southey. 
For the judgment on Wordsworth, which was 
shared by Shelley and other radical poets, com- 
pare Browning's The Lost Leader. 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



411 



And then you overstrain yourself, or so, 

And tumble downward like the flying fish 
Gasping on deck, because you soar too high, 

Bob, 
And fall for lack of moisture quite a-dry. 

Bob! 

And Wordsworth, in a rather long "Ex- 
cursion," 
(I think the quarto holds five hundred 
pages,) 
Has given a sample from the vasty version 

Of his new system to perplex the sages; 
'Tis poetry — at least by his assertion. 
And may appear so when the dog-star 
rages — 
And he who understands it would be able 
To add a story to the Tower of Babel. 

You — Gentlemen ! by dint of long seclusion 
From better company, have kept your 
own 
At Keswick, and, through still continued 
fusion 
Of one another's minds, at last have 
grown 
To deem as a most logical conclusion, 

That Poesy hath wreaths for you alone : 
There is a narrowness in such a notion. 
Which makes me wish you'd change your 
lakes for ocean. 

I would not imitate the petty thought. 
Nor coin my self-love to so base a vice, 
For all the glory your conversion brought, 
Since gold alone should not have been its 
price. 
You have your salary; was't for that you 
wrought ? 
And Wordsworth has his place in the 
Excise. 
You're shabby fellows — ^true — ^but poets 

still, 
And duly seated on the immortal hill. 

Your bays may hide the boldness of your 
brows — 
Perhaps some virtuous blushes ; — let them 
go— • 
To you I envy neither fruit nor boughs — 
And for the fame you would engross be- 
low, 
The field is universal, and allows 

Scope to all such as feel the inherent 
glow: 
Scott, Rogers, Campbell, Moore, and Crabbe 

will try 
'Gainst you the question with posterity. 



For me, who, wandering with pedestrian 
Muses, 
Contend not with you on the winged steed, 
I wish your fate may yield ye, when she 
chooses. 
The fame you envy, and the skill you 
need; 
And recollect a poet nothing loses 

In giving to his brethren their full meed 
Of merit, and complaint of present days 
Is not the certain patji to future praisa 

He that reserves his, laurels for posterity 
(Who does not often claim the bright 
reversion) 
Has generally no great crop to spare it, he 
Being only injured by his own assertion; 
And although here and there some glorious 
rarity 
Arise like Titan from the sea's immer- 
sion. 
The major part of such appellants go 
To — God knows where — for no one else can 
know. 

If, fallen in evil days on evil tongnies, 
Milton appeal'd to the Avenger, Time, 

If Time, the Avenger, execrates his wrongs, 
And makes the word "Miltonic" mean 
"sublime," 

He deign'd not to belie his soul in songs. 
Nor turn his very talent to a crime; 

He did not loathe the Sire to laud the Son, 

But closed the tyrant-hater he begun. 

Think'st thou, could he — the blind Old Man 
— arise 
Like Samuel from the grave, to freeze 
once more 
The blood of monarchs with his prophecies, 

Or be alive again — again all hoar 
With time and trials, and those helpless 
eyes. 
And heartless daughters — worn — and pale 
— and poor. 
Would Jie adore a sultan ? he obey 
The intellectual eunuch Castlereagh? 

Cold-blooded, smooth-faced, placid mis- 
creant ! 

Dabbling its sleek young hands in Erin's 
gore. 
And thus for wider carnage taught to pant, 

Transferr'd to gorge upon a sister shore, 
The vulgarest tool that Tyranny could want. 

With just enough of talent, and no more. 
To lengthen fetters by another fix'd, 
And offer poison long already mix'd. 



412 



THE GKEAT TRADITION 



An orator of such set trash of phrase 

Ineffably — legitimately vile, 
That even its grossest flatterers dare not 
praise, 
Nor foes — all nations — condescend to 
smile, — 
Not even a sprightly blunder's spark caa 
blaze 
From that Ixion grindstone's ceaseless 
toil. 
That turns and turns to give the world a 

notion 
Of endless torments and perpetual motion. 

A bungler even in its disgusting trade. 
And botching, patching, leaving still be- 
hind 
Something of which its masters are afraid, 
States to be curb'd, and thoughts' to be 
confined, 
Conspiracy or Congress to be made — 

Cobbling at manacles for all mankind — 
A tinkering slave-maker, who mends old 

chains. 
With God and man's abhorrence for its 
gains. 

If we may judge of matter by the mind, 

Emasculated to the marrow It 
Hath but two objects, how to serve, and 
bind. 

Deeming the chain it wears even men may 
fit, 
Eutropius of its many masters, — ^blind 

To worth as freedom, wisdom as to wit. 
Fearless — because no feeling dwells in ice, 
Its very courage stagnates to a vice. 

Where shall I turn me not to view its bonds, 

For I will never feel them; — Italy! 
Thy late reviving Roman soul desponds 
Beneath the lie this State-thing breath'd 
o'er thee — 
Thy clanking chain, and Erin's yet green 
wounds 
Have voices — tongues to cry aloud for me. 
Europe has slaves — allies — kings — armies 

still. 
And Southey lives to sing them very ill. 

Meantime — Sir Laureate — I proceed to dedi- 
cate 
In honest simple verse, this soi]g to you. 
And, if in flattering strains I do not predi- 
cate, 
'Tis that I still retain my ''buff and blue" ; 
My politics as yet are all to educate : 



Apostasy's so fashionable, too. 
To keep one creed's a task grown quite 

Herculean ; 
Is it not so, my Tory, ultra-Julian ? 

The Isles op Greece 

lord byron 

[From Don Juan, Canto III] 

The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece! 

Where burning Sappho loved and sung, 
Where grew the arts of war and peace, — 

Where Delos rose, and Phoebus sprung ! 
Eternal summer gilds them yet. 
But all, except their sun, is set. 

The Scian and the Teian muse, 
The hero's harp, the lover's lute. 

Have found the fame your shores refuse: 
Their place of birth alone is mute 

To sounds which echo further west 

Than your sires' "Islands of the Blest." 

The mountains look on Marathon — 
And Marathon looks on the sea; 

And musing there an hour alone, 

I dreamed that Greece might still be free ; 

For, standing on the Persian's grave, 

I could not deem myself a slave. 

A king sat on the rocky brow 

Which looks o'er sea-born Salamis; 

And ships, by thousands, lay below. 
And men in nations;— all were his! 

He counted them at break of day — 

And when the sun set, where were they? 

And where are they? and where art thou, 
My country? On thy voiceless shore 

The heroic lay is tuneless now — 
The heroic bosom beats no more ! 

And must thy lyre, so long divine. 

Degenerate into hands like mine? 

'T is something, in the dearth of fame, 
Though linked among a fettered race, 

To feel at least a patriot's shame. 
Even as I sing, suffuse my face ; 

For what is left the poet here? 

For Greeks a blush — for Greece a tear. 

Must we but weep o'er days more blest? 

Must we but blush? — Our fathers bled. 
Earth ! render back from out thy breast 

A remnant of our Spartan dead ! 



THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



413 



Of the three hundred grant but three, 
To make a new Thermopylae! 

What silent still? and silent all? 

Ah ! no ; — the voices of the dead 
Sound like a distant torrent's fall, 

And answer, "Let one living head, 
But one arise, — we come, we come!" 
'Tis but the living who are dumb. 

In vain — in vain : strike other chords : 
Fill high the cup with Samian wine ! 

Leave battles to the Turkish hordes, 
And shed the blood of Scio's vine! 

Hark! rising to the ignoble call — 

How answers each bold Bacchanal ! 

You have the Pjrrrhic dance as yet : 
Where is the Pyrrhic phalanx gone? 

Of two such lessons, why forget 
The nobler and the manlier one? 

You have the letters Cadmus gave — 

Think ye he meant them for a slave ? 

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! 

We will not think of themes like these ! 
It made Anacreon's song divine ; 

He served — but served Polyerates — 
A tyrant; but our masters then 
Were still, at least, our countrymen. 

The tjTant of the Chersonese 

Was freedom's best and bravest friend; 
That tyrant was Miltiades ! 

Oh ! that the present hour would lend 
Another despot of the kind! 
Such chains as his were sure to bind. 

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine I 
On Suli's rock, and Parga's shore, 
Exists the remnant of a line 

Such as the Doric mothers bore ; 
And there, perhaps, some seed is sown, 
The Heraeleidan blood might own. 

Trust not for freedom to the Franks, 
They have a king who buys and sells ; 

In native swords and native ranks. 
The only hope of courage dwells : 

But Turkish force, and Latin fraud. 

Would break your shield, however broad. 

Fill high the bowl with Samian wine ! 

Our virgins dance beneath the shade — 
I see their glorious black eyes shine ; 

But gazing on each glowing maid. 
My own the burning tear-drop laves, 
To think such breasts must suckle slaves. 



Place me on Sunium's marbled steep, 
Where nothing, save the waves and I, 

May hear our mutual murmurs sweep; 
There, swan-like, let me sing and die: 

A land of slaves shall ne'er be mine — 

Dash down yon cup of Samian wine! 



The Vision of Judgment (1822) ^ 
lord byron 



In the first year of freedom's second dawn 
Died George the Third; although no ty- 
rant, one 
Who shielded tyrants, till each sense with- 
drawn 
Left him nor mental nor external sun : 
A better farmer ne'er brush'd dew from 
lawn, 
A worse king' never left a realm undone ! 
He died — but left his subjects still behind, 
One half as mad — and t'other no less blind. 

He died! — his death made no great stir on 
earth, 
His burial made some pomp ; there was 
profusion 
Of velvet, gilding, brass, and no great 
dearth 
Of aught but tears — save those shed by 
collusion. 
For these things may be bought at their 
true worth ; 
Of elegy there was the due infusion — 
Bought also; and the torches, cloaks, and 

banners, 
Heralds, and relics of old Gothic manners, 

Form'd a sepulchral melodrame. Of all 
The fools who floek'd to swell or see the 
show. 
Who cared about the corpse? The funeral 
Made the attraction, and the black the woe. 
There throbb'd not there a thought which 
pierced the pall; 
And, when the gorgeous coffin was laid 
low. 
It seem'd the mockery of hell to fold 
The rottenness of eighty years in gold. 

^ This satire was written as an answer to the 
Poet Laureate Southey's official elegy on George 
III, A Vision of Judgment, 1821, in which is 
given an account of the assumption of the monarch 
Into Heaven. The second selection is a part of a 
debate between Satan and the Archangel Michael 
concerning George Ill's title to salvation., Wit- 
nesses are summoned, including Junius. Ai the 
close Southey appears and begins to read his poem. 



414 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



So mix his body with the dust! It might 
Return to what it must far sooner, were 
The natural compound left alone to fight 
Its way back into earth, and fire, and 
air; 
But the unnatural balsams merely blight 
What nature made him at his birth, as 
bare 
As the mere million's base unmummied 

clay- 
Yet all his spices but prolong decay. 

He's dead — and upper earth with him has 
done: 
He's buried; save the undertaker's bill, 
Or lapidary scrawl, the world is gone 

For him, unless he left a German will; 
But Where's the proctor who will ask his 
son? 
In whom his qualities are reigning still. 
Except that household virtue, most uncom- 
mon. 
Of constancy to a bad, ugly woman. 

Saint Peter sat by the celestial gate, 
And nodded o'er his keys ; when lo ! there 
came 
A wond'rous noise he had not heard of 
late — 
A rushing sound of wind, and stream, 
and flame; 
In short, a roar of things extremely great, 
Which would have made aught save a 
saint exclaim; 
But he, with first a start and then a wink, 
Said, "There's another star gone out, I 
think!" 

But ere he could return to his repose, 
A cherub flapp'd his right wing o'er his 
eyes — 
At which Saint Peter yawn'd, and rubb'd 
his nose; 
"Saint porter," said the angel, "prithee 
rise !" 
Waving a goodly wing, which glow'd, as 
glows 
An earthly peacock's tail, with heavenly 
dyes : 
To which the saint replied, "Well, what's 

the matter? 
Is Lucifer come back with all this clatter?" 

"No," quoth the cherub, "George the Third 
is dead." 
"And who is George the Third?" replied 
the apostle: 



''What George? what Third?" "The king 

of England," said 

The angel. "Well! he won't find kings 

to jostle 

Him on his way; but does he wear his head? 

Because the last we saw here had a tussle, 

And ne'er would have got into heaven's 

good graces. 
Had he not flung his head in all our faces. 

II 

"He ^ came to his scepter young ; he leaves 
it old: 
Look to the state in which he found his 
realm. 
And left it ; and his annals too behold, 

How to a minion first he gave the helm: 
How grew upon his heart a thirst for gold. 
The beggar's vice, which can but over- 
whelm 
The meanest hearts; and for the rest, but 

glance 
Thine eye along America and France. 

" 'Tis true, he was a tool from first to last, 
(I have the workmen safe), but as a 
tool 
So let him be consumed. From out the past 
Of ages, since mankind have known the 
rule 
Of monarchs — from the bloody rolls amass'd 
Of sin and slaughter — from the Cassars' 
school. 
Take the worst pupil; and produce a reign 
More drench'd with gore, more cumber'd 
with the slain. 

"He ever warr'd with freedom and the free : 
Nations as men, home subjects, foreign 
foes. 
So that they utter'd the word 'Liberty !' 
Found George ,the Third their first op- 
ponent. Whose 
History was ever stain'd as his will be 
With national and individual woes? 
I grant his household abstinence; I grant 
His neutral virtues, which most monarchs 
want ; 

"I know he was a constant consort; own 
He was a decent sire, and middling lord. 

All this is much, and most upon a throne; 
As temperance, if at Apicius' board. 

Is more than at an anchorite's supper 
shown. 

1 George III. 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



415 



I grant him all fh'e kindest can accord; 
And this was well for him, but not for 

those 
Millions who found him what oppression 

chose. 

"The New World shook him off; the Old yet 
groans 
Beneath what he and his prepared, if not 
Completed: he leaves his heirs on many 
thrones 
To all his vices, without what begot 
Compassion for him — his tame virtues; 
drones 
Who sleep, or despots who have now for- 
got 
A lesson which shall be re-taught them, 

wake 
Upon the thrones of earth; but let them 
quake !" 

Ill 

He ^ ceased, and drew forth an MS ; and no 
Persuasion on the part of devils, or 
saints, 
Or angels, now could stop the torrent; so 
He read the first three lines of the con- 
tents ; 
But at the fourth, the whole spiritual show 

Had vanish'd, with variety of scents. 
Ambrosial and sulphureous, as they sprang. 
Like lightning, off from his "melodious 
twang." 

Those grand heroics acted as a spell : 

The angels stopp'd their ears and plied 

their pinion. 

The devils ran howling, deafen'd, down to 

hell; 

The ghosts fled, gibbering, for their own 

dominion, 

1 i. e., Southey, who had given a long defense of 
his work. 



(For 'tis not yet decided where they dwell, 
And I leave every man to his own opin- 
ion;) 

Michael took refuge in his trump — but lo! 

His teeth were set on edge, he could not 
blow! 

Saint Peter, who has hitherto been known 
For an impetuous saint, upraised his 
keys, 

And at the fifth line knock'd the poet down ; 
Who fell like Phaeton, but more at ease, 

Into his lake, for there he did not drown, 
A different web being by the Destinies 

Woven for the laureat's final wreath, when- 
e'er 

Reform shall happen either here or there. 

He first sank to the bottom — like his works, 
But soon rose to the surface — like him- 
self; 
For all corrupted things are buoy'd, like 
corks. 
By their own rottenness, light as an elf. 
Or wish that flits o'er a morass: he lurks. 
It may be, still, like dull books on a shelf. 
In his own den, to scrawl some "Life," or 

"Vision," 
As Welborn says — "the devil turn'd pre- 
cisian." 

As for the rest, to come to the conclusion 

Of this true dream, the telescope is gone 
Which kept my optics free from all de- 
lusion. 
And show'd me what I in my turn have 
shown ; 
All I saw farther, in the last confusion. 
Was, that King George slipp'd into 
heaven for one. 
And when the tumult dwindled to a calm, 
I left him practicing the hundredth psalm. 



3. A VISION OF PERFECTION 



Hymn to Intellectual Beauty 

percy bysshe shelley 

The awful shadow of some unseen Power 
Floats though unseen amongst us,- — vis- 
iting 
This various world with as inconstant 
wing 
As summer winds that creep from flower to 
flower ; — 



Like moonbeams that behind some piny 
mountain shower, 
It visits with inconstant glance 
Each human heart and countenance; 

Like hues and harmonies of evening, — 
Like clouds in starlight widely 

spread, — 
Like memory of music fled, — 
Like aught that for its gTace may be 

Dear, and yet dearer for its mystery. 



416 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Spirit of Beauty^ that dost consecrate 
With thine own hues all thou dost shine 

upon 
Of human thought or form, — where art 
thou gone? 
Why dost thou pass away and leave our 

state, 
This dim vast vale of tears, vacant and 
desolate ? 
Ask why the sunlight not forever 
Weaves rainbows o'er yon mountain 
river. 
Why aught should fail and fade that once 
is shown. 
Why fear and dream and death and 

birth 
Cast on the daylight of this earth 
Such gloom, — why man has such a scope 
For love and hate, despondency and hope? 

No voice from some sublimer world hath ever 
To sage or poet these responses given — 
Therefore the names of Daemon, Ghost, 
and Heaven, 
Remain the records of their vain endeavor, 
Frail spells — whose uttered charm might not 
avail to sever, 
From all we hear and all we see, 
Doubt, chance, and mutability. 
Thy light alone — like mist o'er mountains 
driven. 
Or music by the night wind sent, 
Through strings of some still instru- 
ment, 
Or moonlight on a midnight stream. 
Gives grace and truth to life's unquiet dream. 

Love, Hope, and Self-esteem, like clouds 
depart 
And come, for some uncertain moments 

lent. 
Man were immortal, and omnipotent. 
Didst thou, unknown and awful as thou art. 
Keep with thy glorious train firm state with- 
in his heart. 
Thou messenger of sympathies. 
That wax and wane in lovers' eyes — 
Thou — that to human thought art nourish- 
ment. 
Like darkness to a dying flame ! 
Depart not as thy shadow came, 
Depart not — lest the grave should be, 
Like life and fear, a dark reality. 

While yet a boy I sought for ghosts, and 
sped 
Through many a listening chamber, cave, 
and ruin, 



And starlight wood, with fearful steps 
pursuing 
Hopes of high talk with the departed dead. 
I called on poisonous names with which our 
youth is fed, 
I was not heard — I saw them not — 
When musing deeply on the lot 
Of life, at the sweet time when winds are 
wooing 
All vital things that wake to bring 
News of birds and blossoming, — 
Sudden, thy shadow fell on me ; 
I shrieked, and clasped my hands in ecstasy ! 

I vowed that I would dedicate my powers 
To thee and thine — have I not kept the 

vow? 
With beating heart and streaming eyes, 
even now 
I call the phantoms of a thousand hours 
Each from his voiceless grave : they have in 
visioned bowers 
Of studious zeal or love's delight 
Outstretched with me the envious 
night — 
They know that never joy illumed my brow 
Unlinked with hope that thou wouldst 

free 
This world from its dark slavery, 
That thou — awful Loveliness^ 
Wouldst give whate'er these words cannot 
express. 

The day becomes more solemn and serene 
When noon is past — there is a harmony 
In autumn, and a luster in its sky. 
Which through the summer is not heard or 

seen. 
As if it could not be, as if it had not been ! 
Thus let thy power, which like the truth 
Of nature on my passive youth 
Descended, to my onward life supply 
Its calm — to one who worships thee, 
And every form containing thee. 
Whom, Spirit fair, thy spells did bind 
To fear himself, and love all human kind. 

Ode to the West Wind 
percy bysshe shelley 

I 

0, wild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's 

being. 
Thou, from whose unseen presence the leaves 

dead 
Are driven, like ghosts from an enchanter 

fleeing, 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



417 



Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red, 
Pestilence-stricken multitudes : 0, thou, 
Who chariotest to their dark wintry bed 

The winged seeds, where they lie cold and 

low. 
Each like a corpse within its grave, until 
Thine azure sister of the spring shall blow 

Her clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill 
(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in 

air) 
With living hues and odors plain and hill : 

Wild Spirit, which art moving everywhere; 
Destroyer and preserver ; hear, 0, hear ! 

II 

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's 

commotion, 
Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are 

shed. 
Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven 

and Ocean, 

Angels of rain and lightning: there are 

spread 
On the blue surface of thine airy surge, 
Like the bright hair uplifted from the head 

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim 

verge 
Of the horizon to the zenith's height, 
The locks of the approaching storm. Thou 

dirge 

Of the dying year, to which this closing night 
Will be the dome of a vast sepulcher, 
Vaulted with all thy congregated might 

Of vapors, from whose solid atmosphere 
Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst : 0, 
hear 1 

III 

Thou who didst waken from his summer 

dreams 
The blue Mediterranean, where he lay, 
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams. 

Beside a pumice isle in Baise's bay, 
And saw in sleep old palaces and towers 
Quivering within the wave's intenser day, 

All overgrown with azure moss and flowers 
So sweet, the sense faints picturing them ! 

Thou 
For whose path the Atlantic's level powers 



Cleave themselves into chasms, while far 

below 
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which 

wear 
The sapless foliage of the ocean, know 

Thy voice, and suddenly grow gray with 

fear. 
And tremble and despoil themselves: 0, 

hear! 

IV 

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear ; 
If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee ; 
A wave to pant beneath thy power, and 
share 

The impulse of thy strength, only less free 
Than thou, 0, uncontrollable ! If even 
I were as in my boyhood, and could be 

The comrade of thy wanderings over heaven, 
As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed 
Scarce seemed a vision ; I would ne'er have 
striven 

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need. 
Oh ! lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud ! 
I fall upon the thorns of life ! I bleed ! 

A heavy weight of hours has chained and 

bowed 
One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and 

proud. 



Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is : 
What if my leaves are falling like its own ! 
The tumult of thy mighty harmonies 

Will take from both a deep, autumnal tone. 
Sweet thoug'h in sadness. Be thou. Spirit 

fierce. 
My spirit ! Be thou me, impetuous one ! 

Drive my dead thoughts over the universe 
Like withered leaves to quicken a new birth ! 
And, by the incantation of this verse. 

Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearth 
Ashes and sparks, my words among man- 
kind! 
Be through my lips to unawakened earth 

The trumpet of a prophecy ! 0, Wind, 
If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind? 



418 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Englakd in 1819 
percy btsshe shelley 

An old, mad, blind, despised, and dying 

king,i— 
Princes,^ the dregs of their dull race, who 

flow 
Through public scorn, — mud from a muddy 

spring, — 
Rulers ^ who neither see, nor feel, nor know, 
But leech-like to their fainting country cling. 
Till they drop, blind in blood, without a 

blow, — 
A people starved and stabbed in the un- 

tilled field,— 
An army, which liberticide and prey 
Makes as a two-edged sword to all who wield 
Golden and sangniine laws which tempt and 

slay; 
Religion Christless, Godless — a book sealed ; 
A Senate,* — Time's worst statute unre- 
pealed, — 
Are graves, from which a glorious Phantom 

may 
Burst, to illumine our tempestuous day. 

The Power of Man 

percy bysshe shelley 

[From Prometheus Unbound, 1819] 

Man, oh, not men ! a chain of linked 

thought. 
Of love and might to be divided not. 
Compelling the elements with adamantine 
stress ; 
As the sun rules, even with a tyrant's gaze. 
The unquiet republic of the maze 
Of planets, struggling fierce towards heav- 
en's free wilderness — 

Man, one harmonious soul of many a soul. 
Whose nature is its own divine control, 
Where all things flow to all, as rivers to the 
sea; 
Familiar acts are beautiful through love ; 
Labor, and joain, and grief, in life's green 
grove 
Sport like tame beasts, none knew how gen- 
tle they could be ! 

His Avill, with all mean passions, bad 
delights, 

^ George III. 

=» The Prince of Wales. 

* The Ministry, principally Castlereagh. 

* The House of Lords. 



And selfish cares, its trembling satellites, 
A spirit ill to guide, but mighty to obey. 
Is as a tempest-winged ship, whose helm 
Love rules, through waves which dare not 
overwhelm. 
Forcing life's wildest shores to own its sov- 
ereign sway. 

All things confess his strength. Through 

the cold mass 
Of marble and of color his dreams pass; 
Bright threads whence mothers weave the 
robes their children wear ; 
Language is a perpetual Orphic song, 
Which rules with Daedal hai-mony a throng 
Of thoughts and forms, which else senseless 
and shapeless were. 

The lightning is his slave ; heaven's utmost 

deep 
Gives up her stars, and like a flock of 

sheep 
They pass before his eye, are numbered, and 

roll on ! 
The tempest is his steed, he strides the air ; 
And the abyss shouts from her depth laid 

bare, 
Heaven, hast thou secrets ? Man unveils me ; 

I have none. 



A Vision of the Future ^ 

[From Prometheus Unbound] 

Prometheus. We feel what thou hast 

heard and seen ; yet speak. 
Spirit of the Hour. Soon as the sound 
had ceased whose thunder filled 
The abysses of the sky and the wide earth, 
There was a change : the impalpable thin air 
And the all-circling sunlight were trans- 
formed. 
As if the sense of love dissolved in them 
Had folded itself round the sphered world. 
My visicto then grew clear, and I could see 
Into the mysteries of the universe : 
Dizzy as with delight I floated down ; 
Winnowing' the lightsome air with languid 

plumes, 
My coursers sought their birthplace in the 

sun, 
Where they henceforth will live exempt from 

toil 
Pasturing flowers of vegetable fire; 
And where my moonlike car will stand within 

1 This passage is a poetic rendering of Godwin's 
Political Justice. 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



419 



A temple, gazed upon by Phidian forms 
Of thee, and Asia, and the Earth, and me, 
And you, fair nymphs, looking the love we 

feel, — 
In memory of the tidings it has borne, — 
Beneath a dome fretted with graven flowers. 
Poised on twelve columns of resplendent 

stone, 
And open to the bright and liquid sky. 
Yoked to it by an amphisbenie snake 
The likeness of those winged steeds will mock 
The flight from which they find repose. Alas, 
Whither has wandered now my partial 

tongue 
When all remains untold which ye would 

hear? 
As I have said I floated to the earth : 
It was, as it is still, the pain of bliss 
To move, to breathe, to be; I wandering 

went 
Among the haunts and dwellings of mankind. 
And first was disappointed not to see 
Such mighty change as I had felt within 
Expressed in outward things; but soon I 

looked, 
And behold, thrones were kingless, and men 

walked 
One with the other even as spirits do — 
None fawned, none trampled ; hate, disdain, 

or fear, 
Self-love or self -contempt, on human brows. 
No more inscribed, as o'er the gate of hell, 
''All hope abandon ye who enter here"; 
None frowned, none trembled, none with 

eager fear 
Gazed on another's eye of cold command, 
Until the subject of the tyrant's will 
Became, worse fate, the abject of his own. 
Which spurred him, like an outspent horse, 

to death. 
None wrought his lips in truth-entangling 

lines 
Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to 

speak ; 
None, with firm sneer, trod out in his own 

heart 
The sparks of love and hope till there re- 
mained 
Those bitter ashes, a soul self -consumed. 
And the wretch crept a vampire among men. 
Infecting all with his own hideous ill; 
None talked that common, false, cold, hollow 

talk 
Which makes the heart deny the yes it 

breathes. 
Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy 
With such a self -mistrust as has no name. 



And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind 
As the free heaven which rains fresh light 

and dew 
On the wide earth, passed; gentle, radiant 

forms. 
From custom's evil taint exempt and pure; 
Speaking the wisdom once they could not 

think, 
Looking emotions once they feared to feel, 
And changed to all which once they dared 

not be. 
Yet being now, made earth like heaven ; nor 

pride. 
Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame. 
The bitterest of those drops of treasured 

gall, 
Spoilt the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love. 

Thrones, altars, judgment-seats, and prisons, 

wherein. 
And beside which, by wretched men were 

borne 
Scepters, tiaras, swords, and chains, and 

tomes 
Of reasoned wrong, glozed on by ignoi-ance, 
Were like those monstrous and barbaric 

shapes. 
The ghosts of a no-more-remembered fame, 
Which, from their unworn obelisks, look 

forth 
In triumph o'er the palaces and tombs 
Of those who were their conquerors : molder- 

ing round 
Those imaged to the pride of kings aJid 

priests, 
A dark yet mighty faith, a power as wide 
As is the world it wasted, and are now 
But an astonishment ; even so the tools 
And emblems of its last captivity. 
Amid the dwellings of the peopled earth, 
Stand, not o'erthrown, but unregarded now. 
And those foul shapes, abhorred by god and 

man, 
Which, under many a name and many a 

form. 
Strange, savage, ghastly, dark, and execra- 
ble. 
Were Jupiter, the tyrant of the world ; 
And which the nations, panic-stricken, served 
With blood, and hearts broken by long hope, 

and love 
Dragged to his altars soiled and garlandless. 
And slain among men's unreclaiming tears. 
Flattering the thing they feared, which fear 

was hate. 
Frown, moldering fast, o'er their abandoned 

shrines : 



420 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



The painted veil, by those who were, called 

life, 
Which mimicked, as with colors idly spread, 
All men believed and hoped, is torn aside ; 
The loathsome mask has fallen, the man re- 
mains 
Seepterless, free, uneircumscribed, but man 
Equal, unelassed, tribeless, and nationless, 
Exempt from awe, worship, degree, the king 
Over himself ; just, gentle, wise : but man 
Passionless ; no, yet free from guilt or pain, 
Which were, for his will made or suffered 

them ; 
Nor yet exempt, tho' ruling them like slaves. 
From chance, and death, and mutability, 
The clogs of that which else might oversoar 
The loftiest star of unascended heaven. 
Pinnacled dim in the intense inane. 



The Day! 

percy bysshk shelley 

[From Prometheus Unbound] 

This is the day, which down the void abysm 
At the Earth-born's spell yawns for Heav- 
en's despotism, 
And Conquest is dragged captive through 
the deep : 
Love, from its awful throne of patient power 
In the wise heart, from the last giddy hour 
Of dead endurance, from the slippery, 
steep, 
And narrow verge of crag-like agony, springs 
And folds over the world its healing wings. 

Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endur- 
ance, 
These are the seals of that most firm assur- 
ance 
Which bars the pit over Destruction's 
strength ; 
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity, 
Mother of many acts and hours, should free 
The serpent that would clasp her with his 
length ; 
These are the spells by which to reassume 
An empire o'er the disentangled doom. 

To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite ; 
To forgive wrongs darker than death or 
night; 
To defy Power, which seems omnipotent ; 
To love, and bear ; to hope till Hope creates 
From its own wreck the thing it contem- 
plates ; 



Neither to change, nor falter, nor repent; 
This, like thy glory. Titan, is to be 
Good, great, and joyous, beautiful and free; 
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire, and Victory. 

The World's Great Age Begiks Anew^ 
percy bysshe shelley 

The world's great age begins anew, 

The golden years return. 
The earth doth like a snake renew 

Her winter weeds outworn : 
Heaven smiles, and faiths and empires 

gleam. 
Like wrecks of a dissolving dream. 

A brighter Hellas rears its mountains 

From waves serener far ; 
A new Peneus rolls his fountains 

Against the morning star. 
Where fairer Tempes bloom, there sleep 
Young Cyclads on a sunnier deep. 

A loftier Argo cleaves the main, 

Fraught with a later prize ; 
Another Orpheus sings again, 

And loves, and weeps, and dies. 
A new Ulysses leaves once more 
Calypso for his native shore. 

Oh, write no more the tale of Troy, 
If earth Death's scroll must be! 

Nor mix with Laian rage the joy 
Which dawns upon the free : 

Although a subtler Sphinx renew 

Riddles of death Thebes never knew. 

Another Athens shall arise. 

And to remoter time 
Bequeath, like sunset to the skies. 

The splendor of its prime ; 
And leave, if nought so bright may live, 
All earth can take or Heaven can give. 

Saturn and Love their long repose 
Shall burst, more bright and good 

Than all who fell, than One who rose, 
Than many unsubdued : 

Not gold, not blood, their altar dowers, 

But votive tears and symbol flowers. 

' Hellas, the dramatic poem from which this 
selection is taken, is an idealized account of the 
revolt in Greece. The temporary failure of the 
rising is converted into a prophecy not only of the 
ultimate triumph of this cause but of the great 
cause of humanity of which it constitutes a part. 
In this lyric Shelley is influenced by the Platonic 
notion of the great cycle in human affairs which 
will in its revolution bring back the golden age of 
Greece, elevated to a still higher plane. 



THE EISE OE MODEEN DEMOCKACY 



421 



Oh, cease ! must hate and death return ? 

Cease ! must men kill and die ? 
Cease ! drain not to its dregs the urn 

Of bitter prophecy. 
The world is weary of the past, 
Oh, might it die or rest at last ! 

Adonais 
percy btsshe shelley 

I weep for Adonais — he is dead ! 

0, weep for Adonais ! though our tears 

Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a 
head! 

And thou, sad Hour, selected from all 
years 

To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure com- 
peers, ^ 

And teach them thine own sorrow ! Say : 
"With me 

Died Adonais; till the Future dares 

Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be 
An echo and a light unto eternity." 

Where wert thou, mighty Mother, when 

he lay, 10 

When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft 

which flies 
In darkness *? where was lorn Urania 
When Adonais died ? With veiled eyes, 
'Mid listening Echoes, in her Paradise 
She sate, while one, with soft enamored 

breath, 15 

Rekindled all the fading melodies. 
With which, like flowers that mock the 

corse beneath, 
He had adorned and hid the coming bulk of 

death. 

0, weep for Adonais — ^he is dead! 

Wake, melancholy Mother, wake and 
weep ! • 20 

Yet wherefore ? Quench within their burn- 
ing bed 

Thy fiery tears, and let thy loud heart 
keep 

Like his, a mute and uncomplaining sleep ; 

For he is gone, where all things wise and 
fair 

Descend ; — oh, dream not that the amorous 
Deep 25 

Will yet restore him to the vital air ; 
Death feeds on his mute voice, and laughs 
at our despair. 

Most musical of mourners, weep again ! 
Lament anew, Urania ! — He died, — 



Who was the Sire of an immortal strain, 30 
Blind, old, and lonely, when his country's 

pride. 
The priest, the slave, and the liberticide, 
Trampled and mocked with many a 

loathed rite 
Of lust and blood ; he went, unterrified, 
Lito the gulf of death; but his clear 

Sprite 35 

Yet reigns o'er earth; the third among the 

sons of light. 

Most musical of mourners, weep anew ! 
Not all to that bright station dared to 

climb ; 
And happier they their happiness who 

knew, 
Whose tapers yet burn through that night 

of time 40 

In which suns perished ; others more sub- 
lime. 
Struck by the envious wrath of man or 

God, 
Have sunk, extinct in their refulgent 

prime ; 
And- some yet live, treading the thorny 

road. 
Which leads, through toil and hate, to 

Fame's serene abode. 45 

But now, thy youngest, dearest one has 

perished. 
The nursling of thy widowhood, who grew. 
Like a pale flower by some sad maiden 

cherished. 
And fed with true love tears, instead of 

dew; 
Most musical of mourners, weep anew ! ^o 
Thy extreme hope, the loveliest and the 

last. 
The bloom, whose petals, nipped before 

they blew. 
Died on the promise of the fruit, is waste; 
The broken lily lies — the storm is overpast. 

To that high Capital, where kingly 

Death, 55 

Keeps his pale court in beauty and decay. 

He came ; and bought, with price of purest 

breath, 
A gTave among the eternal. — Come away ! 
Haste, while the vault of blue Italian day 
Is yet his fitting charnel-roof ! while still ^0 
He lies, as if in dewy sleep he lay ; 
Awake him not ! surely he takes his fill 
Of deep and liquid rest, forgetful of all ill. 



422 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



He will awake no more, oh, never more ! — 

Within the twilight chamber spreads 

apace, ^^ 

The shadow of white Death, and at the 

door 
Invisible Corruption waits to trace 
His extreme way to her dim dwelling- 
place ; 
The eternal Hunger sits, but pity and awe 
Soothe her pale rage, nor dares she to 
deface "^^ 

So fair a prey, till darkness, and the law 
Of change, shall o'er his sleep the mortal 
curtain draw. 

0, weep for Adonais ! — The quick Dreams, 
The passion-winged Ministers of thought. 
Who were his flocks, whom near the living 

streams '^^ 

Of his young spirit he fed, and whom he 

taught 
The love which was its miTsie, wander 

not, — 
Wander no more, from kindling brain to 

brain. 
But droop there, whence they sprung ; and 

mourn their lot 
Eound the cold heart, where, after their 

sweet pain, ^^ 

They ne'er will gather strength, or find a 

home again. 

And one with trembling hands clasps his 

cold head. 
And fans him with her moonlight wings, 

and cries : 
"Our love, our hope, our sorrow, is not 

dead; 
See, on the silken fringe of his faint eyes, 
Like dew upon a sleeping flower, there 

lies f^ 

A tear some Dream has loosened from his 

brain." 
Lost Angel of a ruined Paradise ! 
She knew not 'twas her own; as with no 

stain 
She faded, like a cloud which had outwept 

its rain. ^^ 

One from a lucid urn of starry dew 
Washed his light limbs as if embalming 

them ; 
Another clipped her profuse locks, and 

threw 
The wreath upon him, like an anadem, 
Which frozen tears instead of pearls 

begem ; ^^ 



Another in her wilful grief would break 
Her bow and winged reeds, as if to stem 
A greater loss with one which was more 

weak; 
And dull the barbed fire against his frozen 

cheek. 

Another Splendor on his mouth alit, ^^^ 
That mouth, whence it was wont to draw 

the breath 
Which gave it strength to pierce the 

guarded wit. 
And pass into the panting heart beneath 
With lightning and with music : the damp 

death 
Quenched its caress upon his icy lips ; 105 
And, as a dying meteor stains a wreath 
Of moonlight vapor, which the cold night 

clips. 
It flushed through his pale limbs, and passed 

to its eclipse. 

And others came . . . Desires and 

Adorations, 
Winged Persuasions and veiled Destinies, 
Splendors, and Glooms, and glimmering 
Incarnations m 

Of hopes and fears, and twilight Phan- 
tasies ; 
And Sorrow, with her family of Sighs, 
And Pleasure, blind with tears, led by the 

gleam 
Of her own dying smile instead of eyes, 11^ 
Came in slow pomp; — the moving pomp 
might seem 
Like pageantry of mist on an autumnal 
stream. 

All he had loved, and molded into 

thought, 
From shape, and hue, and odor, and sweet 

sound. 
Lamented Adonais. Morning sought ^^o 
Her eastern watch-tower, and her hair 

unbound. 
Wet with the tears which should adorn 

the ground. 
Dimmed the aerial eyes that kindle day; 
Afar the melancholy thunder moaned. 
Pale Ocean in unquiet slumber lay, ^^ 
And the wild winds flew round, sobbing in 

their dismay. 

Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless moun- 
tains. 
And feeds her grief with his remembered 

lay, 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



423 



And will no more reply to winds or foun- 
tains, 

Or amorous birds perched on the young 
green spray, ^^^ 

Or herdsman's horn, or bell at closing 
day; 

Since she can mimic not his lips, more 
dear 

Than those for whose disdain she pined 
away 

Into a shadow of all sounds : — a drear 
Murmur, between their songs, is all the 
woodmen hear. ^^ 

Grief made the young Spring wild, and 

she threw down 
Her kindling buds, as if she Autumn 

were, 
Or they dead leaves; since her delight 

is flown, 
For whom should she have waked the 

sullen year? 
To Phcebus was not Hyacintii so dear l^o 
Nor to himself Narcissus, as to both 
Thou, Adonais : wan they stand and sere 
Amid the faint companions of their youth. 
With dew all turned to tears ; odor, to sigh- 
ing ruth. 

Thy spirit's sister, the lorn nightin- 
gale, 145 

Mourns not her mate with such melodious 
pain; 

Not so the eagle, who like thee could 
scale 

Heaven, and could nourish in the sun's 
domain 

Her mighty youth with morning, doth 
complain, 

Soaring and screaming round her empty 
nest, 150 

As Albion wails for thee: the curse of 
Cain 

Light on his head who pierced thy in- 
nocent breast. 
And scared the angel soul that was its earth- 
ly guest! 

Ah, woe is me ! Winter is come and gone, 
But grief returns with the revolving 



year; 



155 



The airs and streams renew their joyous 

tone; 
The ants, the bees, the swallows reappear ; 
Fresh leaves and flowers deck the dead 

Seasons' bier; 



The amorous birds now pair in every 

brake. 
And build their mossy homes in field and 

brere ; ^^ 

And the green lizard, and the golden 

snake, 
Like unimprisoned flames, out of their 

trance awake. 

Through wood and stream and field and 

hill and Ocean 
A quickening life from the Earth's heart 

has burst. 
As it has ever done, with change and 

motion i^^ 

From the great morning of the world 

when first 
God daAvned on Chaos; in its stream im- 
mersed 
The lamps of Heaven flash with a softer 

light ; 
All baser things pant with life's sacred 

thirst ; 
Diffuse themselves; and spend in love's 

delight 170 

The beauty and the joy of their renewed 

might. 

The leprous corpse touched by this spirit 

tender 
Exhales itself in flowers of gentle breath ; 
Like incarnations of the stars, when 

splendor 
Is changed to fragrance, they illumine 

death "5 

And mock the merry worm that wakes 

beneath ; 
Naught we know, dies. Shall that alone 

which knows 
Be as a sword consumed before the 

sheath 
By sightless lightning? — th' intense atom 

glows 
A moment, then is quenched in a most cold 

repose. i^*^ 

Alas ! that all we loved of him should be. 
But for our grief, as if it had not been, 
And grief itself be mortal ! Woe is me ! 
Whence are we, and why are we ? of what 

scene 
The actors or spectators? Great and 

mean i^^ 

Meet massed in death, who lends what life 

must borrow. 
As long as skies are blue, and fields are 

green. 



424 



THE OESAT TRADITION 



Evening must usher night, night urge the 
morrow, 
Month follow month with woe, and year 
wake year to sorrow. 

Re will awake, no more, oh, never 
more! i^^ 

"Wake thou," cried Misery, "childless 
Mother, rise 

Out of thy sleep, and slake, in thy heart's 
core, 

A wound more fierce than his with tears 
and sighs." 

And all the Dreams that watched Urania's 
eyes. 

And all the Echoes whom their sister's 
song ""^ 

Had held in holy silence, cried: "Arise!" 

Swift as a Thought by the snake Memory 
stung, 
From her ambrosial rest the fading Splen- 
dor sprung. 

She rose like an autumnal Night, that 
springs 

Out of the East, and follows wild and 
drear . 200 

The golden Day, which, on eternal wings, 

Even as a ghost abandoning a bier. 

Had left the Earth a corpse. Sorrow and 
fear 

So struck, so roused, so rapt Urania; 

So saddened round her like an atmos- 
phere 2*^^ 

Of stormy mist ; so swept her on her way 
Even to the mournful place where Adonais 
lay. ' 

Out of her secret Paradise she sped. 
Through camps and cities rough with 

stone, and steel. 
And human hearts, which to her aery 

tread _ _ 210 

Yielding not, wounded the invisible 
Palms of her tender feet where'er they 

fell: 
And barbed tongues, and thoughts more 

sharp than they. 
Rent the soft Form they never could re- 
pel. 
Whose sacred blood, like the young tears 

of May, 215 

Paved with eternal flowers that undeserving 

way. 

In the death chamber for a moment 
Death, 



Shamed by the presence of that living 
Might, 

Blushed to annihilation, and the breath 

Revisited those lips, and life's pale 
Hght 220 

Flashed through those limbs, so late her 
dear delight. 

"Leave me not wild and drear and com- 
fortless. 

As silent lightning leaves the starless 
night ! 

Leave me not !" cried Urania : her distress 

Roused Death : Death rose and smiled, and 

met her vain caress. 225 

"Stay yet awhile ! speak to me once again; 
Kiss me, so long but as a kiss may live; 
And in my heartless breast and burning 

brain 
That word, that kiss shall all thoughts else 

survive. 
With food of saddest memory kept 

alive, 230 

Now thou art dead, as if it were a part 
Of thee, my Adonais ! I would give 
All that I am to be as thou now art! 
But I am chained to Time, and cannot thence 

depart ! 

"Oh gentle child, beautiful as thou wert, 235 
Why didst thou leave the trodden paths 

of men 
Too soon, and with weak hands though 

mighty heart 
Dare the unpastured dragon in his den? 
Defenceless as thou wert, oh where was 

then 
Wisdom the mirrored shield, or scorn 

the spear? 240 

Or hadst thou waited the full cycle, when 
Thy spirit should have filled its crescent 

sphere. 
The monsters of life's waste had fled from 

thee like deer. 

"The herded wolves, bold only to pursue; 

The obscene ravens, clamorous o'er the 

dead; 24E 

The vultures to the conqueror's banner 

true, 
Who feed where Desolation first has fed, 
And whose wings rain contagion; — how 

they fled. 
When like Apollo, from his golden bow, 
The Pythian of the age one arrow sped 25C 
And smiled! — the spoilers tempt no sec- 
ond blow ; 



THE EISE or MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



425 



They fawn on the proud feet that spurn 
them lying low. 

"The sun comes forth, and many reptiles 

spawn ; 
He sets, and each ephemeral insect then 
Is gathered into death without a dawn, 255 
And the immortal stars awake again; 
So is it in the world of living men: 
A godlike mind soars forth, in its delight 
Making earth bare and veiling heaven, 

and when 
It sinks, the swarms that dimmed or 
shared its light 260 

Leave to its kindred lamps the spirit's aw- 
ful night." 

Thus ceased she : and the mountain shep- 
herds came. 
Their garlands sere, their magic mantles 

rent; 
The Pilgrim of Eternity, whose fame 
Over his living head like Heaven is 
bent, 265 

An early but enduring monument, 
Came, veiling all the lightnings of his 

song 
In sorrow ; from her wilds lerne sent 
The sweetest lyrist of her saddest wrong, 
And love taught grief to fall like music from 
his tongue. 270 

Midst others of less note, came one frail 

Form, 
A phantom among men, companionless 
As the last cloud of an expiring storm 
Whose thunder is its knell ; he, as I guess, 
Had gazed on Nature's naked loveli- 



ness, 



275 



Aetseon-like, and now he fled astray 
With feeble steps o'er the world's wilder- 
ness. 
And his own thoughts, along that rugged 
way, 
Pursued, like raging hounds, their father 
and their prey. 

A pardlike Spirit beautiful and swift — 280 
A Love in desolation masked; — a Power 
Girt round with weakness ; — it can scarce 

uplift 
The weight of the superincumbent hour; 
It is a dying lamp, a falling shower, 
A breaking billow; — even whilst we 

speak 285 

Is it not broken ? On the withering flower 



The killing sun smiles brightly; on a 
cheek 
The life can burn in blood, even while the 
heart may break. 

His head was bound with pansies over- 
blown. 

And faded violets, white, and pied, and 
blue; 290 

And a light spear topped with a cypress 
cone. 

Round whose rude shaft dark ivy tresses 
grew 

Yet dripping with the forest's noonday 
dew. 

Vibrated, as the ever-beating heart 

Shook the weak hand that grasped it ; of 
that crew 295 

He came the last, neglected and apart ; 
A herd-abandoned deer, struck by the hun- 
ter's dart. 

All stood aloof, and at his partial moan 
Smiled through their tears; well knew 

that gentle band 
Who in another's fate now wept his 

own ; 300 

As, in the accents of an unknown land, 
He sung new sorrow ; sad Urania scanned 
The Stranger's mien, and murmured: 

"Who art thou?" 
He answered not, but with a sudden 

hand 
Made bare his branded and ensanguined 

brow, 305 

Which was like Cain's or Christ's — Oh ! that 

it should be so! 

What softer voice is hushed over the 
dead? 

Athwart what brow is that dark mantle 
thrown ? 

What form leans sadly o'er the white 
death-bed. 

In mockery of monumental stone, ^'^^ 

The heavy heart heaving without -a moan? 

If it be He, who, gentlest of the wise, 

Taught, soothed, loved, honored the de- 
parted one. 

Let me not vex with inharmonious sighs 
The silence of that heart's accepted sacri- 
fice. 315 

Our Adonals has drunk poison — oh! 
What deaf and viperous murderer could 
crown 



426 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



Life's early cup with sucli a draught of 
woe? 

The nameless worm would now itself dis- 
own: 

It felt, yet could escape the magic tone ^20 

Whose prelude held all envy, hate, and 
wrong, 

But what was howling in one breast 
alone. 

Silent with expectation of the song, 
Whose master's hand is cold, whose silver 
lyre unstrung. 

Live thou, whose infamy is not thy 

fame! 325 

Live! fear no heavier chastisement from 

me. 
Thou noteless blot on a remembered 

name! 
But be thyself, and know thyself to be ! 
And ever at thy season be thou free 
To spill the venom when thy fangs o'er- 

flow: 330 

Remorse and Self -contempt shall cling to 

thee; 
Hot Shame shall burn upon thy secret 

brow. 
And like a beaten hound tremble thou shalt 

— as now. 

Nor let us weep that our delight is fled 
Far from these carrion kites that scream 

below ; ^^^ 

He wakes or sleeps with the enduring 

dead; 
Thou canst not soar where he is sitting 

now. — 
Dust to the dust! but the pure spirit 

shall flow 
Back to the burning fountain whence it 

came, 
A portion of the Eternal, which must 

glow 340 

Through time and change, unquenchably 

the same, 
Whilst thy cold embers choke the sordid 

hearth of shame. 

Peace, peace! he is not dead, he doth not 

sleep — 
He hath awakened from the dream of 

life— 
'Tis we who, lost in stormy visions, 

keep 345 

With phantoms an unprofitable strife, 
And in mad trance strike with our spirit's 

knife 



Invulnerable nothings. — We decay 

Like corpses in a charnel; fear and grief 

Convulse us and consume us day by 

day, 350 

And cold hopes swarm like worms within 

our living clay. 

He has outsoared the shadow of our 

night; 
Envy and calumny and hate and pain, 
And that unrest which men miscall de- 
light. 
Can touch him not and torture not 

again ; 355 

From the contagion of the world's slow 

stain 
He is secure, and now can never mourn 
A heart grown cold, a head grown gray in 

vain ; 
Nor, when the spirit's self has ceased to 

burn. 
With sparkless ashes load an unlamented 

urn. 360 

He lives, he wakes — 'tis Death is dead, not 

he; 
Mourn not for Adonais. — Thou young 

Dawn, 
Turn all thy dew to splendor, for from 

thee 
The spirit thou lamentest is not gone; 
Ye caverns and ye forests, cease to 

moan ! 365 

Cease ye faint flowers and fountains, and 

thou Air, 
Which like a mourning veil thy scarf 

hadst thrown 
O'er the abandoned Earth, now leave it 

bare 
Even to the joyous stars which smile on its 

despair ! 

He is made one with Nature : there is 
heard 370 

His voice in all her music, from the moan 

Of thunder, to the song of night's sweet 
bird; 

He is a presence to be felt and known 

In darkness and in light, from herb and 
stone. 

Spreading itself where'er that Power may 
move 375 

Which has withdrawn his being to its 
own; 

Which wields the world with never wea- 
ried love. 
Sustains it from beneath, and kindles it 
above. 



THE EISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



427 



He is a portion of the loveliness 

Which once he rnade more lovely : he doth 

bear 380 

His part, while the one Spirit's plastic 

stress 
Sweeps through the dull dense world, 

compelling there 
All new successions to the forms they 

wear; 
Torturing th' unwilling dross that checks 

its flight 
To its own likeness, as each mass may 

bear ; ^^^ 

And bursting in its beauty and its might 

From trees and beasts and men into the 

Heaven's light. 

The splendors of the firmament of time 
May be eclipsed, but are extinguished 

not; 
Like stars to their appointed height they 

climb ^^ 

And death is a low mist which cannot blot 
The brightness it may veil. When lofty 

thought 
Lifts a young heart above its mortal lair, 
And love and life contend in it, for what 
Shall be its earthly doom, the dead live 

there ^^^ 

And move like winds of light on dark and 

stormy air. 

The inheritors of unfulfilled renown 
Rose from their thrones, built beyond 

mortal thought, 
Far in the Unapparent. Chatterton 
Rose pale, his solemn agony had not ^^ 
Yet faded from him ; Sidney, as he fought 
And as he fell and as he lived and loved, 

. Sublimely mild, a Spirit without spot. 
Arose ; and Lucan, by his death approved : 

Oblivion, as they rose, shrank like a thing 
reproved. ^°^ 

And many more, whose names on Earth 

are dark 
But whose transmitted effluence cannot 

die 
So long as fire outlives the parent spark, 
Rose, robed in dazzling immortality. 
"Thou art become as one of us," they 



cry. 



410 



"It was for thee yon kingless sphere has 

long 
Swung blind in unascended majesty. 
Silent alone amid an Heaven of Song. 
Assume thy winged throne, thou Vesper of 

our throng!" 



Who mourns for Adonais? oh, come 
forth, 415 

Fond wretch! and know thyself and him 
aright. 

Clasp with thy panting soul the pendu- 
lous Earth; 

As from a center, dart thy spirit's light 

Beyond all worlds, until its spacious might 

Satiate the void circumference : then 
shrink 420 

Even to a point within our day and night ; 

And keep thy heart light, lest it make 
thee sink. 
When hope has kindled hope, and lured thee 
to the brink. 

Or go to Rome, which is the sepulcher, 
O, not of him, but of our joy: 't is 

naught 425 

That ages, empires, and religions there 
Lie buried in the ravage they have 

wrought ; 
For such as he can lend, — they borrow 

not 
Glory from those who made the world 

their prey; 
And he is gathered to the kings of 

thought 430 

Who waged contention with their time's 

decay. 
And of the past are all that cannot pass 

away. 

Go thou to Rome, — at once the Paradise, 
The grave, the city, and the wilderness; 
And where its wrecks like shattered 

mountains rise 435 

And flowering weeds and fragrant copses 

dress 
The bones of Desolation's nakedness 
Pass, till the Spirit of the spot shall lead 
Thy footsteps to a slope of green access 
Where, like an infant's smile, over the 

dead, 440 

A light of laughing flowers along the grass 

is spread. 

And gray walls molder round, on which 
dull Time 

Feeds, like slow fire upon a hoary br' nd ; 

And one keen pyramid with wedge sub- 
lime. 

Pavilioning the dust of him who 
planned 445 

This refuge for his memory, doth stand 

Like flame transformed to marble; and 
beneath. 



428 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



A field is spread, on which a newer band 
Have pitched in Heaven's smile their 
camp of death, 
Welcoming him we lose with scarce ex- 
tinguished breath. 450 

Here pause: these graves are all too 
young as yet 

To have outgrown the sorrow which con- 
signed 

Its charge to each; and if the seal is set. 

Here, on one fountain of a mourning 
mind. 

Break it not thou! too surely shalt thou 
find 455 

Thine own well full, if thou returnest 
home, 

Of tears and gall. From the world's bit- 
ter wind 

Seek shelter in the shadow of the tomb. 
What Adonais is, why fear we to become? 

The One remains, the many change and 



pass; 



460 



Heaven's light forever shines, Earth's 

shadows fly; 
Life, like a dome of many-colored glass. 
Stains the white radiance of Eternity, 
Until Death tramples it to fragments. — 

Die, 
If thou wouldst be with that which thou 

dost seek! 465 

Follow where all is fled! — Rome's azure 

sky, 
Flowers, ruins, statues, music, words, are 

weak 
The glory they transfuse with fitting truth 

to speak. 

Why linger? why turn back, why shrink, 
my Heart? 

Thy hopes are gone before: from all 
things here 470 

They have departed; thou shouldst now 
depart ! 

A light is past from the revolving year. 

And man, and woman; and what still is 
dear 

Attracts to crush, repels to make th:e 
wither. 

The soft sky smiles, — the low wind whis- 
pers near; 475 



'T is Adonais calls! oh, hasten thither, 
No more let Life divide what Death can 
join together. 

That Light whose smile kindles the Uni- 
verse, 
That Beauty in which all things work and 

move, 
That Benediction which the eclipsing 

Curse 480 

Of birth can quench not, that sustaining 

Love' 
Which, through the web of being blindly 

wove 
By man and beast and earth and air and 

sea, 
Burns bright or dim, as each are mirrors 

of 
The fire for which all thirst, now beams 

on me, 485 

Consuming the last clouds of cold mortality. 

The breath whose might I have invoked 

in song 
Descends on me; my spirit's bark is 

driven. 
Far from the shore, far from the trem- 
bling throng 
Whose sails were never to the tempest 

given ; 490 

The massy earth and sphered skies are 

riven ! 
I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar : 
Whilst burning through the inmost veil of 

Heaven, 
The soul of Adonais, like a star. 
Beacons from the abode where the Eternal 

are. 

A Dirge 

PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY 

Rough wind, that moanest loud 

Grief too sad for song; 
Wild wind, when sullen cloud 

Knells all the night long; 
Sad storm, whose tears are vain, 
Bare woods, whose branches strain, 
Deep caves and dreary main, 

Wail, for the world's wrong ! 



THE EISE OF MODEEN DEMOCEACY 



429 



4. THE IMMORTALITY OF BEAUTY 



Beauty 

john keat.s 

[From Endymion, 1818] 

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever; 

Its loveliness increases ; it will never 

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep 

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet 

breathing. 
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreath- 
ing 
A flowery band to bind us to the earth. 
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman 

dearth 
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days. 
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkened ways 
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all, 
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall 
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the 

moon, 
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady 

boon 
For simple sheep ; and such are daffodils 
With the green world they live in; and 

clear rills 
That for themselves a cooling covert make 
'Gainst the hot season ; the mid-forest brake, 
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose 

blooms : 
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms 
We have imagined for the mighty dead ; 
All lovely tales that we have heard or read : 
An endless fountain of immortal drink, 
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink. 

Nor do we merely feel these essences 
For one short hour ; no, even as the trees 
That whisper round a temple become soon 
Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon, 
The passion poesy, glories infinite. 
Haunt us till they become a cheering light 
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast, 
That, whether there be shine, or gloom o'er- 

east. 
They always must be with us, or we die. 

La Belle Dame Sans Merci 
john" keats 

what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, 

Alone and palely loitering? 
The sedge has wither'd from the lake, 

And no birds sing. 



what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, 
So haggard and so woe-begone? 

The squirrel's granary is full. 
And the harvest's done. 

1 see a lily on thy brow 

With ang-uish moist and fever dew, 
And on thy cheeks a fading rose 
Fast withereth too. 

''I met a lady in the. meads. 
Full beautiful — a fairy's child ; 

Her hair was long, her foot was light, 
And her eyes were wild. 

"I made a garland for her head. 

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; 

She look'd at me as she did love. 
And made sweet moan. 

"I set her on my pacing steed, 

And nothing else saw all day long. 

For sideways would she lean, and sing 
A fairy's song. 

"She found me roots of relish sweet, 
And honey wild, and manna-dew. 

And sure in language strange she said — • 
'I love thee true.' 

"She took me to her elfin grot. 

And there she wept and sigh'd full sore, 
And there I shut her wild, wild eyes. 

With kisses four. 

"And there she lulled me asleep. 

And there I dream'd — ah ! woe betide ! — 
The latest dream I ever dream'd 

On the cold hill's side. 

"I saw pale kings and princes too, 

Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; 
They cried — 'La Belle Dame sans Merci 
Hath thee in thrall!' 

"I saw their starved lips in the gloom, 
With horrid warning gaped wide; 

And I awoke, and found me here 
On the cold hill's side. 

"And this is why I sojourn here. 

Alone and palely loitering, 
Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake, 

And no birds sing." 



430 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



Ode to a Nightingale 

john keats 

My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness 
pains 
My sense, as though of hemlock I had 
drunk. 
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains 
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had 
sunk: 
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot. 
But being too happy in thine happi- 
ness,^ 
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the 
trees. 

In some melodious plot 
Of beechen green, and shadows number- 
less, 
Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 

for a draught of vintage ! that hath been 
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth. 
Tasting of Flora and the country green. 
Dance, and Provengal 3ong, and sunburnt 
mirth ! 
for a beaker full of the warm South, 
Full of the true, the blushful Hippo- 
crene. 
With beaded bubbles winking at the 
brim. 

And purple-stained mouth ; 
That I might drink, and leave the world 
unseen. 
And with thee fade away into the for- 
est dim: 

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget, 
What thou among the leaves hast never 
known, 
The weariness, the fever, and the fret 
Here, where men sit and hear each other 
groan ; 
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray 
hairs, 
Where youth grows pale, and specter- 
thin, and dies; 
Where but to think is to be full of 
sorrow 

And leaden-eyed despairs, 
Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous 
eyes. 
Or new Love pine at them beyond to- 
morrow. 

Away ! away ! for I will fly to thee. 

Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, 
But on the viewless wings of Poesy, 



Though the dull brain perplexes and re- 
tards : 
Already with thee ! tender is the night. 
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her 
throne, 
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays ; 
But here there is no light, 
Save what from heaven is with the breezes 
blown 
Through verdurous glooms and winding 
mossy ways. 

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, 
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the 
boughs. 
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet 
Wherewith the seasonable month endows 
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree 
wild; 
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglan- 
tine; 
Fast fading violets cover'd up in 
leaves ; 

And mid-May's eldest child, 
The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine, 
The murmurous haunt of flies on sum- 
mer eves. 

Darkling I listen ; and, for many a time 
I have been half in love with easeful 
Death, 
Call'd him soft names in many a mused 
rhyme, 
To take into the air my quiet breath ; 
Now more than ever seems it rich to die, 
To cease upon the midnight with no pain. 
While thou art pouring forth thy soul 
abroad 

In such an ecstasy! 
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears 
in vain — 
To thy high requiem become a sod. 

Thou wast not born for death, immortal 
Bird! 
No hungry generations tread thee down; 
The voice I hear this passing night was 
heard 
In ancient days by emperor and clown : 
Perhaps the self-same song that found a 
path 
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, 
sick for home. 
She stood in tears amid the alien corn ; 
The same that ofttimes hath 
Charm'd magic casements, opening on 
the foam 
Of perilous seas, in fairy lands forlorn. 



THE RISE OF MODERN DEMOCRACY 



431 



Forlorn ! the very word is like a bell 

To toll me back from thee to my sole self ! 
Adieu ! the fancy cannot cheat so well 
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. 
Adieu ! adieu ! thy plaintive anthem fades 
Past the near meadows, over the still 
stream, 
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried 
deep 

In the next valley -glades : 
Was it a vision, or a waking dream? 
Fled is that music: — Do I wake or 
sleep ? 



. Ode on a Grecian Urn 

john keats 

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness. 

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, 
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express 
A flowery tale more sweetly than our 
rhyme : 
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy 
shape 
Of deities or mortals, or of both, 
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? 
What men or gods are these"? What maid- 
ens loth ? 
What mad pursuit? What struggle to 
escape? 
What pipes and timbrels? What wild 
ecstasy ? 

Heard melodies are sweet, but those un- 
heard 
Are sweeter ; therefore, ye soft pipes, play 
on; 
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd. 

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: 
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst 
not leave 
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be 
bare ; 
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou 
kiss. 
Though winning near the goal — yet, do not 
grieve ; 
She cannot fade, though thou hast not 
thy bliss, 
Forever wilt thou love, and she be 
fair! 

Ah, happy, happy boughs ! that cannot shed 
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu : 
And, happy melodist, unwearied. 
Forever piping songs forever new; 



More happy love ! more happy, happy love ! 
Forever warm and still to be enjoy'd. 
Forever panting, and forever young; 
All breathing human passion far above, 
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and 
cloy'd, 
A burning forehead, and a parching 
tongue. 

Who are these coming to the sacrifice? 

To what green altar, mysterious priest, 
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies. 
And all her silken flanks with garlands 
drest? 
What little town by river or sea shore. 
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, 
Is emptied of this folk, this pious 
morn? 
And, little town, thy streets for evermore 
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell 
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. 

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! witli brede 

Of marble men and maidens overwrought 

With forest branches and the trodden weed ; 

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of 

thought 

As doth eternity : Cold Pastoral ! 

When old age shall this generation waste. 
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other 
woe 
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou 
say'st, 
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," — that is 
.all 
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to 
know. 



On First Looking into Chapman's 
Homer 

john keats 

Much have I travel'd in the realms of 



And many goodly states and kingdoms 

seen; 
Round many western islands have I been 
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. 
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told 
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his 

demesne ; 
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene 
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and 

bold: 
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
When a new planet swims into his ken ; 



432 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 
He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men 

Look'd at each other with a wild surmise- 
Silent, upon a peak in Darien, 

When I Have Fears That I May 
Cease to Be 

john keats 

When I have fears that I may cease to be 
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming 

brain, 
Before high piled books, in charact'ry, 



Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd 

grain ; 
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd 

face, 
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, 
And think that I may never live to trace 
Their shadows, with the magic hand of 

chance ; 
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour! 
That I shall never look upon thee more, 
Never have relish in the fairy power 
Of unreflecting love ! — then on the shore 
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think 
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink. 



NINETEENTH CENTURY IDEALS AND 

PROBLEMS 

1. DEMOCRACY AND NATIONALISM 



1. UTILITARIAN IDEAS OF LIBERTY 



On Liberty^ 

john stuart mill 

[From On Liberty, 1859] 

1. The Principle 

The object of this Essay is to assert one 
very simple principle, as entitled to govern 
absolutely the dealings of society with the 
individual in the way of compulsion and 
control, whether the means used be physical 
force in the form of legal penalties, or the 
moral coercion of public opinion. That 
principle is, that the sole end for which 

1 1 do not know whether then or at any other 
time so short a book ever instantly produced so 
wide and so important an effect on contemporary 
thought as did Mill's On Liberty in that day of 
intellectual and social fermentation (1859). It 
was like the effect of Emerson's awakening at the 
Phi Beta Kappa Society in New England in 1837. 
The thought of writing it first came into his head 
in 1855, as he was mounting the steps of the 
Capitol at Rome, the spot where the thought of 
the greatest of all literary histories had started 
into the mind of Gibbon just a hundred years 
before. He had been inclining towards over- 
government, both social and political ; there was 
also, he says, a moment when, by reaction from 
a contrary excess, "I might have become a less 
thorough Radical and Democrat than I am." It 
was the composition of this book and the influence 
under which it grew that kept him right. Mill 
believed that no symmetry, no uniformity of cus- 
tom and convention, but bold, free expansion in 
every field, was demanded by all the needs of 
human life, and the best instincts of the modern 
mind. For this reason, among others, he thought 
Carlyle made a great mistake in presenting 
Goethe as the example to the modern world of the 
lines on which it should shape itself. "You might 
as well," he said (1854), "attempt to cut down 
Shakespeare to a Greek drama, or a Gothic cathe- 
dral to a Greek temple." For this bold, free ex- 
pansion to which Goethe's ideals were the oppo- 
site, these two hundred brief pages, without being 
in any sense volcanic, are a vigorous, argumenta- 
tive, searching, noble, and moving appeal. The 
little volume belongs to the rare books that after 
hostile criticism has done its best are still found 
to have somehow added a cubit to man's stature. 
—From Becollections by Viscount Mcrley, 



mankind are warranted, individually or col- 
lectively, in interfering with the liberty of 
action of any of their number, is self -pro- 
tection. That the only purpose for which 
power can be rightfully exercised over any 
member of a civilized community, against 
his will, is to prevent harm to others. His 
own good, either physical or moral, is not 
a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully 
be compelled to do or forbear because it 
will be better for him to do so, because it 
will make him happier, because, in the opin- 
ions of others, to do so would be wise, or 
even right. These are good reasons for 
remonstrating with him, or reasoning with 
him, or persuading him or entreating him, 
but not compelling him, or visiting him 
with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To 
justify that, the conduct from which it is 
desired to deter him must be calculated to 
produce evil to some one else. The only 
part of the conduct of any one, for which 
he is amenable to society, is that which 
concerns others. In the part which merely 
concerns himself his independence is, of 
right, absolute. Over himself, over his own 
body and mind, the individual is sovereign. 
It is, perhaps, necessary to say that this 
doctrine is meant to apply only to human 
beings in the maturity of their faculties. 
We are not speaking of children, or of 
young persons below the age which the law 
may fix as that of manhood and woman- 
hood. Those who are still in a state to re- 
quire being taken care of by others, must 
be protected against their own actions as 
well as against external injury. For the 
same reason, we may leave out of considera- 
tion those backward states of society in 
which the race itself may be considered as 
in its nonage. The early difficulties in 



433 



434 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



the way of spontaneous progress are so 
great that there is seldom any choice of 
means for overcoming them; and a ruler 
full of the spirit of improvement is war- 
ranted in the use of any expedients that 
will attain an end, perhapy otherwise un- 
attainable. Despotism is a legitimate mode 
of government in dealing with barbarians, 
provided the end be their improvement, and 
the means justified by actually effecting that 
end. Liberty, as a principle, has no appli- 
cation to any state of things anterior to the 
time when mankind have become capable 
of being improved by free and equal dis- 
cussion. Until then, there is nothing for 
them but implicit obedience to an Akbar or 
a Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate as 
to find one. But as soon as mankind have 
attained the capacity of being guided to 
their own improvement by conviction or 
persuasion (a period long since reached in 
all nations with whom we need here con- 
cern ourselves), compulsion, either in the 
direct form or in that of pains and penal- 
ties for non-compliance, is no longer ad- 
missible as a means to their own good, and 
justifiable only for the security of others. 
It is proper to state that I forego any 
advantage which could be derived to my 
argument from the idea of abstract right, as 
a thing independent of utility. I regard 
utility as the ultimate appeal on all 
ethical questions; but it must be utility 
in the largest sense, grounded on the 
permanent interests of man as a progres- 
sive being. Those interests, I contend, au- 
thorize the subjection of individual spon- 
taneity to external control, only in respect 
to those actions of each which concern the 
interest of other people. If any one does 
an act hurtful to others, there is a prima 
facie case for punishing him, by law, or, 
where legal penalties are not safely appli- 
cable, by general disapprobation. There 
are also many positive acts for the bene- 
fit of others, which he may rightfully be 
compelled to perform; such as, to give evi- 
dence in a court or justice ; to bear his fair 
share in the common defence, or in any 
other joint work necessary to the interest 
of the society of which he enjoys the pro- 
tection, and to perform certain acts of in- 
dividual beneficence, such as saving a fel- 
low creature's life, or interposing to protect 
the defenceless against ill-usage, things 
which wherever it is obviously a man's duty 
to do, he may rightfully be made respon- 



sible to society for not doing. A person 
may cause evil to others not only by his 
actions but by his inaction, and in either 
case he is justly accountable to them for the 
injury. The latter case, it is true, requires 
a much more cautious exercise of compul- 
sion than the former. To make any one 
answerable for doing evil to others, is the 
rule; to make him answerable for not pre- 
venting evil, is, comparatively speaking, the 
exception. Yet there are many cases clear 
enough and grave enough to justify that 
exception. In all things which regard the 
external relations of the individual, he is de 
jure amenable to those whose interests are 
concerned, and if need be, to society as their 
protector. There are often good reasons 
for not holding him to the responsibility; 
but these reasons must arise from the spe- 
cial expediences of the case: either be- 
cause it is a kind of ease in which he is 
on the whole likely to act better, when 
left to his own discretion, than when con- 
trolled in any way in which society have 
it in their power to control him ; or because 
the attempt to exercise control would pro- 
duce other evils, greater than those which 
it would prevent. When such reasons as 
these preclude the enforcement of respon- 
sibility, the conscience of the agent him- 
self should step into the vaeaAt judgment 
seat, and protect those interests of others 
which have no external protection; judging 
himself all the more rigidly, because the case 
does not admit of his being made account- 
able to the judgment of his fellow creatures. 
But there is a sphere of action in which 
society, as distinguished from the individual, 
has, if any, only an indirect interest; com- 
prehending all that portion of a person's 
life and conduct which affects only himself, 
or, if it also affects others, only with their 
free, voluntary, and undeceived consent and 
participation. When I say only himself, I 
mean directly, and in the first instance : for 
whatever affects himself, may affect others 
through himself; and the objection which 
may be grounded on this contingency will 
receive consideration in the sequel. This, 
then, is the appropriate region of human 
liberty. It comprises, first, the inward do- 
main of consciousness; demanding liberty 
of conscience, in the most comprehensive 
sense; liberty of thought and feeling; ab- 
solute freedom of opinion and sentiment 
on all subjects, practical or speculative, 
scientific, moral, or theological. The liberty 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



435 



of expressing and publishing opinions may 
seem to fall under a different principle, 
since it belongs to that part of the conduct 
of an individual which concerns other peo- 
ple; but, being almost of as much impor- 
tance as the liberty of thought itself, and 
resting in great part on the same reasons, 
is practically inseparable from it. Sec- 
ondly, the principle requires liberty of taste 
and pursuits; of framing the plan of our 
life to suit our own character; of doing as 
we like, subject to such consequences as may 
follow without impediment from our fel- 
low-creatures, so long as what we do does 
not harm them even though they should 
think our conduct foolish, perverse, or 
wrong. Thirdly, from this liberty of each 
individual follows the liberty, within the 
same limits, of combination among indi- 
viduals; freedom to unite for any purpose 
not involving harm to others : the persons 
combining being supposed to be of full 
age, and not forced or deceived. 

No society in which these liberties are 
not, on the whole, respected is free, what- 
ever may be its form of government; and 
none is completely free in which they do not 
exist absolute and unqualified. The only 
freedom which deserves the name, is that of 
pursuing our own good in our own way, 
so long as we do not attempt to deprive 
others of theirs, or impede their efforts to 
obtain it. Each is the proper guardian 
of his own health, whether bodily, or mental 
and spiritual. Mankind are greater gain- 
ers by suffering each other to live as seems 
good to themselves, than by compelling each 
to live as seems good to the rest. 

Though this doctrine is anything but new, 
and, to some persons, may have the air of a 
truism, there is no doctrine which stands 
more directly opposed to the general ten- 
dency of existing opinion and practice. So- 
ciety has expended fully as much effort 
in the attempt (according to its lights) to 
compel people to conform to its notion 
of personal, as of social excellence 

2. Liberty of Thought and Discussion 

The time, it is to be hoped, is gone by 
when any defence would be necessary of the 
"liberty of the press" as one of the securi- 
ties against corrupt or tyrannical govern- 
ment. No argument, we may suppose, can 
now be needed, against permitting a legisla- 
ture or an executive, not identified in in- 



terest with the people, to prescribe opinions 
to them, and determine what doctrines or 
what arguments they shall be allowed to 
hear. This aspect of the question, besides, 
has been so often and so triumphantly en- 
forced by preceding writers, that it needs 
not be specially insisted on in this place. 
Though the law of England, on the subject 
of the press, is as servile to this day 
as it was in the time of the Tudors, 
there is little danger of its being actual- 
ly put in force against political dis- 
cussion, except during some temporary 
panic, when fear of insurrection drives 
ministers and judges from their jDropriety ; 
and speaking generally, it is not, in con- 
stitutional countries, to be apprehended that 
the government, whether completely respon- 
sible to the people or not, will often attempt 
to control the expression of opinion, ex- 
cept when in doing so it makes itself the 
organ of the general intolerance of the 
public. Let us suppose, therefore, that the 
government is entirely at one with the peo- 
ple, and never thinks of exerting any power 
of coercion unless in agreement with what 
it conceives to be their voice. But I deny 
the right of the people to exercise such co- 
ercion, either by themselves or by their 
government. The power itself is illegiti- 
mate. The best government has no more 
title to it than the worst. It is as noxious, 
or more noxious, when exerted in accordance 
with public opinion, than when in opposi- 
tion to it. If all mankind minus one, were 
of one opinion, and only one person were 
of the contrary opinion, mankind would be 
no more justified in silencing that one per- 
son than he, if he had the power, would be 
justified in silencing mankind. Were an 
opinion a personal possession of no value 
except to the owner; if to be obstructed 
in the enjoyment of it were simply a private 
injury, it would make some difference 
whether the injury was inflicted only on a 
few persons or on many. But the peculiar 
evil of silencing the expression of an opin- 
ion is, that it is robbing the human race; 
posterity as well as the existing generation ; 
those who dissent from the opinion, still 
more than those who hold it. If the opin- 
ion is right, they are deprived of the op- 
portunity of exchanging error for truth : if 
wrong they lose, what is almost as great a 
benefit, the clearer preception and livelier 
impression of truth, .produced by its col- 
lision with error. .... 



436 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



3. Trade 

The principles asserted in these pages 
must be more generally admitted as the basis 
for discussion of details, before a consistent 
application of them to all the various de- 
partments of government and morals can be 
attempted with any prospect of advantage. 
The few observations I propose to make on 
questions of detail, are designed to illus- 
trate the principles, rather than to follow 
them out to their consequences. I offer, 
not so much applications, as specimens of 
application; which may serve to bring into 
greater clearness the meaning and limits of 
the two maxims which together form the en- 
tire doctrine of this Essay, and to assist the 
judgment in holding the balance between 
them, in the cases where it appears doubt- 
ful which of them is applicable to the case. 

The maxims are, first, that the individual 
is not accountable to society for his actions, 
in so far as these concern the interest of 
no person but himself. Advice, instruction, 
persuasion, and avoidance by other people, 
if thought necessary by them for their own 
good, are the only measures by which so- 
ciety can justifiably express its dislike or 
disapprobation of his conduct. Secondly, 
that for such actions as are prejudicial to 
the interest of others, the individual is ac- 
countable, and may be subjected either to 
social or to legal punishments, if society 
is of opinion that the one or the. other is 
requisite for its protection. 

In the first place, it must by no means 
be supposed, because damage or probability 
of damage, to the interest of others, can 
alone justify the interference of society, 
that therefore it always does justify such 
interference. In many cases, an individual, 
in pursuing a legitimate object, necessarily 
and therefore legitimately causes pain or 
loss to others, or intercepts a good which 
they had a reasonable hope of obtaining. 
Such oppositions of interest between indi- 
viduals often arise from bad social institu- 
tions, but are unavoidable while those in- 
stitutions last ; and some would be unavoid- 
able under any institutions. Whoever suc- 
ceeds in an overcrowded profession, or in 
a competitive examination; whoever is pre- 
ferred to another in any contest for an 
object which both desire, reaps benefit from 
the loss of others, from their wasted exer- 
tion and their disappointment. But it is, by 
common admission, better for the general 



interest of mankind, that persons should 
pursue their objects undeterred by this sort 
gf consequences. In other words, society 
admits no right, either legal or moral, in the 
disappointed competitors, to immunity from 
this kind of suffering; and feels called on 
to interfere, only when means of success 
have been employed which it is contrary to 
the general interest to permit — namely, 
fraud or treachery and force. 

Again, trade is a social act. Whoever un- 
dertakes to sell any description of goods to 
the public, does what affects the interest of 
other persons, and of society in general ; and 
thus his conduct, in principle, comes within 
the jurisdiction of society: accordingly, it 
was once held to be the duty of governments, 
in all cases which were considered of im- 
portance, to fix prices, and regailate the proc- 
esses of manufacture. But it is now recog- 
nized, though not till after a long struggle, 
that iDoth the cheapness and the good qual- 
ity of commodities are most effectually pro- 
vided for by leaving the producers and sell- 
ers perfectly free, under the sole check of 
equal freedom to the buyers for supplying 
themselves elsewhere. This is the so-called 
doctrine of Free Trade, which rests on 
grounds different from, though equally solid 
with, the principle of individual liberty as- 
serted in this Essay. Restrictions on trade, 
or on production for purposes of trade, are 
indeed restraints ; and all restraint, qua re- 
straint, is an evil : but the restraints in qiies- 
tion affect only that part of conduct which 
society is competent to restrain, and are 
wrong solely because they do not really pro- 
duce the results which it is desired to pro- 
duce by them. As the principle of indi- 
vidual liberty is not involved in the doctrine 
of Free Trade, so neither is it in most of the 
questions which arise respecting the limits 
of that doctrine: as for example, what 
amount of public .control is admissible for 
the prevention of fraud by adulteration ; 
how far sanitary precautions, or arrange- 
ments to protect work-people employed in 
dangerous occupations, should be enforced 
on employers. Such questions involve con- 
siderations of liberty, only in so far as 
leaving people to themselves is always bet- 
ter, cceteris paribus, than controlling them: 
but that they might be legitimately eon- 
trolled for these ends, is in principle unde- 
niable. On the other hand, there are ques- 
tions relating to interference with trade, 
which are essentially questions of liberty; 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



437 



such as the Maine Law/ ah-eady touched 
upon ; the prohibition of the importation of 
opium into China ; the restriction of the sale 
of poisons; all eases, in short, where the 
object of the interference is to make it pos- 
sible or difficult to obtain a particular com- 
modity. These interferences are objection- 
able, not as infringements on the liberty of 
the producer or seller, but on that of the 
buyer 

4. Paternalism 

I have reserved for the last place a large 
class of questions respecting the limits of 
government interference, which, though 
closely connected with the subject of this 
Essay, do not, in strictness, belong to it. 
These are cases in which the reasons against 
interference do not turn upon the principle 
of liberty : the question is jiot about restrain- 
ing the actions of individuals, but about 
helping them: it is asked whether the gov- 
ernment should do, or cause to be done, 
something for their benefit, instead of leav- 
ing it to be done by themselves, individually, 
or in voluntary combination. 

The objections to government interference, 
when it is not such as to involve infringe- 
ment of liberty, may be of three kinds. 

The first is, when the thing to be done is 
likely to be better done by individuals than 
by the government. Speaking generally, 
there is no one so fit to conduct any business, 
or to determine how or by whom it shall be 
conducted, as those who are personally inter- 
ested in it. This principle condemns the 
interferences, once so common, of the legis- 
lature, or the officers of government, with 
the ordinary processes of industry. But this 
part of the subject has been sufficiently en- 
larged upon by political economists, and is 
not particularly related to the principles of 
this Essay. 

The second objection is more nearly allied 
to our subject. In many cases, though indi- 
viduals may not do the particular thing so 
well, on the average, as the officers of gov- 
ernment, it is nevertheless desirable that it 
should be done by them, rather than by the 
government, as a means to their mental edu- 
cation — a mode of strengthening their active 
faculties, exercising their judgment, and 
giving them a familiar knowledge of the 
subject with which they are thus left to deal. 

^ Prohibition, enforced by law in the state of 
Maine. 



This is a principal, though not the sole, 
recommendation of jury trial (in cases not 
political) ; of free and jDopular local and 
municipal institutions, of the conduct of in- 
dustrial and philanthropic enterprises by 
voluntary associations. These are not ques- 
tions of liberty, and are connected with that 
subject only by remote tendencies ; but they 
are questions of development. It belongs to 
a different occasion from the present to 
dwell on these things as parts of national 
education; as being, in truth, the peculiar 
training of a citizen, the practical part of 
the political education of a free people, tak- 
ing them out of the narrow circle of per- 
sonal and family selfishness, and accustom- 
ing them to the comprehension of joint in- 
terests, the management of joint concerns — 
habituating t4iem to act from public or 
semi-public motives, and guide their con- 
duct by aims which unite instead of isolating 
them from one another. Without these 
habits and powers, a free constitution can 
neither be worked nor preserved, as is 
exemplified by the too-often transitory na- 
ture of political freedom in countries where 
it does not rest upon a sufficient basis of 
local liberties. The management of purely 
local business by the localities, and of the 
great enterprises of industry by the union 
of those who voluntarily supply the pecuni- 
ary means, is further recommended by all 
the advantages which have been set forth in 
this Essay as belonging to individuality of 
development, and diversity of modes of ac- 
tion. Government operations tend to be 
everywhere alike. With individuals and vol- 
untary associations, on the contrary, there 
are varied experiments, and endless di- 
versity of experience. What the State can 
usefully do, is to make itself a central de- 
pository, and active circulator and diffuser 
of the experience resulting from many trials. 
Its business is to enable each experimentalist 
to benefit by the experiments of others, in- 
stead of tolerating no experiments but its 
own. 

The third, and most cogent reason for re- 
stricting the interference of government, is 
the great evil of adding unnecessarily' to its 
power. Every function superadded to those 
already exercised by the government, causes 
its influence over hojoes and fears to be more 
widely diffused, and converts, more and 
more, the active and ambitious part of the 
public into hangers-on of the government, 
or of some party which aims at becoming 



438 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



the government. If the roads, the railways, 
the banks, the insurance offices, the great 
joint-stock companies, the universities and 
the public charities, were all of them 
branches of the government; if in addition, 
the municipal corporations and local boards, 
with all tha.t now devolves on them, became 
departments of the central administi*ation, 
if the employes of all these different enter- 
prises were appointed and paid by the gov- 
ernment and looked to the government for 
every rise in life ; not all the freedom of the 
press and popular' constitution of the leg- 
islature would make this or any other coun- 
try free otherwise than in name. And the 
evil would be greater, the more efficiently 
and scientifically the administrative ma- 
chinery was constructed — the more skillful 
the arrangements for obtaining tiie best 
qualified hands and heads with which to 
work it. In England it has of late been 
proposed that all the members of the civil 
service of government should be selected by 
competitive examination, to obtain for those 
employments the most intelligent and in- 
structed persons procurable; and much has 
been said and written for and against this 
proposal. One of the arguments most in- 
sisted on by its opponents is that the occu- 
pation of a permanent official servant of 
the State does not hold out sufficient pros- 
pects of emolument and importance to at- 
tract the highest talents, which will always 
be able to find a more inviting career in the 
professions, or in the service of companies 
and other public bodies. One would not have 
been surprised if this argument had been 
used by the friends of the proposition, as 
an answer to its principal difficulty. Coming 
from the opponents it is strange enough. 
What is urged as an objection is the safety- 
valve of the proposed system. If indeed all 
the high talents of the country could be 
drawn into the service of the government, a 
proposal tending to bring about that result 
might well inspire uneasiness. If every part 
of the business of society which requires 
organized concert, or large and comprehen- 
sive views, were in the hands of the gov- 
ernment, and if government offices were uni- 
versally filled by the ablest men, all the en- 
larged culture and practiced intelligence in 
the country, except the purely speculative, 
would be concentrated in a numerous bureau- 
cracy, to whom alone the rest of the com- 
munity would look for all things : the multi- 
tude for direction and dictation in all they 



had to do; the able and aspiring for per- 
sonal advancement. To be admitted into the 
ranks of this bureaucracy and when ad- 
mitted, to rise therein, would be the sole 
objects of ambition. Under this regime, not 
only is the oul^pide public ill-qualified, for 
want of practical experience, to criticize or 
check the mode of operation of tlie bureau- 
cracy, but even if the accidents of despotic 
or the natural working of popular institu- 
tions occasionally raised to ihe summit a 
ruler or rulers of reforming inclinations, no 
reform can be effected wliich is contrary to 
the interest of the bureaucracy. Such is the 
melancholy condition of the Russian empire, 
as is shown in the accounts of those who 
have had sufficient opportunity of observa- 
tion. The Czar himself is powerless against 
the bureaucratic body ; he can send any one 
of them to Siberia, but he cannot govern 
without them, or against their will. On 
every decree of his they have a tacit veto, by 
merely refraining from carrying it into 
effect. In countries of more advanced civili- 
zation and of a more insurrectionary spirit, 
the public, accustomed to expect everything 
to be done for them by the State, or at least 
to do nothing for themselves without asking 
from the State not only leave to do it, but 
even how it is to be done, naturally hold the 
State responsible for evil which befalls them, 
and if the evil exceeds their amount of pa- 
tience they rise against the government and 
make what is called a revolution ; whereupon 
somebody else, with or without legitimate 
authority from tie nation vaults into the 
seat, issues his orders to the bureaucracy, and 
everything goes on much as it did before; 
the bureaucracy being unchanged, and 
nobody else being capable of taking their 
place. 

A very different spectacle is exhibited 
among a people accustomed to transact their 
own business. In France, a large part of 
the people having been engaged in military 
service, many of whom have at least the 
rank of noncommissioned officers, there are 
in every popular insurrection several per- 
sons competent to take the lead, and im- 
provise some tolerable plan of action. What 
the French are in military affairs the Ameri- 
«ans are in every kind of civil business; let 
them be left without a government, every 
body of Americans is able to improvise one, 
and to carry on that or any other public 
business with a sufficient amount of intel- 
ligence, order, and decision. This is what 



NINETEENTH CENTURY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



439 



every free people ought to be : and a people 
capable of this is certain to be free; it will 
never let itself be enslaved by any man or 
body of men because these are able to seize 
and pull the reins of the central adminis- 
tration. No bureaucracy can hope to make 
such a people as this do or undergo any- 
thing that they do not like. But where 
everything is done through the bureaucracy, 
nothing to which the bureaucracy is really 
adverse can be done at all. The constitu- 
tion of such countries is an organization of 
the experience and practical ability of the 
nation into a disciplined body for the pur- 
pose of governing the rest; and the more 
perfect that organization is in itself, the 
more successful in drawing to itself and 
educating for itself the persons of greatest 
capacity from all ranks of the community, 
the more complete is the bondage of all, the 
members of the bureaucracy included. For 
the governers are as much the slaves of 
their organization and discipline, as the gov- 
erned of the governors, A Chinese mandarin 
is as much the tool and creature of a 
despotism as the humblest cultivator. An 
individual Jesuit is to the utmost degree of 
abasement the slave of his order, though 



the order itself exists for the collective power 

and importance of its members 

A government cannot have too much of 
the kind of activity which does not impede, 
but> aids and stimulates, individual exertion 
and development. The mischief begins when, 
instead of calling forth the activity and pow- 
ers of individuals and bodies, it substitutes 
its own activity for theirs ; when, instead of 
informing, advising, and, upon occasion, de- 
nouncing, it makes them work in fetters, or 
bids them stand aside and does their work 
instead of them. The worth of a State, in 
the long run, is the worth of the individuals 
composing it; and a State which postpones 
the interests of their mental expansion and 
elevation to a little more of administrative 
skill, or of that semblance of it which prac- 
tice gives, in order that they may be more 
docile instruments in its hands even for bene- 
ficial purposes — will find that with small 
men no great thing can really be accom- 
plished; and that the perfection of ma- 
chinery to which it has sacrificed everything 
will in the end avail it nothing, for want of 
the vital power which, in order that the 
machine might work more smoothly, it has 
preferred to banish. 



2. THE PRINCIPLES AND POLICIES OF BRITISH LIBERALISM 



The Spirit of Liberalism 

viscount morley 

[From Becollections , 1917] 

Alike with those who adore and those who 
detest it, the dominating force in the living 
mind of Europe for a long generation after 
the overthrow of the French monarchy in 
1830 has been that marked way of looking 
at things, feeling them, for which with a 
hundred kaleidoscopic turns, the accepted 
name is Liberalism. It is a summary term 
with many extensive applications; people 
are not always careful to sort them out, and 
they are by no means always bound to one 
another. There are as many differences in 
Liberalism in different ages and communi- 
ties as there are in the attributes imputed 
to that great idol of the world which has 
been glorified under the name of Republic, 
though the system of the American Republic 
is one thing, and the working principles of 
the French Republic are another, and the 



republic in the north of the American con- 
tinent has little in common with either sys- 
tem or spirit in the republics of the south. 
Respect for the dignity and worth of the 
individual is its root. It stands for pursuit 
of social good against class interest or 
dynastic interest. It stands for the subjec- 
tion to human judgment of all claims of 
external authority, whether in an organized 
Church, or in more loosely gathered societies 
of believers, or in books held sacred. In 
law-making it does not neglect the higher 
characteristics of human nature, it attends 
to them first. In executive administration, 
though judge, gaoler, and perhaps the hang- 
man will be indispensable, still mercy is 
counted a wise supplement to terror. Gen- 
eral Gordon spoke a noble word for Lib- 
eralist ideas when he upheld the sovereign 
duty of trying to creep under men's skins — 
only another way of putting the Golden 
Rule. The whole creed is a good deal too 
comprehensive to be written out here, and 
it is far more than a formalized creed. 



440 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Treitsehke, the greatest of modern absolut- 
ists, lays it down that everything new that 
the nineteenth century has erected is the 
work of Liberalism. Needless to say that we 
use the mighty word in its large, far-spread- 
ing, continental sense, not merely in the zone 
of English politics and party. It is worth 
noting that a strange and important liber- 
alizing movement of thought had awakened 
the mind of New England with Emerson for 
its noble and pure-hearted preacher in 1837. 
The duty of mental detachment, the supreme 
claim of the individual conscience, spread 
from religious opinion to the conduct of life 
and its interwoven social relations. Not a 
reading man, Emerson said with a twinkle 
of good humor, but has a draft of a new 
community in his waistcoat-pocket. The 
Blithedale Romance and Walclen are enough 
to tell us what this strange disquiet came to. 
In deeper, graver, more extensive shape, the 
like new-born ideals of simplification, re- 
lease, enlarged outlook as to Labor, Prop- 
erty, War, Political Rule, excited like a 
flaming comet the reflective imagination all 
over Europe in 1848. 

It was inevitable that this deep conflict of 
theory, idea, social aim, should come to a 
head in polities. They go to the root of gov- 
ernment and order; and government and 
order are obviously in the essence of men as 
political beings, whether in rulers holding 
in their hands the direction of a nation's 
fate, or in that great general mass described 
in Burke's imposing phrase as "those whom 
providence has doomed to live on trust." 
But if government and order are of the very 
essence, so, too, are conscience, principle, 
the thinker, the teacher, the writer. To 
treat these elements of the social structure 
as strictly secondary and subordinate is the 
contradiction of Liberalism. Napoleon was 
the master type. If thinkers thought wrong, 
or gave an inconvenient ply to conscience, or 
"carried a principle to lengths that were 
troublesome, it was like mutiny in the regi- 
ment. If the spiritual power gave itself 
airs before the temporal, you would lock it 
up at Savona or elsewhere until it came to 
its senses. For all this today's name is 
Militarism, the point-blank opposite of Lib- 
eralism in its fullest and profoundest sense, 
whatever the scale and whatever the dis- 
guise. Dr. Johnson, though the best of men, 
marked a sad divergence from the Liberal- 
ism that reigned in the century after him 
when he said, "I would not give half a 



guinea to live under one form of govern- 
ment rather than another : it is of no moment 
to the happiness of the individual." ^ The 
strange, undying passion for the word Re- 
public, and all the blood and tears that have 
been shed in adoration of that symbolic 
name, give the verdict of the world against 
him. 

Progress of the Nation Under the 
Liberal Regime 

john bright 

[From an Address before the Working- 
men's Club at Rochdale, January 2, 1877] 

What I am here for tonight is rather to 
enter into counsel with you than to lecture 
or to preach to you, and I want to speak to 
you on points about which working-men are 
very often forgetful. 

Many of them— the younger generation no 
doubt — are very ignorant about the change 
in the working-man's condition during the 
generation with which I have been connected, 
I mean during the last forty years. I venture 
to say that there can scarcely be anything 
more worthwhile a working-man's examining 
and comprehending than the change which 
has taken place in the condition of his class. 
When you speak of a working-man, you 
mean of course a man who is accustomed 
regularly to some useful employment or 
work. To be a man at all he must have 
food, and to be a healthy man one would 
say that it was necessary he should have a 
free market for the purchase of his food. 
To be a working-man he must have materials 
with which to work, and it would seem 
reasonable that he should have a free market 
for the purchase of materials. More than 
that, as far as possible, he should have a free 
market for the sale of his materials. A great 
many people in this country — I hope a 
diminishing number — think that because 
other countries do not allow us to send our 
goods into their market free of duty, there- 
fore we should not allow them to send their 
goods to this market free of duty. They 
think two bad things are better than one. 
They remind me very much of what it would 
be if a man had got a sound box on one 
side of his head and he was to go about 
complaining that nobody gave him another 
sound box on the other side. 

Now, we will go back for a moment to a 

1 Compare Pope's identical opinion in An Essay 
on Man. 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



441 



period which I remember very well, and 
which many in this meeting must remember. 
We will go back to the year 1840. At that 
time there was great distress in the coun- 
try. The duties upon goods coming into 
this country were almost beyond counting. I 
believe there were at least 1,200 articles on 
which, by the law of England, taxes were 
levied when the goods came into Liverpool, 
or London, or Hull, or Glasgow, or any 
other of the ports of the kingdom. Every- 
thing was taxed, and everything was limited 
and restricted. Even bread, the common 
food of the people, was taxed, almost more 
highly than anything else. Now, you may 
imagine — nay, you cannot imagine — but you 
may try to imagine in what kind of fetters 
all our industry was chained at that time. 
And you may try to imagine, but now in this 
day you cannot imagine, what was the 
amount of pauperism, suffering, and abject 
misery perpetually prevailing among the 
great body of the working-classes in the 
United Kingdom. 

I shall only refer to two articles, and from 
them you may learn what was the state of 
things with regard to others. I shall ask 
your attention to two articles only, those of 
corn and sugar. Up to the year 1846 — that 
is, just thirty years ago — everybody who is 
fifty years of age ought to remember all 
about it very well — up to 1846 corn was in 
reality prohibited from coming to this coun- 
try from abroad, until our own prices had 
risen so high by reason of a deficient harvest 
that people began to complain and began to 
starve, and it was let in at these very high 
prices in order in some degree to mitigate 
starvation, and to make famine less un- 
safe. 

It was in these times that Ebenezer 
Elliott, the Sheffield poet — the Corn-law- 
Rhymer — wrote his burning and scathing 
condemnation of this law. Many of you 
here are no doubt weavers employed in the 
cotton or woolen trade of this town, and 
have read the touching lines in which he is 
showing how the Corn Law is striking here 
and there almost everybody, blasting his 
prosperity and his hopes, and condemn- 
ing him and his family to daily suffering. 
He turns at last to the weaver, and he 
says : — 

Bread-taxed weaver, all may see 
What that tax hath done for thee, 
And thy children vilely led. 



Singing hymns for shameful bread. 
Till the stones of every street 
Know their little naked feet. 

And then looking upon the growth of crime, 
the conspiracies that were constantly afloat, 
the insurrections which were looked towards 
by people as a relief, he then addresses the 
ancient monarchy of his country. He says : — 

What shall bread tax do for thee 
Venerable monai'chy? 
Dreams of evil spare my sight; 
Let that horror rest in night. 

He knew, and everybody knew who compre- 
hended the character and operation of that 
law, that if it should continue to afflict the 
people as it did through thirty years of its 
existence, there was no institution in this 
country, not even its venerable monarchy, 
that could stand the strain that that law 
would bring to bear upon it. But there was 
another fact shown by the figures of that 
time — that not only pau^Derism increased, 
and crime increased, but mortality increased. 
Strong men and women were stricken down 
by the law, but the aged and little children 
were its constant and most numerous victims. 
I recollect, in one of those fine speeches 
which the late Mr. Fox — I mean Mr. Fox 
who for many years, as you recollect, and 
not long ago, was one of the representatives 
of the neighboring town of Oldham — I 
recollect an observation, or a passage in a 
speech of Mr. Fox, spoken, I think, from 
the boards of Covent Garden Theater, at one 
of our great meetings, where he said, refer- 
ring to the mortality among the people, and 
the death-rate rapidly increasing when the 
harvest failed, and when foreign food was 
prohibited, "The Corn Law is the harvest of 
Death as well as of the landowner, and 
Monopoly says to Corruption, 'Thou art my 
brother.' " 

Under the Government of Sir Robert Peel, 
in 1846, the law was repealed, and three 
years afterwards — in 1849 — all the duties on 
these articles were taken off, excej)t a shilling 
per quarter, which has been more recently 
abolished. Since this happened there has 
been no fall of rents throughout the kingdom. 
In point of fact the prosperity of the coun- 
try has been so increased that the rent of 
land throughout the country is now higher 
than it was when that Corn Law was in 



442 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



existence, and the farmers, who were always 
complaining during the existence of that 
law, have scarcely ever been heard to com- 
plain in the least since it was abolished. 
They complained for a year or two because 
they had been greatly frightened, but there 
has never been, I will say, within the last 
hundred years a period when the farmers of 
this country have made less complaint to the 
public or to Parliament than they have dur- 
ing the last thirty years since the law for 
their protection was abolished. And what 
happened to the laborer? The wages of 
farm-laborers have risen on the whole much 
more, I believe, than fifty per cent, through- 
out the whole country; and in some coun- 
ties and districts, I believe, the farm-laborer 
at this moment is receiving double the wages 
he was when this law was in existence. We 
ought to learn from this what a grand thing 
it is to establish our la^v■s upon a basis of 
freedom and justice. It blesses him who 
gives and him who takes. It has blessed all 
our manufacturing districts with a steadiness 
of employment and an abundance they never 
knew before, and it has blessed not less the 
very class who in their dark error and blind- 
ness thought that they could have profited 
by that which was so unjust, so cruel to the 
bulk of their countrymen. 

There is only one other point to which I 
shall refer as to changes in the law, and that 
is with regard to the extension of the 
borough franchise. You know what a ter- 
rible thing it was in prospect, how many 
people said we were going to Americanize 
our institutions. They did not know what 
that meant, but they used the phrase, and 
what harm has happened? They said that 
property would not be safe, and how every- 
body would overturn everybody else. And 
what has happened? The most conspicuous 
fact throughout the country is, that there is 
universal content in all the borough popula- 
tion among those to whom the franchise had 
been extended. At this moment there are no 
conspiracies. Your workmen's club is not 
a political club to get up some movement 
against the law or the monarchy. There is 
nothing of that kind now. In time past, 
even those very persons who were so much 
afraid of us did not hold their property 
and their privileges by so secure a tenure as 
they have held them since the passing of the 
law. Nay, the monarch of these realms, 
popular as she has been ; popular as she has 
always deserved to be ; still, I will undertake 



to say of her, I say it without hesitation, and 
without fear of contradiction, that there 
were times within the last thirty years, and 
since she came to the throne, when there was 
a great deal less of an honest and true loy- 
alty than is to be found in this country at 
the present time. 

And you have not only got the franchise, 
but you have got the ballot to secure you 
from any compulsion with regard to its 
exercise. I recollect a peer, whose name you 
would know very well if I were to mention 
it, who went about in a state of almost men- 
tal agony, saying, "If this Ballot Bill be 
passed the whole influence of property will 
be gone." But what has happened? The 
influence of property, so far as it is a just 
influence, exists now, and is exercised now, 
and any exercise which it had before the 
ballot was conferred was an exercise that it 
ought not to have had, and was a tyranny 
over all those upon whom it was exer- 
cised. 

But I want to tell the working-men of this 
workman's club what some of them do not — • 
at least what some woi'kmen do not appear 
altogether to appreciate or comprehend — • 
that they are now the full citizens of a free 
country, and that on them a great responsi- 
bility is devolved. Is it not a grand his- 
tory, that of the last forty years? Are not 
the changes such as all of us may be proud 
of, that they have been effected with so lit- 
tle, in fact with no disturbance? You can- 
not point, probably, to a revolution of vio- 
lence in any country of late times where 
there has been so much done of permanent 
good, in the same period, as has been done 
for the people of this country by the wise 
changes in our law. And yet, I dare say, 
history will not say very much of these 
changes. The fact is, history busies itself 
with other matters. It will tell our children, 
I dare say, of conquests in India, of annexa- 
tion, it may be in the Punjab, of Chinese 
wars — ^wars which were as discreditable to 
us as they have been unprofitable. It will 
tell your children of the destruction of 
Sebastopol, and perhaps it may tell them 
that everything for which Sebastopol was 
destroyed has been surrendered, or is being 
now surrendered, by an English minister at 
Constantinople. But of all these changes 
which have saved the nation from anarchy, 
and an English monarchy from ruin, history 
will probably say but little. Blood shines 
more upon her pages, and the grand and 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



443 



noiseless triumphs of peace and of wise and 
just legislation too often find but scanty 
memorial from her hands. 

But now there may be those who will put 
this question to me. Some of my critics 
tomorrow or the day after will say, What 
has this to do with working-men's clubs'? 
Why talk polities to a meeting Avhich is un- 
derstood not to be a jDolitical meeting? I 
have not been talking politics. These ques- 
tions which I have been discussing were poli- 
ties a few years ago when the contest was 
raging round us whether they should be set- 
tled justly or not. Now they are not poli- 
ties, they are not matters of controversy, 
they are matters of history, and I am treat- 
ing you to a chapter of history. But then 
they will say, Why tell us the old story, and 
go back to the Corn Law and the Sugar 
monopoly? They will say I wanted to 
glorify myself before my fellow-townsmen 
because I had taken a humble part, with 
hundreds of thousands of others, in carry- 
ing these measures. No, I tell you the old 
story because there are many in this room 
wiio are too young to have known much 
about it, and it is a great and salutary les- 
son for the members of the workmen's club, 
and for workmen everywhere to have spoken 
and read to them. It tells them of freedom, 
and how freedom was won, and what free- 
dom has done for them, and it points the 
way to other paths of freedom which yet lie 
open before them. 

I conclude what I have to say with only 
one other point, and that is on the question 
of education. I believe that workmen have 
need to be taught, to have it pointed out to 
them, how much their own family comfort 
and the success and happiness of their chil- 
dren depends on this — that they should do 
all they can to give their children such edu- 
cation as is in their power. One of the 
American States is the State of Massa- 
chusetts, and it probably is the most edu- 
cated and intellectual. It has a system of 
general education. Massachusetts was 
founded about 250 years ago. From that 
time to this it has had a system — a very ex- 
tended system — of public schools. Eight 
generations of its population have had the 
advantage of being educated in these schools. 
The men who were driven from this country 
by the tyranny of monarch and archbishop 
founded this school system — the men of 
whom the poet I have already quoted speaks 
in these terms, describing them as — 



The Fathers of New England who unbound 
In wild Columbia Europe's double chain. 

Meaning the chain of a despotic monarchy 
and of a despotic and persecuting Church. 
Suppose we had had in this country all that 
time schools for the education of your chil- 
dren, to what a position this country would 
have risen by this time. 

I want to ask working-men to do their 
utmost to support the school system. Be it 
a school belonging to a sect, or be it a school 
belonging to the School Board; if it be a 
convenient or a possible school for your 
children, take care that your children go to 
school, so that Parliament in voting 2,500,- 
OOOZ. for the purpose of education — 2,500,- 
0001. to which you subscribe by the taxes — 
shall have the cordial and the enthusiastic 
support of the people in forwarding educa- 
tion to the greatest possible degree in their 
power. DeiDend upon it if you support the 
school the school will compensate you. You 
know, I dare say, a passage, which is one 
of the many striking passages which you- 
may find in the writings of Shakespeare — 
where he says, speaking of children that are 
rebellious and troublesome — 

How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is. 
To have a thankless child. 

I ask working-men, and I might ask it of 
every class to a certain extent, how much 
of the unhappiness of families, how much 
of the grief and gloom which often over- 
shadow the later years of parents come from 
what I may call the rebellion of children 
against their parents' authority, and against 
the moral law. If you will send your chil- 
dren to school, encourage them in their learn- 
ing, make them feel that this is a great thing 
for them to possess, the generation to come 
will be much superior to the generations 
that have passed, and those who come after 
us will see that prospering, of which we can 
only look forward to see the beginnings in 
the efforts which are now being made. And 
more than this, besides making your fami- 
lies happier, besides doing so much for the 
success of your children in life, you will 
also produce this great result, that you will 
do much to build up the fabric of the great- 
ness and the glory of your country upon the 
sure foundation of an intellig,ent' and a 
Christian people. 



444 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Why I Am a Liberal 

ROBERT BROWNING 

"Why?" Because all I haply can and do, 
All that I am now, all I hope to be, — 
Whence comes it save from fortune set- 
ting free 

Body and soul the purpose to pursue, 

God traced for both 1 If fetters, not a few. 
Of prejudice, convention, fall from me. 
These shall I bid men — each in his degree 

Also God-guided — bear, and gayly tool 

But little do or can the best of us : 
That little is achieved thro' Liberty. 

Who then dares hold, emancipated thus, 
His fellow shall continue bound 1 not I, 

Who live, love, labor freely, nor discuss 
A brother's right to freedom. That is 
"Why." 

The Lost Leader 

robert brow^ning 

Just for a handful of silver he left us, 

Just for a riband to stick in his coat — 
Found the one gift of which fortune 
bereft us. 
Lost all the others she lets us devote ; 
They, with the gold to give, doled him out 
silver. 
So much was theirs who so little allowed : 
How all our cojDper had gone for his service ! 
Rags — were they purple, his heart had 
been proud ! 
We that had loved him so, followed him, 
honored him. 
Lived in his mild and magnificent eye, 



Learned his great language, caught his clear 
accents, 
Made him our pattern to live and to die ! 
Shakespeare was of us, Milton was for us. 
Burns, Shelley, were with us, — they watcli 
from their graves ! 
He alone breaks from the van and the free- 
men, 
— He alone sinks to the rear and the 
slaves ! 
We shall march prospering, — not through 
his presence; 
Songs may inspirit us, — not from his lyre ; 
Deeds will be done, — ^while he boasts his 
quiescence. 
Still bidding crouch whom the rest bade 
aspire : 
Blot out his name, then, record one lost soul 
more. 
One task more declined, one more footpath 
untrod. 
One more devils'-triumph and sorrow for 
angels. 
One wrong more to man, one more insult 
to God! 
Life's night begins : let him never come back 
to us! 
There would be doubt, hesitation, and 
pain. 
Forced praise on our part — the glimmer of 
twilight. 
Never glad, confident morning again ! 
Best fight on well, for we taught him — strike 
gallantly. 
Menace our heart ere we master his own; 
Then let him receive the new knowledge and 
wait us. 
Pardoned in heaven, the first by the 
throne ! 



3. FREEDOM AND THE EMPIRE 



Home-Thoughts, prom Abroad 

robert browning 

Oh, to be in England 

Now that April's there. 

And whoever wakes in England 

Sees, some morning, unaware, 

That the lowest boughs and the brush-wood 

sheaf 
Round the elm-tree bole are in tiny leaf, 
While the chaffinch sings on the orchard 

bough 
In England — now! 



And after April, when May follows. 

And the whitethroat builds, and all the swal- 
lows! 

Hark, where my blossomed pear-tree in the 
hedge 

Leans to the field and scatters on the clover 

Blossoms and dewdrops — at the bent spray's 
edge— 

That's the wise thrush; he sings each song 
twice over. 

Lest you should think he never could re- 
capture 

The first fine careless rapture ! 



NINETEENTH CENTURY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



445 



And though the fields look rough with hoary 

dew, 
All will be gay when noontide wakes anew 
The buttercups, the little children's dower 
— Far brighter than this gaudy melon- 
flower ! 

Home-ThoughtS;, from the Sea 
robert browning 

Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent to the 

Northwest died away ; 
Sunset ran, one glorious blood-red, reeking 

into Cadiz Bay; 
Bluish 'mid the burning water, full in face 

Trafalgar lay; 
In the dimmest Northeast distance dawned 

Gibraltar grand and gray; 
"Here and here did England help me: how 

can I help England?" — say. 
Whoso turns as I, this evening, turn to God 

to praise and pray. 
While Jove's planet rises yonder, silent over 

Africa. 

You AsK^E, Why, Tho' III at Ease 

ALFRED TENNYSON 

You ask me, why, tho' ill at ease, 
Within this region I subsist, 
Whose spirits falter in the mist. 

And languish for the purple seas. 

It is the land that freemen till. 
That sober-suited Freedom chose, 
The land, where girt with friends or foes 

A man may speak the thing he will ; 

A land of settled government, 
A land of just and old renown. 
Where Freedom slowly broadens down 

From precedent to precedent ; 

Where faction seldom gathers head. 
But, by degrees to fullness wrought. 
The strength of some diffusive thought 

Hath time and space to work and spread. 

Should banded unions persecute 
Opinions, and induce a time 
When single thought is civil crime, 

And individual freedom mute; 

Tho' power should make from land to land 
The name of Britain trebly great — 



Tho' every channel of the State 
Should fill and choke with golden sand — 

Yet waft me from the harbor-mouth, 
Wild wind ! I seek a warmer sky. 
And I will see before I die 

The palms and temples of the South. 

Of Old Sat Freedom on the Heights 
alfred tennyson 

Of old sat Freedom on the heights. 
The thunders breaking at her feet ; 

Above her shook the starry lights; 
She heard the torrents meet. 

There in her place she did rejoice, 
Self-gather'd in her prophet-mind. 

But fragments of her mighty voice 
Came rolling on the wind. 

Then stepped she down thro' town and field 
To mingle with the human race, 

And part by part to men reveal'd 
The fulness of her face — 

Grave mother of majestic works, 
From her isle-altar gazing down. 

Who, God-like, gTasps the triple forks, 
And, king-like, wears the crown. 

Her open eyes desire the truth. 

The wisdom of a thousand years 
Is in them. May perpetual youth 

Keep dry their light from tears ; 

That her fair form may stand and shine. 
Make bright our days and light our 
dreams. 

Turning to scorn with lips divine 
The falsehood of extremes ! 



Love Thou Thy Land 
alfred tennyson 

Love .thou thy land, with love far-brought 
From out the storied past, and used 
Within the present, but transfused 

Thro^i&ite^g. time by power of thought; 

True love turn'd round on fixed poles, 
Love, that endures not sordid ends, 
For English natures, freemen, friends. 

Thy brothers, and immortal souls. 



446 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



But pamper not a hasty time, 
Nor feed with crude imaginings 
The herd, wild hearts and feeble wings 

That every sophister can lime. 

Deliver not the tasks of might 
To weakness, neither hide the ray 
From those, not blind, who wait for day, 

Tho' sitting girt with doubtful light. 

Make knowledge circle with the winds; 

But let her herald. Reverence, fly 

Before her to whatever sky 
Bear seed of men and growth of minds. 

Watch what main-currents draw the years : 
Cut Prejudice against the grain. 
But gentle words are always gain; 

Regard the weakness of thy peers. 

Nor toil for title, place, or touch 

Of pension, neither count on praise — 
It grows to guerdon after-days. 

Nor deal in watch-words overmuch ; 

Not clinging to some ancient saw. 
Not master'd by some modern term. 
Not swift nor slow to change, but firm ; 

And in its season bring the law, 

That from Discussion's lip may fall 

With Life that, working strongly, binds — 
Set in all lights by many minds, 

To close the interests of all. 

For Nature also, cold and warm, 
And moist and dry, devising long. 
Thro' many agents making strong. 

Matures the individual form. 

Meet is it changes should control 
Our being, lest we rust in ease. 
We all are changed by still degTees, 

All but the basis of the soul. 

So let the change which comes be free 
To ingroove itself with that which flies. 
And work, a joint of state, that plies 

Its office, moved with sympathy. 

A saying hard to shape in act ; 
For all the past of Time reveals 
A bridal dawn of thunder-peals. 

Wherever Thought hath wedded Fact. 



Even now we hear with inward strife 
A motion toiling in the gloom — 
The Spirit of the years to come 

Yearning to mix himself with Life. 

A slow-develop'd strength awaits 
Completion in a painful school; 
Phantoms of other forms of rule, 

New Majesties of mighty States — 

The warders of the growing hour, 
But vague in vapor, hard to mark; 
And round them sea and air are dark 

With great contrivances of Power. 

Of many changes, aptly join'd. 
Is bodied forth the second whole. 
Regard gradation, lest the soul 

Of Discord race the rising wind ; 

A wind to puff your idol-fires. 

And heap their ashes on the head; 
To shame the boast so often made, 

That we are wiser than our sires. 

0, yet, if Nature's evil star 

Drive men in manhood, as in youth, 
To follow flying steps of Truth 

Across the brazen bridge of war — 

If New and Old, disastrous feud. 
Must ever shock, like armed foes. 
And this be true, till Time shall close, 

That Principles are rain'd in blood; 

Not yet the wise of heart would cease 
To hold his hope thro' shame and guilt. 
But with his hand against the hilt, 

Would pace the troubled land, like Peace ; 

Not less, tho' dogs of Faction bay, 

Would serve his kind in deed and word. 
Certain, if knowledge bring the sword. 

That knowledge takes the sword away — 

Would love the gleams of good that broke 
From either side, nor veil his eyes ; 
And if some dreadful need should rise 

Would strike, and firmly, and one stroke. 

Tomorrow yet would reap today, 
As we bear blossom of the dead; 
Earn well the thrifty months, nor wed 

Raw Haste, half-sister to Delay. 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



447 



Ode on the Death op the Duke op 
Wellington 

alfred tennyson 



Bury the Great Duke 

With an empire's lamentation ; 
Let us bury the Great Duke 

To the noise of the mourning of a mighty 
nation ; 
Mourning when their leaders fall, 
Warriors carry the warrior's pall, 
And sorrow darkens hamlet and hall. 



II 

Where shall we lay the man whom we de- 
plore? 
Here, in streaming London's central roar. 
Let the sound of those he wrought for, 
And the feet of those he fought for, 
Echo round his bones for evermore. 



Ill 

Lead out the pageant : sad and slow. 

As fits an universal woe. 

Let the long, long procession go. 

And let the sorrowing crowd about it grow, 

And let the mournful martial music blow; 

The last great Englishman is low. 



IV 

Mourn, for to us he seems the last, 
Remembering all his greatness in the past, 
No more in soldier fashion will he greet 
With lifted hand the gazer in the street. 
friends, our chief state-oracle is mute ! 
Mourn for the man of long-enduring blood, 
The statesman-warrior, moderate, resolute, 
Whole in himself, a common good. 
Mourn for the man of amplest influence. 
Yet clearest of ambitious crime, 
Our greatest yet with least pretence, 
Great in council and great in war, 
Foremost captain of his time. 
Rich in saving common-sense. 
And, as the greatest only are. 
In his simplicity sublime. 
good gray head which all men knew, 
voice from which their omens all men 

drew, 
iron nerve to true occasion true, 
fallen at length that tower of strength 



Which stood four-square to all the winds 

that blew ! 
Such was he whom we deplore. 
The long self-sacrifice of life is o'er. 
The great World-victor's victor will be seen 



All is over and done. 

Render thanks to the Giver, 

England, for thy son. 

Let the bell be toll'd. 

Render thanks to the Giver, 

And render him to the mold. 

Under the cross of gold 

That shines over city and river, 

There he shall rest forever 

Among the wise and the bold. 

Let the bell be toll'd. 

And a reverent people behold 

The towering ear, the sable steeds. 

Bright let it be with its blazon'd deeds, 

Dark in its funeral fold. 

Let the bell be toll'd, 

And a deeper knell in the heart be knoll'd; 

And the sound of the sorrowing anthem 

roll'd 
Thro' the dome of the golden cross ; 
And the volleying cannon thunder his loss; 
He knew their voices of old. 
For many a time in many a clime 
His captain's-ear has heard them boom 
Bellowing victory, bellowing doom. 
When he with those deep voices wrought, 
Guarding realms and kings from shame, 
With those deep voices our dead captain 

taught 
The tyrant, and asserts his claim 
In that dread sound to the great name 
Which he has worn so pure of blame. 
In praise and in dispraise the same, 
A man of well-attemper'd frame. 
civic muse, to such a name, 
To such a name for ages long, 
To such a name. 

Preserve a broad approach of fame, 
And ever-echoing avenues of song ! 

VI 

"Who is he that eometh, like an honor'd 

guest. 
With banner and with music, with soldier 

and with priest, 
With a nation weeping, and breaking on 

my rest ?" — 
Mighty Seaman, this is he 



448 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



Was great by land as thou by sea. 

Thine island loves thee well, thou famous 
man, 

The greatest sailor since our world began. 

Now, to the roll of muffled drums, 

To thee the greatest soldier comes; 

For this is he 

Was great by land as thou by sea. 

His foes were thine; he kept us free; 

0, give him welcome, this is he 

Worthy of our gorgeous rites, 

And worthy to be laid by thee; 

For this is England's greatest son, 

He that gain'd a hundred fights, 

Nor ever lost an English, gun ; 

This is he that far aM^ay 

Against the myriads of Assay e 

Clash'd with his fiery few and won ; 

And underneath another sun, 

Warring on a later day. 

Round affrighted Lisbon drew 

The treble works, the vast designs 

Of his labor'd rampart-lines. 

Where he greatly stood at bay, 

Whence he issued forth anew. 

And ever great and greater grew. 

Beating from the wasted vines 

Back to France her banded swarms, 

Back to France with countless blows, 

Till o'er the hills her eagles flew 

Beyond the Pyrenean pines, 

FoUow'd up in valley and glen 

With blare of bugle, clamor of men, 

Roll of cannon and clash of arms, 

And England pouring on her foes. 

Such a war had such a close. 

Again their ravening eagle rose 

In anger, wheel'd on Europe-shadowing 
wings. 

And barking for the thrones of kings; 

Till one that sought but Duty's iron crown 

On that loud Sabbath shook the spoiler 
down ; 

A day of onsets of despair ! 

Dash'd on every rocky square, 

Their surging charges foam'd themselves 
away ; 

Last, the Prussian trumpet blew; 

Thro' the long-tormented air 

Heaven flash'd a sudden jubilant ray, 

And down we swept and charged and over- 
threw. 

So great a soldier taught us there 

What long-enduring hearts could do 

In that world-earthquake, Waterloo! 

Mighty Seaman, tender and true, 

And pure as he from taint of craven guile. 



saviour of the silver-coasted isle, 

shaker of the Baltic and the Nile, 

If aught of things that here befall 

Touch a spirit among things divine. 

If love of country move thee there at all, 

Be glad, because his bones are laid by thine ! 

And thro' the centuries let a' people's voice 

In full acclaim, 

A people's voice, 

The proof and echo Do. all human fame, - 

A people's voice, when they rejoice 

At civic revel and pomp and game. 

Attest their great commander's claim 

With honor, honor, honor, honor to him, 

Eternal honor to his name. 



VII 

A people's voice! we are a people yet. 
Tho' all men else their nobler dreams forget. 
Confused by brainless mobs and lawless 

Powers, 
Thank Him who isl'd us here, and roughly 

set 
His Briton in blown seas and storming 

showers. 
We have a voice with which to pay the debt 
Of boundless love and reverence and regret 
To those great men who fought, and kept 

it ours. 
And keep it ours, God, from brute con- 
trol ! 
Statesmen, guard us, gTiard the eye, the 

soul 
Of Europe, keep our noble England whole, 
And save the one true seed of freedom sown 
Betwixt a people and their ancient throne. 
That sober freedom out of which there 

springs 
Our loyal passion for our temperate kings ! 
For, saving that, ye help to save mankind 
Till public wrong be crumbled into dust. 
And drill the raw world for the march of 

mind. 
Till crowds at length be sane and crowns 

be just. 
But wink no more in slothful overtrust. 
Remember him who led your hosts ; 
He bade you guard the sacred coasts. 
Your cannons molder on the seaward wall; 
His voice is silent in your council-hall 
For ever ; and whatever tempests lour 
For ever silent ; even if they broke 
In thunder, silent; yet remember all 
He spoke among you, and the Man who 

spoke ; 
Who never sold the truth to serve the hour, 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



449 



Nor palter'd with Eternal God for power; 

Who let the turbid streams of rumor flow 

Thro' either babbling world of high and 
low; 

Whose life was work, whose language rife 

With rugged maxims hewn from life; 

Who never spoke against a foe; 

Whose eighty winters freeze with one re- 
buke 

All great self-seekers trampling on the 
right. 

Truth-teller was our England's Alfred 
named ; 

Truth-lover was our English Duke ! 

Whatever record leap to light 

He never shall be shamed. 

VIII 

Lo ! the leader in these glorious wars 
Now to glorious burial slowly borne, 
Follow'd by the brave of other lands. 
He, on whom from both her open hands 
Lavish Honor shower'd all her stars, 
And affluent Fortune emptied all her horn. 
Yea, let all good things await 
Him who cares not to be great 
But as he saves or serves the state. 
Not once or twice in our rough island-story 
That path of. duty was the way to glory. 
He that walks it, only thirsting 
For the right, and learns to deaden 
Love of self, before his journey closes. 
He shall find the stubborn thistle bursting 
Into glossy purples, which out-redden 
All voluptuous garden-roses. 
Not once or twice in our fair island-story 
The path of duty was the way to glory. 
He, that ever following her commands. 
On with toil of heart and knees and hands. 
Thro' the long gorge to the far light has 

won 
His path upward, and prevail'd, 
Shall find the toppling crags of Duty scaled 
Are close upon the shining table-lands 
To which our God himself is moon and sun. 
Such was he: his work is done. 
But while the races of mankind endure 
Let his great example stand 
Colossal, seen of every land, 
And keep the soldier firm, the statesman 

pure; 
Till in all lands and. thro' all human story 
The path of duty be the way to glory. 
And let the land whose hearths he saved 

from shame 
For many and many an age proclaim 



At civic revel and pomp and game. 
And when the long-illumined cities flame, 
Their ever-loyal iron leader's fame, 
With honor, honor, honor, honor to him. 
Eternal honor to his name. 



IX 

Peace, his triumph will be sung 

By some yet unmolded tongue 

Far on in summers that we shall not see. 

Peace, it is a day of pain 

For one about whose patriarchal knee 

Late the little children clung, 

peace, it is a day of pain 

For one upon whose hand and heart and 
brain 

Once the weight and fate of Europe hung. 

Ours the pain, be his the gain ! 

More than is of man's degree 

Must be with us, watching here 

At this, our great solemnity. 

Whom we see not we revere; 

We revere, and we refrain 

From talk of battles loud and vain. 

And brawling memories all too free 

For such a wise humility 

As befits a solemn fane: 

We revere, and while we hear 

The tides of Music's golden sea 

Setting toward eternity. 

Uplifted high in heart and hope are we. 

Until we doubt not that for one so true 

There must be other nobler work to do 

Than when he fought at Waterloo, 

And Victor he must ever be. 

For tho' the Giant Ages heave the hill 

And break the shore, and evermore 

Make and break, and work their will, 

Tho' world on world in myriad myriads 
roU^ 

Round us, each with different powers, 

And other forms of life than ours, 

What know we greater than the soul ? 

On God and Godlike men we build our trust. 

Hush, the Dead March wails in the peo- 
ple's ears; 

The dark crowd moves, and there are sobs 
and tears; 

The black earth yawns; the mortal disap- 
pears ; 

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust; 

He is gone who seem'd so great. — 

Gone, but nothing can bereave him 

Of the force he made his own 

Being here, and we believe him 

Something far advanced in State, 



450 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



And that he wears a truer crown 

Than any wreath that man can weave him. 

Speak no more of his renown, 

Lay your earthly fancies down, 

And in the vast cathedral leave him. 

God accept him, Christ receive him ! 

(1852) 



Hands All Round 

alfred tennyson 

First pledge our Queen this solemn night, 

Then drink to England, every guest; 
That man's the best Cosmopolite 

Who loves his native country best. 
May freedom's oak for ever live 

With stronger life from day to day; 
That man's the true Conservative 
Who lops the molder'd branch away. 

Hands all round! 
God the traitor's hope confound! 
To this great cause of Freedom drink, my 
friends. 
And the great name of England, round 
and round. 

To all the loyal hearts- who long 

To keep our English Empire whole! 
To all our noble sons, the strong 

New England of the Southern Pole! 
To England under Indian skies. 

To those dark millions of her realm ! 
To Canada whom we love and prize. 
Whatever statesman hold the helm. 

Hands all round! 
God the traitor's hope confound! 
To this great name of England drink, my 
friends. 
And all her glorious empire, round and 
round. 

To all our statesmen so they be 

True leaders of the land's desire ! 
To both our Houses, may they see 

Beyond the borough and the shire ! 
We sail'd wherever ship could sail. 

We founded many a mighty state ; 
Pray God our greatness may not fail 
Thro' craven fears of being great ! 

Hands all round! 
God the traitor's hope confound ! 
To this great cause of Freedom drink, my 
friends. 
And the great name of England, round 
and round! 



To THE Queen 

ALFRED TENNYSON 

[Epilogue, Idylls of the King] 

loyal to the royal in thyself. 
And loyal to thy land, as this to thee — 
Bear witness, that rememberable day. 
When, pale as yet, and fever-worn, the 

Prince 
Who scarce had pluck'd his flickering life 

again 
From halfway down the shadow of the 

grave, 
Past with thee thro' thy people and their 

love. 
And London roll'd one tide of joy thro' all 
Her trebled millions, and loud leagues of 

man 
And welcome! witness, too, the silent cry. 
The prayer of many a race and creed, and 

clime — 
Thunderless lightnings striking under sea 
From sunset" and sunrise of all thy realm. 
And that true North, whereof we lately 

heard 
A strain to shame us "keep you to your- 
selves ; 
So loyal is too costly! friends — your love 
Is but a burthen: loose the bond, and go." 
Is this the tone of empire? here the faith 
That made us rulers 1 this, indeed, her voice 
And meaning, whom the roar of Hougou- 

mont 
Left mightiest of all peoples under heaven ? 
What shock has fool'd her since, that she 

should speak 
So feebly? wealthier — wealthier — hour by 

hour ! 
The voice of Britain, or a sinking land, 
Some third-rate isle half-lost among her 

seas? 
There rang her voice, when the full city 

peal'd 
Thee and thy Prince! The loyal to their 

crown 
Are loyal to their own far sons, who love 
Our ocean-empire with her boundless homes 
For ever-broadening England, and her 

throne 
In our vast Orient, and one isle, one isle, 
That knows not her own greatness: if she 

knows 
And dreads it we are fall'n. — But thou, my 

Queen, 
Not for itself, but thro' thy living love 
For one to whom I made it o'er his grave 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



451 



k 



Sacred, accept this old imperfect tale, 
New-old, and shadowing Sense at war with 

Soul 
Rather than that gray king, whose name, a 

ghost. 
Streams like a cloud, man-shaped, from 

mountain peak. 
And cleaves to cairn and cromlech still; or 

him 
Of Geoffrey's book, or him of Malleor's, 

one 
Touch'd by the adulterous finger of a time 
That hover'd between war and wantonness, 
And crownings and dethronements : take 

withal 
Thy poet's blessing, and his trust that 

Heaven 
Will blow the tempest in the distance back 
From thine and ours: for some are scared, 

who mark, 
Or wisely or unwisely, signs of storm, 
Waverings of every vane with every wind, 
And wordy trucklings to the transient hour, 
And fierce or careless looseners of the faith, 
And Softness breeding scorn of simple life, 
Or Cowardice, the child of lust for gold, 
Or Labor, with a groan and not a voice. 
Or Art with poisonous honey stol'n from 

France, 
And that which knows, but careful for it- 
self. 
And that which knows not, ruling that which 

knows 
To its own harm: the goal of this great 

world 
Lies beyond sight : yet — if our slowly-grown 
And crown'd Republic's crowning common- 
sense. 
That saved her many times, not fail — their 

fears 
Are morning shadows huger than the shapes 
That cast them, not those gloomier which 

forego 
The darkness of that battle in the West, 
Where all of high and holy dies away. 

(1873) 

A Song in Time of Order (1852) 

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 

Push hard across the sand. 

For the salt wind gathers breath ; 

Shoulder and wrist and hand, 
Push hard as the push of death. 

The wind is as iron that rings. 
The foam-heads loosen and flee; 



It swells and welters and swings, 
The pulse of the tide of the sea. 

And up on the yellow cliff 

The long corn flickers and shakes; 

Push, for the wind holds stiff. 
And the gunwale dips and rakes. 

Good hap to the fresh fierce weather, 
The quiver and beat of the sea! 

While three men hold together 
The kingdoms are less by three. 

Out to the sea with her there. 

Out with her over the sand. 
Let the kings keep the earth for their share ! 

We have done with the sharers of land. 

They have tied the world in a tether. 
They have bought over God with a fee ; 

While three men hold together, 
The kingdoms are less by three. 

We have done with the kisses that sting, 
The thief's mouth red from the feast, 

The blood on the hands of the king. 
And the lie at the lips of the priest. 

Will they tie the winds in a tether. 
Put a bit in the jaws of the sea? 

While three men hold together, 
The kingdoms are less by three. 

Let our flag run out straight in the wind! 

The old red shall be floated again 
When the ranks that are thin shall be 
thinned. 
When the names that were twenty are 
ten; 

When the devil's riddle is mastered 

And the galley-bench creaks with a Pope, 

We shall see Buonaparte the bastard 
Kick heels with his throat in a rope. 

While the shepherd sets wolves on his sheep 
And the emperor halters his kine. 

While Shame is a watchman asleep 
And Faith is a keeper of swine. 

Let the wind shake our flag like a feather, 
Like the plumes of the foam of the sea ! 

While three men hold together, 
The kingdoms are less by three. 

All the world has its burdens to bear, 
From Cayenne to the Austrian whips; 



452 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Forth, with the rain in our hair 

And the salt sweet foam in our lips : 

In the teeth of the hard glad weather, 
In the blown wet face of the sea ; 

While three men hold together. 
The kingdoms are less by three. 

An Appeal 

algernon charles swinburne 

Art thou indeed among these. 
Thou of the tyrannous crew. 
The kingdoms fed upon blood, 
O queen from of old of the seas, 
England, art thou of them too 
That drink of the poisonous flood, 
That hide under poisonous trees? 

Nay, thy name from of old, 
Mother, was pure, or we dreamed; 
Purer we held thee than this. 
Purer fain would we hold ; 
So goodly a glory it seemed, 
A fame so bounteous of bliss. 
So more precious than gold. 

A praise so sweet in our ears. 

That thou in the tempest of things 

As a rock for a refuge shouldst stand. 

In the blood-red river of tears 

Poured forth for the triumph of kings; 

A safeguard, a sheltering land, 

In the thunder and torrent of years. 

Strangers came gladly to thee. 

Exiles, chosen of men, 

Safe for thy sake in thy shade, 

Sat down at thy feet and were free. 

So men spake of thee then; 

Now shall their speaking be stayed? 

Ah, so let it not be! 

Not for revenge or affright, 

Pride, or a tyrannous lust. 

Cast from thee the crown of thy praise. 

Mercy was thine in thy might ; 

Strong when thou wert, thou wert just ; 

Now, in the wrong-doing days, 

Cleave thou, thou at least, to the right. 

How should one charge thee, how sway. 
Save by the memories that were? 
Not thy gold nor the strength of thy ships, 
Nor the might of thine armies at bay. 
Made thee, mother, most fair; 



But a word from republican lips 
Said in thy name in thy day. 

Hast thou said it, and hast thou forgot? 
Is thy praise in thine ears as a scoff? 
Blood of men guiltless was shed. 
Children, and souls without spot, 
Shed, but in places far off; 
Let slaughter no more he, said 
Milton; and slaughter was not. 

Was it not said of thee too, 

Now, but now, by thy foes. 

By the slaves that had slain their France 

And thee would slay as they slew — 

"Down with her walls that enclose 

Freemen that eye us askance. 

Fugitives, men that are true !" 

This was thy praise or thy blame 
From bondsman or freeman — to be 
Pure from pollution of slaves, 
Clean of their sins, and thy name 
Bloodless, innocent, free; 
Now if thou be not, thy waves 
Wash not from off thee thy shame. 

Freeman he is not, but slave. 
Whoso in fear for the State 
Cries for surety of blood, 
Help of gibbet and grave ; 
Neither is any land great 
Whom, in her fear-stricken mood. 
These things only can save. 

Lo! how fair from afar. 
Taintless of tyranny, stands 
Thy mighty daughter, for years 
Who trod the winepress of war, — 
Shines with immaculate hands ; 
Slays not a foe, neither fears;. 
Stains not peace with a scar. 

Be not as tyrant or slave, 

England ; be not as these, 

Thou that wert other than they. 

Stretch out thine hand, but to save ; 

Put forth thy strength, and release : 

Lest there arise, if thou slay, 

Thy shame as a ghost from the grave. 

Recessional (1897) 

rudyard kipling 

God of our fathers, known of old — 

Lord of our far-flung battle line — 
Beneath whose awful hand we hold 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



453 



Dominion over palm and pine — 
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 
Lest we forget — lest we forget ! 

The tumul't and the shouting dies — 
The Captains and the Kings depart — 

Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, 
An humble and a contrite heart. 

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 

Lest we forget — lest we forget ! 

Far-called, our navies melt away — 

On dune and headland sinks the fire — 

Lo, all our pomp of yesterday 
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre! 



Judge of the Nations, spare us yet, 
Lest we forget — lest we forget ! 

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose 
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe — 

Such boasting as the Gentiles use, 
Or lesser breeds without the Law — 

Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet, 

Lest we forget — lest we forget ! 

For heathen heart that puts her trust 
In reeking tube and iron shard — 

All valiant dust that builds on dust, 
And guarding calls not Thee to guard. 

For frantic boast and foolish word. 

Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord! 

Amen. 



4. INTERNATIONAL SYMPATHIES 



At the Sunrise in 1848 
dante gabriel rossetti 

God said. Let there be light ! and there was 

light. 
Then heard we sounds as though the Earth 

did sing 
And the Earth's angel cried upon the wing: 
We saw priests fall together and turn 

white : 
And covered in the dust from the sun's 

sight, 
A king was spied, and yet another king. 
We said: "The round world keeps its bal- 
ancing : 
On this globe, they and we are opposite, — 
If it is day with us, with them 't is night. 
Still, Man, in thy just pride, remember this : 
Thou hadst not made that thy sons' sons 

shall ask 
What the word king may mean in their 

day's task. 
But for the light that led: and if light is, 
It is because God said. Let there be light." 

Sat Not the Struggle Nought Availeth 
arthur hugh clough 

Say not the struggle nought availeth, 
The labor and the wounds are vain, 

The enemy faints not, nor faileth. 

And as things have been they remain. 

If hopes were dupes, fears may be liars; 
It may be, in yon smoke concealed. 



Your comrades chase e'en now the fliers. 
And, but for you, possess the field. 

For while the tired waves, vainly breaking. 
Seem here no painful inch to gain. 

Far back, through creeks and inlets making. 
Comes silent, flooding in, the main. 

And not by eastern windows only. 

When daylight comes, comes in the light. 

In front, the sun climbs slow, how slowly. 
But westward, look, the land is bright. 

(1849) 

The Italian in England 

robert brov^ning 

That second time they hunted me 
From hill to plain, from shore to sea. 
And Austria, hounding far and wide 
Her blood-hounds through the country-side, 
Breathed hot and instant on my trace, — 
I made six days a hiding-place 
Of that dry green old aqueduct 
Where I and Charles, when boys, have 

plucked 
The fire-flies from the roof above, 
Bright creeping through the moss they love : 
— How long it seems since Charles was 

lost! 
Six days the soldiers crossed and crossed 
The country in my very sight; 
And when that peril ceased at night, 
The sky broke out in red dismay 
With signal fires; well, there I lay 



454 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



Close covered o'er in my recess, 
Up to the neck in ferns and cress, 
Thinking on Metternich our friend, 
And Charles's miserable end, 
And much beside, two days; the third. 
Hunger o'ercame me when I heard 
The peasants from the village go 
To work among the maize; you know. 
With us in Lombardy, they bring 
Provisions packed on mules, a string 
With little bells that cheer their task. 
And casks, and boughs on every cask 
To keep the sun's heat from the wine; 
These I let pass in jingling line, 
And, close on them, dear noisy crew, 
The peasants from the village, too; 
For at the very rear would troop 
Their wives and sisters in a group 
To help, I knew. When these had passed, 
I threw my glove to strike the last. 
Taking the chance : she did not start. 
Much less cry out, but stooped apart, 
One instant rapidly glanced round, 
And saw me beckon from the ground. 
A wild bush grows and hides my crypt; 
She picked my glove up while she stripped 
A branch off, then rejoined the rest 
With that; my glove lay in her breast. 
Then I drew breath; they disappeared: 
It was for Italy I feared. 

An hour, and she returned alone 
Exactly where my glove was thrown. 
Meanwhile came many thoughts; on me 
Rested the hopes of Italy. 
I had devised a certain tale 
Which, when 't was told her, could not fail 
Persuade a peasant of its truth ; 
I meant to call a freak of youth 
This hiding, and give hopes of pay, 
And no temptation to betray. 
But when I saw that woman's face, 
Its calm simplicity of grace, 
Our Italy's own attitude 
In which she walked thus far, and stood, 
Planting each naked foot so firm, 
To crush the snake and spare the worm — 
At first sight of her eyes, I said, 
"I am that man upon whose head 
They fix the price, because I hate 
The Austrians over us ; the State 
Will give you gold — oh, gold so much — 
If you betray me to their clutch, 
And be your death, for aught I know, 
If once they find you saved their foe. 
Now, you must bring me food and drink, 
And also paper, pen, and ink, 



And carry safe what I shall write 

To Padua, which you'll reach at night 

Before the duomo shuts; go in, 

And wait till Tenebrse begin; 

Walk to the third confessional. 

Between the pillar and the wall, 

And kneeling whisper. Whence cornea 

peace? 
Say it a second time, then cease ; 
And if the voice inside returns, 
From Christ and Freedom; what concerns 
The cause of Peace? —for answer, slip 
My letter where you placed your lip; 
Then come back happy we have done 
Our mother service — I, the son. 
As you the daughter of our land !" 

Three mornings more, she took her stand 
In the same place, with the same eyes: 
I was no surer of sunrise 
Than of her coming. We conferred 
Of her own prospects, and I heard 
She had a lover — stout and tall, 
She said — then let her eyelids fall, 
"He could do much" — as if some doubt 
Entered her heart, — then, passing out, 
"She could not speak for others, who 
Had other thoughts; herself she knew; 
And so she brought me drink and food. 
After four days, the scouts pursued 
Another path ; at last arrived 
The help my Paduan friends contrived 
To furnish me: she brought the news. 
For the first time I could not choose 
But kiss her hand, and lay my own 
Upon her head — "This faith was shown 
To Italy, our mother ; she 
Uses my hand and blesses thee." 
She followed down to the sea-shore; 
I left and never saw her more. 

How very long since I have thought 

Concerning — much less wished for — aught 

Beside the good of Italy, 

For which I live and mean to die ! 

I never was in love; and since 

Charles proved false, what shall now con- 
vince 

My inmost heart I have a friend? 

However, if I pleased to spend 

Real wishes on myself — say, three — 

I know at least what one should be. 

I would grasp Metternich until 

I felt his red wet throat distil 

In blood ' through these two hands. And 
next 

— Nor much for that am I perplexed — 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



455 



Charles, perjured traitor, for his part, 
Should die slow of a broken heart 
Under his new employers. Last 
— Ah, there, what should I wish? For fast 
Do I grow old and out of strength. 
If I resolved to seek at length 
My father's house again, how seared 
They all would look, and unprepared! 
My brothers live in Austria's pay 
— Disowned me long ago, men say ; 
And all my early mates who used 
To praise me so — perhaps induced 
More than one early step of mine — 
Are turning wise : while some ojDine 
"Freedom grows license," some suspect 
"Haste breeds delay," and recollect 
They always said, such premature 
Beginnings never could endure ! 
So, with a sullen "All's for best," 
The land seems settling to its rest. 
I think then, I should wish to stand 
This evening in that dear, lost land, 
Over the sea the thousand miles, 
And know if yet that woman smiles 
With the calm smile ; some little farm 
She lives in there, no doubt; what harm 
If I sat on the door-side bench. 
And, while her spindle made a trench 
Fantastically in the dust, 
Inquired of all her fortunes — just 
Her children's ages and their names, 
And what may be the husband's aims 
For each of them. I'd talk this out, 
And sit there, for an hour about, 
Then kiss her hand once more, and lay 
Mine on her head, and go my way. 



So much for idle wishing — how 
It steals the time ! To business now. 



(1845) 



Thk Patriot 
robert browning 



It was roses, roses, all the way. 

With myrtle mixed in my path like mad : 
The house-roofs seemed to heave and sway. 

The church-spires flamed, such flags they 
had, 
A year ago on this very day. 

The air broke into a mist with bells, 

The old walls rocked with the crowd and 

cries. 

Had I said, "Good folk, mere noise repels — 

But give me your sun from yonder skies !" 

They had answered, "And afterward what 

else?" 



Alack, it was I who leaped at the sun 
To give it my loving friends to keep ! 

Naught man could do, have I left undone : 
And you see my harvest, what I reap 

This very day, now a year is run. 

There's nobody on the house-tops now — 
Just a palsied few at the windows set ; 

For the best of the sight is, all allow. 
At the Shambles' Gate — or, better yet, 

By the very scaffold's foot, I trow. 

I go in the rain, and, more than needs, 
A rope cuts both my wrists behind ; 

And I think, by the feel, my forehead bleeds, 
For they fling, whoever has a mind. 

Stones at me for my year's misdeeds. 

Thus I entered, and .thus I go ! 

In triumphs, people have dropped down 
dead. 
"Paid by the world, what dost thou owe 

Me ?" — God might question ; now instead, 
'T is God shall repay : I am safer so. 

(1855) 



On the Monument Erected to 
Mazzini^ at Genoa 

algernon charles swinburne 

Italia, mother of the souls of men. 

Mother divine 
Of all that serv'd thee best with sword or 
pen, 

All sons of thine, 

Thou knowest that here the likeness of the 
best 
Before thee stands: 
The head most high, the heart found faith- 
fulest. 
The purest hands. 

Above the fume and foam of time that flits,' 

The soul, we know. 
Now sits on high where Alighieri sits 

With Angelo. 

Not his own heavenly tongue hath heavenly 
speech 
Enough to say 
What this man was, whose praise no thought 
may reach, 
Nor words can weigh. 



1 Inspirer of the Italian revolt against Austria 

In 1848. 



456 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Since man's first mother brought to mortal 
birth 

Her first-born son, 
Such grace befell not ever man on earth 

As crowns this One. 

Of God nor man was ever this thing 
said: 
That he could give 
Life back to her who gave him, that his 
dead 
Mother might live. 

But this man found his mother dead and 
slain, 

With fast-seal'd eyes, 
And bade the dead rise up and live again, 

And she did rise: 

And all the world was bright with her 
through him : 
But dark with strife, 
Like heaven's own sun that storming clouds 
bedim. 
Was all his life. 

Life and the clouds are vanish'd; hate and 
fear 

Have had their span 
Of time to hurt and are not: He is here. 

The sunlike man. 

City superb, that hadst Columbus first 

For sovereign son, 
Be prouder that thy breast hath later nursed 

This mightier One. 

Glory be his for ever, while his land 
Lives and is free, 
controlling breath and sovereign 

hand 
He bade her be. 

Earth shows to heaven the names by thou- 
sands told 
That crown her fame. 
But highest of all that heaven and earth 
behold, 
Mazzini's name. 

To Louis Kossuth* 

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 

Light of our fathers' eyes, and in our own 
Star of the unsetting sunset ! for thy name, 

* Leader of the Hungarian revolt and president 
of the Republic in Hungary until its overthrow 
by Francis Joseph and the forces of Russia. Kos- 
suth fled to America in 1849. 



That on the front of noon "was as a flame 
In the great year nigh twenty years agone 
When all the heavens of Europe shook and 

shone 
With stormy wind and lightning, keeps 

its fame 
And bears its witness all day through the 

same; 
Not for past days and great deeds past 

alone, 
Kossuth, we praise thee as our Landor 

praised, 
But that now too we know thy voice up- 
raised, 
Thy voice, the trumpet of the truth of God, 
Thine hand, the thunder-bearer's, raised to 

smite 
As with heaven's lightning for a sword and 

rod 
Men's heads abased before the Muscovite. 



France 1870i 

george meredith 

We look for her that sunlike stood 
Upon the forehead of our day. 
An orb of nations, radiating food 
For body and for mind alway. 
Where is the Shape of glad array; ^ 

The nervous hands, the front of steel. 
The clarion tongue? Where is the bold 
proud face? 
We see a vacant place; 
We hear an iron heel. 
O she that made the brave appeal ^^ 

For manhood when our time was dark, 
And from our fetters struck the spark 
Which was as lightning to reveal 
New seasons, with the swifter play 
Of pulses, and benigner day ; 
She that divinely shook the dead 
From living man; that stretched ahead 
Her resolute forefinger straight. 
And marched towards the gloomy gate 

Of earth's Untried, gave note, and in 20 
The good name of Humanity 

Called forth the daring vision! she, 
She likewise half corrupt of sin. 
Angel and Wanton! Can it be? 
Her star has foundered in eclipse, 25 

The shriek of madness on her lips; 
Shreds of her, and no more, we see. 



15 



1 Written at the moment of France's humilia- 
tion by Germany, when Paris was in the hands of 
the enemy. 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



457 



There is a horrible convulsion, smothered 

din, 
As of one that in a grave-cloth struggles to 

be free. 

Look not on spreading boughs ^^ 

For the riven forest tree. 
Look down where deep in blood and mire 
Black thunder plants his feet and plows 
The soil for ruin ; that is France : 

Still thrilling like a lyre, ^ 

Amazed to shivering discord from a fall 
Sudden as that the lurid hosts recall 
Who met in Heaven the irreparable mis- 
chance. 

that is France ! 
The brilliant eyes to kindle bliss, ^ 

The shrewd quick lips to laugh and kiss. 
Breasts that a sighing world inspire, 
And laughter-dimpled countenance 
Whence soul and senses caught desire! 

Ever invoking fire from Heaven, the fire ^^ 
Has seized her, unconsumable, but framed 
For all the ecstasies of suffering dire. 
Mother of Pride, her sanctuary shamed: 
Mother of Delicacy, and made a mark 
For outrage : Mother of Luxury, stripped 

stark : 50 

Mother of Heroes, bondsmen; through the 

rains, 
Across her boundaries, lo the league-long 

chains ! 
Fond mother of her martial youth; they 

pass, 
They are specters in her sight, are mown as 

grass ! 
Mother of Honor, and dishonored : Mother ^^ 
Of Glory, she condemned to crown with 

bays 
Her victor, and be fountain of his praise. 
Is there another curse? There is another: 
Compassionate her madness : is she not 
Mother of Reason? she that sees them 

mown, 60 

Like grass, her young ones! Yea, in the 

low groan. 
And under the fixed thunder of this hour 
Which holds the animate world in one foul 

blot 
Tranced circumambient while relentless 

Power 
Beaks at her heart and claws her limbs 

down-thrown, 65 

She, with the plunging, lightnings overshot, 
With madness for an armor against pain. 
With milkless breasts for little ones athirst. 



And round her all her noblest dying in 

vain, 
Mother of Reason is she, trebly cursed, '^*^ 
To feel, to see, to justify the blow; 
Chamber to chamber of her sequent brain 
Gives answer of the cause of her great woe. 
Inexorably echoing through the vaults, 
" 'T is thus they reap in blood, in blood 

who sow : '^5 

This is the sum of self-absolved faults." 
Doubt not that through her grief, with sight 

supreme. 
Through her delirium and despair's last 

dream, 
Through pride, through bright illusion and 

the brood 
Bewildering of her various Motherhood, ^^ 
The high strong light within her, though 

she bleeds. 
Traces the letters of returned misdeeds. 
She sees what seed long sown, ripened of 

late, 
Bears, this fierce crop ; and she discerns 

her fate 
From origin to agony, and on 85 

As far as the wave washes long and wan 
Off one disastrous impulse: for of waves 
Our life is, and our deeds are pregnant 

graves 
Blown rolling to the sunset from the dawn. 

Ah, what a dawn of splendor, when her 
sowers 90 

Went forth and bent the necks of popula- 
tions, 

And of their terrors and humiliations 

Wove her the starry wreath that earthward 
lowers 

Now in the figure of a burning yoke ! 

Her legions traversed North and South and 
East, »5 

Of triumph they enjoyed the glutton's feast : 

They grafted the green sprig, they lopped 
the oak. 

They caught by the beard the tempests, by 
the scalp 

The icy precipices, and clove sheer through 

The heart of horror of the pinnacled 
Alp, lOO 

Emerging not as men whom mortals knew. 

They were the earthquake and the hurri- 
cane. 

The lightnings and the locusts, plagues of 
blight, 

Plagues of the revel : they were Deluge rain. 

And dreaded Conflagration ; lawless 
Might. 



105 



458 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Death writes a reeling line along the snows, 
Where under frozen mists they may be 

tracked, 
Who men and elements provoked to foes, 
And Gods: they were of God and Beast 

compact : 
Abhorred of all. Yet, how they sucked 

the teats "o 

Of Carnage, thirsty issue of their dam, 
Whose eagles, angrier than their oriflamme, 
Flushed the vext earth with blood, green 

earth forgets. 
The gay young generations mask her grief; 
Where bled her children hangs the loaded 

sheaf. 115 

Forgetful is green earth; the Gods alone 
Remember everlastingly : they strike 
Remorselessly, and ever like for like. 
By their great memories the Gods are 

known. 

They are with her now, and in her ears, 

and known. i^o 

'Tis they that cast her to the dust for 

Strength, 
Their slave, to feed on her fair body's 

length, 
That once the sweetest and the proudest 

shone ; 
Scoring for hideous dismemberment 
Her limbs, as were the anguish-taking 

breath 125 

Gone out of her in the insufferable descent 
From her high chieftainship ; as were she 

death. 
Who hears a voice of justice, feels the knife 
Of torture, drinks all ignominy of life. 
They are with her, and the painful Gods 

might weep, 1^0 

If ever rain of tears came out of Heaven 
To flatter Weakness and bid Conscience 

sleep. 
Viewing the woe of this Immortal, driven 
For the soul's life to drain the maddening 

cup 
Of her own children's blood implacably : 1^ 
Unsparing even as they to furrow up 
The yellow land to likeness of a sea: 
The bountiful fair land of vine and grain. 
Of wit and grace and ardor, and strong 

roots, 
Fruits perishable, imperishable fruits; 1"^ 
Furrowed to likeness of the dim gray main 
Behind the black obliterating cyclone. 

Behold, the Gods are with her, and are 
known. 



Whom they abandon, misery persecutes 
No more: them half -eyed apathy may 

loan 145 

The happiness of the pitiable brutes. 
Whom the just Gods abandon have no light. 
No ruthless light of introspective eyes 
That in the midst of misery scrutinize 
The heart and its iniquities outright. i^o 
They rest, they smile and rest; they have 

earned perchance 
Of ancient service quiet for a term; 
Quiet of old men dropping to the worm ; 
And so goes out the soul. But not of 

France. 
She cries for grief, and to the gods she 



cries, 



155 



For fearfully their loosened hands chastise. 
And mercilessly they watch the rod's caress 
Ravage her flesh from scourges merciless. 
But she, inveterate of brain, discerns 
That Pity has as little place as Joy 1^0 

Among their roll of gifts; for Strength 

she yearns. 
For Strength, her idol once, too long her 

toy. 
Lo, Strength is of the plain root- Virtues 

born: 
Strength shall ye gain by service, prove 

in scorn. 
Train by endurance, by devotion shape. 1^^ 
Strength is not won by miracle or rape. 
It is the offspring of the modest years, 
The gift of sire to son, through those sound 

laws 
Which we name Gods, which are the right- 
eous cause. 
The cause of man, and Manhood's minis- 
ters. 170 
Could France accept the fables of her 

priests. 
Who blest her banners in this game of 

beasts. 
And now bid hope that Heaven will in- 

tereeede 
To violate its laws in her sore need. 
She would find comfort in their opiates. 1'^^ 
Mother of Reason ! can she cheat the Fates ? 
Would she, the champion of the open 

mind, 
The Omnipotent's first gift — the gift of 

growth — 
Consent even for a night-time to be blind, 
And sink her soul on the delusive sloth 1^0 
For fruits ethereal and material, both. 
In peril of her place among mankind"? 
The Mother of the many Laughters might 
Call one poor shade of laughter in the light 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



459 



Of her unwavering lamp to mark what 

things 1^^ 

The world puts faith in, careless of the 

truth : 
What silly puppet-bodies danced on strings, 
Attached by credence, we appear in sooth. 
Demanding intercession, direct aid. 
When the whole tragic tale hangs on a for- 
feit blade ! 190 

She swung the sword for centuries; in a 

day 
It slipped her, like a stream cut from its 

source. 
She struck a feeble hand, and tried to pray. 
Clamored of treachery, and had recourse 
To drunken outcries in her dream that 

Force 195 

Needed but to hear her shouting to obey. 
Was she not formed to conquer ? The bright 

plumes 
Of crested vanity shed graceful nods: 
Transcendent in her foundries. Arts and 

looms, 
Had France to fear the vengeance of the 

Gods? 200 

Her Gods were then the battle-roll of names 
Sheathed in the records of old war; with 

dance 
And song she thrilled her warriors and her 

dames, 
Embracing her Dishonorer : gave him France 
From head to foot, France present and to 

come, 205 

So she might hear the trumpet and the 

drum — 
Bellona and Bacchante! rushing forth 
On those stout marching Schoolmen of the 

North. 
Inveterate of brain, well knows she why 
Strength failed her, faithful to himself the 

first; 210 

Her dream is done, and she can read the 

sky, 

And she can take into her heart the worst 
Calamity to drug the shameful thought 
Of days that made her as the man she served, 
A name of terror, but a thing unnerved ; 215 
Buying the trickster, by the trickster bought. 
She for dominion, he to patch a throne. 

Behold the Gods are with her now, and 

known : 
And to know them, not suffering for their 

sake, 
Is madness to the souls that may not 

take 220 



The easy way of death, being divine. 
Her frenzy is not Reason's light extinct 
In fumes of foul revenge and desperate 

sense, 
But Reason rising on the storm intense, 
Three-faced, with present, past, and future 

linked ; 225 

Informed three-fold with duty to her line. 
By sacrifice of blood must she atone, 
(Since thus the foe decrees it) to her own: 
That she who cannot supplicate, nor cease. 
Who will not utter the false word for 

Peace, 230 

May burn to ashes, with a heart of stone, 
Whatso has made her of all lands the flower, 
To spring in fiame for one redeeming hour, 
For one propitious hour arise from prone. 
Athwart Ambition's path, and have and 

wrench 235 

His towering stature from the bitter trench. 
Retributive, by her taskmasters shown, — 
The spectral trench where bloody seed was 

sown. 



240 



245 



Henceforth of her the Gods are known, 
Open to them her breast is laid. 
Inveterate of brain, heart-valiant. 
Never did fairer creature pant 
Before the altar and the blade! 

Swift fall the blows, and men upbraid, 
And friends give echo blunt and cold, 
The echo of the forest to the axe. 
Within her are the fii-es that wax 
For resurrection from the mold. 



She snatched at Heaven's flame of old, 
And kindled nations : she was weak : 250 

Frail sister of her heroic prototype. 
The Man ; for sacrifice unripe. 
She too must fill a Vulture's beak. 



Once more, earthly fortune, speak! 
Has she a gleam of victory? one 
Outshining of her old historic sun? 
For a while ! for an hour ! 
And sunlight on her banner seems 
A miracle conceived in dreams. 
The faint reflux of orient beams 
Through a lifting shower. 



255 



260 



Now is she in the vulture-grasp of Power, 
And all her sins are manifest to men. 
Now may they reckon with punctilious pen 
Her list of misdemeanors, and her dower 
Of precious gifts that gilded the rank fen 
Where lay a wanton greedy to devour. 267 



460 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Now is she in the vulture-grasp of Power. 
The harlot sister of the man sublime, 
Prometheus, she, though vanquished will not 
cower. 270 

Offending Heaven, she groveled in the slime ; 
Offending Man, she aimed beyond her time ; 
Offending Earth, her Pride was like a tower. 

like the banner on the tower, 

Her spirit was, and toyed and curled 275 

Among its folds to lure the world — 

It called to follow. But when strong men 

thrust 
The banner on the winds, 't was flame, 
And pilgrim-generations tread its dust, 
And kiss its track. Disastrously unripe, 280 
Imperfect, changeful, full of blame. 
Still the Gods love her, for that of high 

aim 
Is this good France, the bleeding thing they 

stripe. 

She shall rise worthier of her prototype 

Through her abasement deep ; the pain that 
runs 285 

From nerve to nerve some victory achieves. 

They lie like circle-strewn soaked Autumn- 
leaves 

Which stain the forest scarlet, her fair sons ! 

And of their death her life is : of their blood 

From many streams now urging to a 
flood, _ 290 

No more divided, France shall rise afresh. 

Of them she learns the lesson of the flesh : — 

The lesson writ in red since first Time ran 
A hunter hunting down the beast in man : 
That till the chasing out of its last vice, 295 
The flesh was fashioned but for sacrifice. 
Cast hence the slave's delights, the wan- 
ton's lures, 
France ! and of thy folly pay full price ; 
The limitary nature that immures 
A spirit dulled in clay shall break, as 
thrice 300 

It has broken on a night of blood and 

tears, 
To give thy ghost free breath, and joy 
thy peers. 

Immortal mother of a mortal host! 

Thou suffering of the wounds that will not 

slay, 
Wounds that bring death but take not life 

away ! — ^^^ 

Stand fast and hearken while thy victors 

boast : 



Hearken, and loathe that music evermore. 

Slip loose thy garments woven of pride 
and shame : 

The torture lurks in them, with them the 
blame 

Shall pass to leave thee purer than be- 
fore. 310 

Undo thy jewels, thinking whence they 
came, 

For what, and of the abominable name 

Of her who in imperial beauty wore. 

O Mother of a fated fleeting host 
Conceived in the past days of sin, and 

born 315 

Heirs of disease and arrogance and scorn. 
Surrender, yield the weight of thy great 

ghost. 
Like wings on air, to what the Heavens 

proclaim 
With trumpets from the multitudinous 

mounds 
Where peace has filled the hearing of thy 

sons: • 320 

Albeit a pang of dissolution rounds 
Each new discernment of the undying Ones, 
Stoop to these graves here scattered thick 

and wide 
Along thy fields, as sunless billows roll; 
These ashes have the lesson for the soul. 325 
"Die to thy Vanity, and to thy Pride, 
And to thy Luxury: that thou may'st 

live. 
Die to thyself," they say, "as we have 

died 
From dear existence, and the foe forgive. 
Nor pray for aught save in our little space 
To warm good seed to greet the fair earth's 

face." 331 

mother! take their counsel, and so shall 
The broader world breathe in on this thy 

home, 
Light clear for thee the counter-changing 

dome. 
Fire lift thee to the heights meridional, 335 
Strength give thee, like an ocean's vast ex- 
panse 
Off mountain cliffs, the generations all, 
Not whirling in their narrow rings of foam, 
But like a river forward. Soaring France ! 
Now is Humanity on trial in thee: 340 
Now may'st thou gather humankind in fee: 
Now prove that Reason is a quenchless 

scroll ; 
Make of calamity thine aureole. 
And bleeding lead us through the troubles 

of the sea. 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



46i 



America 

sidney dobell 

Men say, Columbia, we shall hear thy guns. 
But in what tongue shall be thy battle-cry? 
Not that our sires did love in years gone by, 
When all the Pilgrim Fathers were little 

sons 
In merrie homes of Englaunde 1 Back, and 

see 
Thy satehel'd ancestor! Behold, he runs 
To mine, and, elasp'd, they tread the equal 

lea 
To the same village-school, where side by 

side 
They spell "our Father." Hard by, the 

twin-pride 
Of that gray hall whose ancient oriel gleams 
Thro' yon baronial pines, with looks of light 
Our sister-mothers sit beneath one tree. 
Meanwhile our Shakespeare wanders past 

and dreams 
His Helena and Hermia. Shall we fight? 

Nor force nor fraud shall sunder us ! ye 
Who north or south, on east or western 

land. 
Native to noble sounds, say truth for truth, 
Freedom for freedom, love for love, and 

God 
For God ; ye who in eternal youth 
Speak with a living and creative flood 
This universal English, and do stand 
Its breathing book; live worthy of that 

grand 
Heroic utterance — parted, yet a whole. 
Far, yet unsevered, — children brave and free 
Of the great Mother-tongue, and ye shall be 
Lords of an Empire wide as Shakespeare's 

soul. 
Sublime as Milton's immemorial theme, 
And rich as Chaucer's speech, and fair as 

Spenser's dream. (1855) 

To Walt Whitman in America 

ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE 

Send but a song oversea for us. 

Heart of their hearts who are free, 

Heart of their singer, to be for us 
More than our singing can be; 

Ours, in the tempest at error. 

With no light but the twilight of terror; 
Send us a song oversea! 

Sweet-smelling of pine leaves and grasses, 
And blown as a tree through and through 



With the winds of the keen mountain- 
passes, 

And tender as sun-smitten dew; 
Sharp-tongued as the winter that shakes 
The wastes of your limitless lakes. 

Wide-eyed as the sea-line's blue. 

strong-winged soul with prophetic 
Lips hot with the bloodbeats of song, 

With tremor of heartstrings magnetic, 
With thoughts as thunders in throng. 

With consonant ardors of chords 

That pierce men's souls as with swords 
And hale them hearing along. 

Make us, too, music, to be with us 

As a word from a world's heart warm. 

To sail the dark as a sea with us. 
Full-sailed, outsinging the storm, 

A song to put fire in our ears 

Whose burning shall burn up tears. 
Whose sign bid battle reform; 

A note in the ranks of a clarion, 

A word in the wind of cheer. 
To consume as with lightning the carrion 

That makes time foul for us here ; 
In the air that our dead things infest 
A blast of the breath of the west. 

Till east way as west way is clear. 

Out of the sun beyond sunset, 

From the evening whence morning shall be. 
With the rollers in measureless onset. 

With the van of the storming sea. 
With the world-wide wind, with the breath 
That breaks ships driven upon death, 

With the passion of all things free. 

With the sea-steeds footless and frantic, 
White myriads for death to bestride 

In the charge of the ruining Atlantic, 
Where deaths by regiments ride, 

With clouds and clamors of waters. 

With a long note shriller than slaughter's 
On the furrowless fields world-wide. 

With terror, with ardor and wonder. 
With the soul of the season that wakes 

When the weight of a whole year's thunder 
In the tidestream of autumn breaks. 

Let the flight of the wide-winged word 

Come over, come in and be heard. 
Take form and flre for our sakes. 

For a continent bloodless with travail 
Here toils and brawls as it can, 



462 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



And the web of it who shall unravel 

Of all that peer on the plan ; 
Would fain grow men, but they grow not, 
And fain be free, but they know not 

One name for freedom and man. 

One name, not twain for division; 

One thing, not twain, from the birth ; 
Spirit and substance and vision. 

Worth more than worship is worth ; 
Unbeheld, unadored, undivined, 
The cause, the center, the mind, 

The secret and sense of the earth. 

Here as a weakling in irons, 

Here as a weanling in bands, 
As a prey that the stake-net environs. 

Our life that we looked for stands; 
And the man-child naked and dear. 
Democracy, turns on us here 

Eyes trembling, with tremulous hands. 

It sees not what season shall bring to it 

Sweet fruit of its bitter desire ; 
Few voices it hears yet sing to it, 

Few pulses of hearts reaspire: 
Foresees not time, nor forebears 
The noises of imminent years, 

Earthquake, and thunder, and fire: 

When crowned and weaponed and curbless 
It shall walk without helm or shield 

The bare burnt furrows and herbless 
Of war's last flame-stricken field, 

Till godlike, equal with time. 

It stand in the sun sublime. 

In the godhead of man revealed. 

Round your people and over them 

Light like raiment is drawn. 
Close as a garment to cover them 

Wrought not of mail nor of lawn : 
Here, with hope hardly to wear, 
Naked nations and bare 

Swim, sink, strike out for the dawn. 

Chains are here, and a prison, 
Kings, and subjects, and shame : 

If the God upon you be arisen. 

How should our songs be the same? 

How in confusion of change. 

How shall we sing, in a strange 
Land songs praising his name? 



God is buried and dead to us, 

Even the spirit of earth. 
Freedom : so have they said to us, 

Some with mocking and mirth, 
Some with heartbreak and tears : 
And a God without eyes, without ears. 

Who shall sing of him, dead in the birth? 

The earth-god Freedom, the lonely 

Face lightening, the footprint unshod, 

Not as one man crucified only 

Nor scourged with but one life's rod : 

The soul that is substance of nations. 

Reincarnate with fresh generations; 
The great god Man, which is God, 

But in weariest of years and obscurest 
Doth it live not at heart of all things, 

The one God and one spirit, a purest 
Life, fed from unstanchable springs? 

Within love, within hatred it is, 

And its seed in the stripe as the kiss, 
And in slaves is the germ, and in kings. 

Freedom we call it, for holier 
Name of the soul's there is none ; 

Surelier it labors, if slowlier. 
Than the meters of star or of sun; 

Slowlier than life unto breath, 

Surelier than time unto death. 
It moves till its labor be done. 

Till the motion be done and the measure 
Circling through season and clime. 

Slumber and sorrow and pleasure. 
Vision of virtue and crime ; 

Till consummate with conquering eyes, 

A soul disembodied, it rise 

From the body transfigured of time. 

Till it rise and remain and take station 
With the stars of the world that rejoice; 

Till the voice of its heart's exultation 
Be as theirs an invariable voice. 

By no discord of evil estranged, 

By no pause, by no breach in it changed. 
By no clash in the chord of its choice. 

It is one with the world's generations. 
With the spirit, the star, and the sod: 

With the kingless and king-stricken nations, 
With the cross, and the chain, and the rod ; 

The most high, the most secret, most lonely, 

The earth-soul Freedom, that only 
Lives, and that only is God. 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



463 



11. THE CRUSADE AGAINST MATERIALISM 



1. THE GOSPEL OF WORK 



The Inheritance 



THOMAS CARLTLE 



[From Past and Present, 1843, Book II, 
chapter xvii] 

It is all work and forgotten work, this 
peopled, clothed, articulate-speaking, high- 
towered, wide-acred World. The hands of 
forgotten brave men have made it a World 
for us; — they, — honor to them; they, in 
spite of the idle and the dastard. This Eng- 
lish Land, here and now, is the summary ol 
what was found of wise, and noble, and ac- 
cordant with God's Truth, in all the genera- 
tions of English Men. Our English Speech 
is speakable because there were Hero-Poets 
of our blood and lineage ; speakable in pro- 
portion to the number of these. This Land 
of England has its conquerors, possessors, 
which change from epoch to epoch, from day 
to day ; but its real conquerors, creators, and 
eternal proprietors are these following, and 
their representatives if you can find them : 
All the Heroic Souls that ever were in Eng- 
land, each in their degree; all the men that 
ever cut a thistle, drained a puddle out of 
England, contrived a wise scheme in Eng- 
land, did or said a true and valiant thing 
in England. I tell thee, they had not a ham- 
mer to begin with; and yet Wren built St. 
Paul's : not an articulated syllable ; and yet 
there have come English Literatures, Eliza- 
bethan Literatures, Satanic-School, Cock- 
ney-School, and other Literatures; — once 
more, as in the old time of the Leitourgia, 
a most waste imbroglio, and world-wide 
jungle and jumble; waiting terribly to be 
"well-edited" and "well-burnt!" Arachne 
started with forefinger and thumb, and had 
not even a distaff; yet thou seest Man- 
chester, and Cotton Cloth, which will shelter 
naked backs, at twopence an ell. 

Work? The quantity of done and for- 
gotten work that lies silent under my feet in 
this world, and escorts and attends me, 
and supports and keeps me alive, whereso- 
ever I walk or stand, whatsoever I think or 
do, gives rise to reflections ! Is it not enough, 
at any rate, to strike the thing called "Fame" 
into total silence for a wise man ? For fools 
and unrefleetive persons, she is and will be 



very noisy, this "Fame," and talks of her 
"immortals" and so forth: but if you will 
consider it, what is she ? Abbot Samson was 
not nothing because nobody said anything of 
him. Or thinkest thou, the Right Honorable 
Sir Jabez Windbag can be made something 
by Parliamentary Majorities and Leading 
Articles? Her "immortals !" Scarcely two 
hundred years back can Fame recollect 
articulately at all; and there she but maun- 
ders and mumbles. She manages to recol- 
lect a Shakespeare or so; and prates, con- 
siderably like a goose, about him; — and in 
the rear of that, onwards to the birth of 
Theuth, to Hengst's Invasion, and the bosom 
of Eternity, it was all blank; and the re- 
spectable Teutonic Languages, Teutonic 
Practices, Existences, all came of their own 
accord, as the grass springs, as the trees 
grow; no Poet, no work from the inspired 
heart of a Man needed there ; and Fame has 
not an articulate word to say about it! Or 
ask her, What, with all conceivable ap- 
pliances and mnemonics, includingapotheosis 
and human sacrifices among the number, she 
carries in her head with regard to a Wodan, 
even a Moses, or other such ? She begins to 
be uncertain as to what they were, whether , 
spirits or men of mold, — gods, charlatans: 
begins sometimes to have a misgiving that 
they were mere sjnnbols, ideas of the mind; 
perhaj^s nonentities and Letters of the 
Alphabet ! She is the noisiest, inarticulately 
babbling, hissing, screaming, foolishest, un- 
musiealest of fowls that fly; and needs no 
"trumpet," I think, but her own enormous 
goose-throat, — measuring several degrees of 
celestial latitude, so to speak. Her "wings," 
in these days, have grown far swifter than 
ever; but her goose-throat hitherto seems 
only larger, louder, and foolisher than ever. 
She is transitory, futile, a goose-goddess : — 
if she were not transitory, what would be- 
come of us ! It is a chief comfort that she 
forgets us all; all, even to the very Wodans; 
and grows to consider us, at last, as probably 
nonentities and Letters of the Alphabet. 

Yes, a noble Abbot Samson resigns him- 
self to Oblivion too; feels it no hardship, 
but a comfort; counts it as a still resting- 
place, from much sick feet and fever and 
stupidity, which in the night-watches often 



464 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



made his strong heart sigh. Your most 
sweet voices, making one enormous goose- 
voice, Bobus and Company, how can they 
be a guidance for any Son of Adamf In 
silence of you and the like of you, the "small 
still voices" will speak to him better; in 
which does lie guidance. 

My friend, all speech and rumor is short- 
lived, foolish, untrue. ' Genuine Work alone, 
what thou workest faithfully, that is eternal, 
as the Almighty Founder and Woi'ld- 
Builder himself. Stand thou by that; and 
let ''Fame" and the rest of it go prating. 

Heard are the Voices, 
Heard are the Sages, 
The Worlds and the Ages : 
Choose well ; your choice is 
Brief and yet endless. 

Here eyes do regard you, 
In Eternity's stillness : 
Here is all fulness, 
Ye brave, to reward you ; 
Work, and despair not. 



Happiness, and Labor 

thomas carlyle 

[Ibid., Book III, chapters iv and vi] 

Truly, I think the man who goes about 
pothering and uproaring for his "happi- 
ness," — pothering, and were it ballot-box- 
ing, poem-making, or in what way soever 
fussing and exerting himself, — he is not the 
nian that will help us to "get our knaves and 
dastards arrested !" No ; he rather is on the 
way to increase the number, — by at least one 
unit and his tail ! Observe, too, that this is 
all a modern affair; belongs not to the old 
heroic times, but to these dastard new times. 
"Happiness our being's end and aim," all 
that very paltry speculation is at bottom, if 
we will count well, not yet two centuries old 
in the world. 

The only happiness a brave man ever 
troubled himself with asking much about 
was happiness enough to get his work done. 
Not "I can't eat!" but "I can't work!" that 
was the burden of all wise complaining 
among men. It is, after all, the one unhap- 
piness of a man, That he cannot work ; that 
he cannot get his destiny as a man fulfilled. 
Behold, the day is passing swiftly over, our 



life is passing swiftly over; and the night 
Cometh, wherein no man can work. The 
night once come, our happiness, our unhap- 
piness, — it is all abolished; vanished, clean 
gone ; a thing that has been : "not of the 
slightest consequence" whether we were hap- 
py as eupeptic Curtis, as the fattest pig of 
Epicurus, or unhappy as Job with potsherds, 
as musical Byron with Giaours and sensibili- 
ties of the heart ; as the unmusical Meat-jack 
with hard labor and rust ! But our work, — ■ 
behold that is not abolished, that has not 
vanished: our work, behold, it remains, or 
the want of it remains; — for endless Times 
and Eternities, remains; and that is now 
the sole question with us f orevermore ! Brief 
brawling Day, with its noisy phantasms, its 
poor paper-crowns tinsel-gilt, is gone; and 
divine everlasting Night, with her star- 
diadems, with her silences and her veracities, 
is come! What hast thou done, and how? 
Happiness, unhappiness: all that was but 
the wages thou hadst; thou hast spent all 
that, in sustaining thyself hitherward ; not a 
coin of it remains with thee, it is all spent, 
eaten : and now thy work, where is thy 
work? Swift, out with it; let us see thy 
work ! 

Of a truth, if man were not a poor hungry 
dastard, and even much of a blockhead, 
withal, he would cease criticizing his victuals 
to such extent ; and criticize himself rather, 
what he does Avith his victuals ! . . . 

And now to observe with what bewildering 
obscurations and impediments all this as yet 
stands entangled, and is yet intelligible to 
no man ! How, with our gross Atheism, we 
hear it not to be the Voice of God to us, 
but regard it merely as a Voice of earthly 
Profit-and-Loss. And have a Hell in Eng- 
land, — the Hell of not making money. And 
coldly see the all-conquering valiant Sons 
of Toil sit enchanted, by the million, in their 
Poor-Law Bastille, as if this were Nature's 
Law; — mumbling to ourselves some vague 
janglement of Laissez-faire, Supply-and- 
demand, Cash-payment the one nexus of 
man to man : Free-trade, Competition, and 
Devil take the hindmost, our latest Gospel 
yet preached ! 

As if, in truth, there were no God of 
Labor ; as if godlike Labor and brutal Mam- 
monism were convertible terms. A serious, 
most earnest Mammonism grown Midas- 
eared; an unserious Dilettantism, earnest 
about nothing, grinning with inarticulate, in- 
credulous, incredible jargon about all things, 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



465 



as the enchanted Dilettanti do by the Dead 
Sea ! It is mournful enough, for the present 
hour; were there not an endless hope in it 
withal. Giant Labor, truest emblem there is 
of God the World- Worker, Demiurgus, and 
Eternal Maker; noble Labor, which is yet 
to be the King of this Earth, and sit on the 
highest throne, — staggering hitherto like a 
blind irrational giant, hardly allowed to have 
his common place on the street-pavements; 
idle Dilettantism, Dead-Sea Apism crying 
out, "Down with him ; he is dangerous !" 

Labor must become a seeing rational giant, 
with a soul in the body of him, and take his 
place on the throne of things, — leaving his 
Mammonism, and several other adjuncts, on 
the lower steps of said throne. 



Plugson op Undershot 

thomas carlyle 

[Ibid., Book III, chapter x] 

One thing I do know: Never, on this 
Earth, was the relation of man to man long 
carried on by Cash-payment alone. If, at 
any time, a philosoiDhy of Laissez-faire, 
Competition, and Supply-and-demand, start 
up as the exponent of human relations, 
expect that it will soon end. 

Such philosophies will arise : for man's 
philosophies are usually the "supplement of 
his practice" ; some ornamental Logic-var- 
nish, some outer skin of Articulate Intelli- 
gence, with which he strives to render his 
dumb Instinctive Doings presentable when 
they are done. Such philosophies will arise ; 
be preached as Mammon-Gospels, the ulti- 
mate Evangel of the World ; be believed with 
what is called belief, with much superficial 
bluster, and a kind of shallow satisfaction 
real in its way; — but they are ominous gos- 
pels ! They are the sure and even swift, 
forerunner of great changes. Expect that 
the old System of Society is done, is dying 
and fallen into dotage, when it begins to 
rave in that fashion. Most Systems that I 
have watched the death of, for the last three 
thousand years, have gone just so. The 
Ideal, the True and Noble that was in them 
having faded out, and nothing now remain- 
ing but naked Egoism, vulturous Greediness, 
they cannot live; they are bound and in- 
exorably ordained by the oldest Destinies, 
Mothers of the Universe, to die. Curious 
enough; they thereupon, as I have pretty 



generally noticed, devised some light com- 
fortable kind of "wine-and-walnuts philoso- 
phy" for themselves, this of Supply-and- 
demand or another ; and keep saying, during 
hours of mastication and rumination, which 
they call hours of meditation: "Soul, take 
thy ease ; it is all well that thou art a vulture- 
soul"; — and pangs of dissolution come upon 
them, oftenest before they are aware! 

Cash-payment never was, or could except 
for a few years be, the union-bond of man 
to man. Cash never yet paid one man fully 
his deserts to another ; nor could it, nor can 
it, now or henceforth to the end of the world. 
I invite his Grace of Castle-Rackrent to re- 
flect on this; — does he think that a Land 
Aristocracy when it becomes a Land Auc- 
tioneership can have long to live? Or that 
Sliding-seales will increase the vital stamina 
of it? The indomitable Plugson too, of the 
respected Firm of Plugson, Hunks and Com- 
pany, in St. Dolly Undershot, is invited to 
reflect on this; for to him also it will be 
new, perhaps even newer. Bookkeeping by 
double entry is admirable, and records sev- 
eral things in an exact manner. But the 
Mother-Destinies also .keep their Tablets; 
in Heaven's Chancery also there goes on a 
recording ; and things, as my Moslem friends 
say, are "written on the iron leaf." 

Your Grace and Plugson, it is like, go 
to Church occasionally: did you never in 
vacant moments, with perhaps a dull parson 
droning to you, glance into your New Testa- 
ment, and the cash-account stated four times 
over, by a kind of quadruple entry, — in the 
Four Gospels there ? I consider that a cash- 
account, and balance-statement of work 
done and wages paid, worth attending to. 
Precisely such, though on a smaller scale, go 
on at all moments under this Sun; and the 
statement and balance of them in the Plug- 
son Ledgers and on the Tablets of Heaven's 
Chancery are discrepant exceedingly; — 
which ought really to teach, and to have long 
since taught, an indomitable common-sense 
Plugson of Undershot, much more an unat- 
tackable wweommon-sense Grace of Rack- 
rent, a thing or two ! — In brief, we shall 
have to dismiss the Cash-Gospel rigorously 
into its own place : we shall have to know, 
on the threshold, that either there is some 
infinitely deeper Gospel, subsidiary, ex- 
planatory, and daily and hourly corrective, 
to the Cash one; or else that the Cash one 
itself and all others are fast traveling! 
For all human things do require to have 



466 



THE GEEAT TKADITION 



an ideal in them; to have some Soul in 
them, as we said, were it only to keep the 
Body unputrefied. And wonderful it is to 
see how the Ideal or Soul, place it in what 
ugliest Body you may, will irradiate said 
Body with its own nobleness; will grad- 
ually, incessantly, mold, modify, new-form 
or reform said ugliest Body, and make it 
at last beautiful, and to a certain degree 
divine! — Oh, if you could dethrone that 
Brute-god Mammon, and put a Spirit-god 
in his place! One way or other, he must 
and will have to be dethroned. 

Fighting, for example, as I often say to 
myself, Fighting with steel murder-tools is 
surely a much uglier operation than Work- 
ing, take it how you will. Yet even of 
Fighting, in religious Abbot Samson's days, 
see what a Feudalism there had grown, — a 
"glorious Chivalry," much besung down to 
the present day. Was not that one of the 
"impossiblest" things ? Under the sky is no 
uglier spectacle than two men with clenched 
teeth, and hell-fii'e eyes, hacking one another's 
flesh, converting precious living bodies, and 
priceless living souls, into nameless masses 
of putrescence, useful only for turnip- 
manure. How did a Chivalry ever come 
out of that; how anything that was not 
hideous, scandalous, infernal? It will be a 
question worth considering by and by. 

I remark, for the present, only two things : 
first, that the Fighting itself was not, as we 
rashly suppose it, a Fighting without cause, 
but more or less with cause. Man is created 
to fight; he is perhaps best of all definable 
as a born soldier; his life "a battle and a 
march," under the right General. It is for- 
ever indispensable for a man to fight : now 
with Necessity, Avith Barrenness, Scarcity, 
with Puddles, Bogs, tangled Forests, un- 
kempt Cotton ; — now also with the hallucina- 
tions of his poor fellow Men. Hallucinatory 
visions rise in the head of my poor fellow 
man; make him claim over me rights which 
are not his. All fighting, as we noticed long 
ago, is the dusty conflict of strength, each 
thinking itself the strongest, or, in other 
words, the justest ; — of Mights which do in 
the long-run, and forever will in this just 
Universe in the long-run, mean Rights. In 
conflict the perishable part of them, beaten 
sufficiently, flies off into dust; this process 
ended, appears the imperishable, the true 
and exact. 

And now let us remark a second thing: 
how, in these baleful operations, a noble 



devout-hearted Chevalier will comport him- 
self, and an ignoble godless Bucanier and 
Chactaw Indian. Victory is the aim of each. 
But deep in the heart of the noble man it 
lies forever legible, that as an Invisible Just 
God made him, so will and must God's Jus- 
tice and this only, were it never so invisible, . 
ultimately prosper in all controversies and 
enterprises and battles whatsoever. What 
an Influence; ever-present, — like a Soul in 
the rudest Caliban of a body; like a ray 
of Heaven, and illuminative creative Fiat- 
Lux, in the wasted terrestrial Chaos ! Blessed 
divine Influence, traceable even in the horror 
of Battlefields and garments rolled in blood: 
how it ennobles even the Battlefield ; and, in 
place of a Chactaw Massacre, makes it a 
Field of Honor ! A Battlefield too, is great. 
.Considered well, it is a kind of Quintessence 
of Labor; Labor distilled into its utmost 
concentration ; the significance of years of it 
compressed into an hour. Here too thou 
shalt be strong, and not in muscle only, if 
thou wouldst prevail. Here too thou shalt 
be strong of heart, noble of soul ; thou shalt 
dread no pain or death, thou shalt not love 
ease or life; in rage, thou shalt remember 
mercy, justice ; — thou shalt be a Knight and 
not a Chactaw, if thou wouldst prevail! It 
is the rule of all battles, against hallucinat- 
ing fellow Men, against unkempt Cotton, or 
whatsoever battles they may be, which a man 
in this world has to fight. 

Howel Davies dyes the West-Indian Seas 
with blood, piles his decks with plunder ; 
approves himself the expertest Seaman, the 
daringest Seafighter: but he gains no last- 
ing victory; lasting victory is not possible 
for him. Not, had he fleets larger than the 
combined British Navy all united with him 
in bucaniering. He, once for all, cannot 
prosper in his duel. He strikes down his 
man : yes ; but his man, or his man's repre- 
sentative, has no notion to lie struck down; 
neither, though slain ten times, will he keep 
so lying ; — nor has the Universe any notion 
to keep him so lying ! On the contrary, the 
Universe and he have, at all moments, all 
manner of motives to start up again, and 
desperately flght again. Your Napoleon is 
flung out, at last, to St. Helena; the latter 
end of him sternly compensating the begin- 
ning. The Bucanier strikes down a man, a 
hundred or a million men : but what profits 
it? He has one enemy never to be struck 
down ; nay two enemies : Mankind and the 
Maker oLMen, On the great scale or on the 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



467 



small, in fighting of men or fighting of dif- 
ficulties, I will not embark my venture with 
Howel Davies : it is not the Bucanier, it is 
the Hero only that can gain victory, that can 
do more than seem to succeed. These things 
will deserve meditating; for they apply to 
all battle and soldiership, all struggle and 
effort whatsoever in this Fight of Life. It 
is a poor Gospel, Cash-Gospel or whatever 
name it have, that does not, with clear tone, 
uncontradictable, carrying conviction to all 
hearts, forever keep men in mind of these 
things. 

Unhappily, my indomitable friend Plug- 
son of Undershot has, in a great degree, for- 
gotten them ; — as, alas, all the world has ; as, 
alas, our very Dukes and Soul-Overseers 
have, whose special trade it was to remem- 
ber them ! Hence these tears. — Plugson, 
who has indomitably spun Cotton merely to 
gain thousands of pounds, I have to call as 
yet a Bucanier and Chactaw ; till there come 
something better, still more indomitable 
from him. His hundred Thousand-pound 
Notes, if there be nothing other, are to me 
but as the hundred Scalps in a Chactaw wig- 
wam. The blind Plugson : he was a Captain 
of Industry, born member of the Ultimate 
genuine Aristocracy of this Universe, could 
he have known it ! These thousand men that 
Bpan and toiled round him, they were a regi- 
ment whom he had enlisted, man by man; 
to make war on a very genuine enemy: 
Bareness of back, and disobedient Cotton- 
fiber, which will not, unless forced to it, con- 
sent to cover bare backs. Here is a most 
genuine enemy ; over whom all creatures will 
wish him victory. He enlisted his thousand 
men; said to them, "Come, brothers, let us 
have a dash at Cotton !" They follow with 
cheerful shout ; they gain such a victory over 
Cotton as the Earth has to admire and clap 
hands at: but, alas, it is yet only of the 
Bucanier or Chactaw sort, — as good as no 
victory! Foolish Plugson of St. Dolly 
Undershot : does he hope to become illustri- 
ous by hanging up the scalps in his wigwam, 
the hundred thousands at his banker's, and 
saying. Behold my scalps'? Why, Plugson, 
even thy own host is all in mutiny : Cotton 
is conquered; but the "bare backs" — are 
worse covered than ever ! Indomitable Plug- 
son, thou must cease to be a Chactaw; thou 
and others ; thou thyself, if no other ! 

Did William the Norman Bastard, or any 
of his Taillefers, IroncuUers, manage so? 
Ironcutter; at the end of the campaign, did 



not turn-off his thousand fighters, but said 
to them: "Noble fighters, this is the land 
we have gained; be I Lord in it, — what we 
will call Law-ward, maintainer and keeper of 
Heaven's Laws: be I Law-ward, or in brief 
orthoepy Lord in it, and be ye Loyal Men 
around me in it; and we will stand by one 
another, as soldiers round a captain, for 
again we shall have need of one another!" 
Plugson, bucanier-like, says to them : "Noble 
spinners, this is the Hundred Thousand we 
have gained, wherein I mean to dwell and 
plant vineyards; the hundred thousand is 
mine, the three and sixpence daily was yours : 
adieu, noble spinners ; drink my health with 
this groat each, which I give you over and 
above!" The entirely unjust Captain of 
Industry, say I ; not Chevalier, but Bucanier ! 
"Commercial Law" does indeed acquit him ; 
asks, with wide eyes, What else? So too 
Howel Davies asks, Was it not according 
to the strictest Bucanier Custom? Did I 
dejDart in any jot or tittle from the Laws of 
the Bucaniers? 

After all, money, as they say, is miracu- 
lous. Plugson wanted victory ; as Chevaliers 
and Bucaniers, and all men alike do. He 
found money recognized, by the whole world 
with one assent, as the tru^e symbol, exact 
equivalent and synonym of victory; — and 
here we have him, a grimbrowed, indomita- 
ble Bucanier, coming home to us with a 
"victory," which the whole world is ceasing 
to clap hands at ! The whole world, taught 
somewhat impressively, is beginning to 
recognize that such victory is but half a 
victory ; and that now, if it please the Pow- 
ers, we must — have the other half ! 

Money is miraculous. What miraculous 
facilities has it yielded, will it yield us ; but 
also what never-imagined confusions, ob- 
scurations has it brought in ; down almost to 
total extinction of the moral-sense in large 
masses of mankind! "Protection of prop- 
erty," of what is "mine," means with most 
men protection of money, — the thing which, 
had I a thousand padlocks over it, is least 
of all mine; is, in a manner, scarcely worth 
calling mine ! The symbol shall be held 
sacred, defended everywhere with tip-staves, 
ropes, and gibbets; the thing signified shall 
be composedly cast to the dogs. A human 
being who has worked with human beings 
clears all scores with them, cuts himself 
with triumphant completeness forever loose 
from them, by paying down certain shillings 
and pounds. Was it not the wages, I 



468 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



promised you'? There they are, to the last 
sixpence, — according to the Laws of the 
Bucaniers! — Yes, indeed; — and, at such 
timeg, it becomes imperatively necessary to 
ask all persons, bucaniers and others, 
Whether these same respectable Laws of the 
Bucaniers are written on God's eternal 
Heavens at all, on the inner Heart of Man 
at all; or on the respectable Bucanier Log- 
book merely, for the convenience of bucanier- 
ing merely? What a question; — ^whereat 
Westminster Hall shudders to its driest 
parchment ; and on the dead wigs each par- 
ticular horsehair stands on end ! 

The Laws of Laissez-faire, Westminster, 
the laws of industrial Captain and industrial 
Soldier, how much more of idle Captain and 
industrial Soldier, will need to be remodeled, 
and modified, and rectified in a hundred and 
a hundred ways, — and not in the Sli ding- 
scale direction, but in the totally opposite 
one ! With two million industrial Soldiers 
already sitting in Bastilles, and five million 
pining on potatoes, methinks Westminster 
cannot begin too soon ! — A man has other 
obligations laid on him, in God's Universe, 
than the jDayment of cash : these also West- 
minster, if it will continue to exist and have 
board-wages, must contrive to take some 
ch:irge of: — by Westminster or by another, 
they must and will be taken charge of; be, 
with whatever difficulty, got articulated, got 
enforced, and to a certain approximate extent 
put in practice. And, as I say it, it cannot 
be too soon ! For Mammonism, left to itself, 
has become Midas-eared; and with all its 
gold mountains, sits starving for want of 
bread : and Dilettantism with its partridge- 
nets, in this extremely earnest Universe of 
ours, is playing somewhat too high a game. 

''A man by the very look of him promises 
so much" : yes ; and by the rent-roll of him 
does he promise nothing f — 

Alas, what a business will this be, which 
our Continental friends, groping tliis long 
while somewhat absurdly about it and about 
it, call "Organization of Labor"; — which 
must be taken out of the hand of absurd 
windy persons, and put into the hands of 
wise, laborious, modest, and valiant men, to 
begin with it straightway; to proceed with 
it, and succeed in it more and more, if 
Europe, at any rate if England, is to con- 
tinue habitable much longer. Looking at 
the kind of most noble Corn-Law Dukes or 
Practical Duces we have, and also of right 
reverend Soul-Overseers, Christian Spiritual 



Duces "on a minimum of four thousand five 
hundred," one's hopes are a little chilled. 
Courage, nevertheless ; there are many brave 
men in England ! My indomitable Plugson, 
— nay is there not even in thee some hope? 
Thou art hitherto a Bucanier, as it was writ- 
ten and prescribed for thee by an evil world : 
but in that grim brow, in that indomitable 
heart which can conquer Cotton, do there 
not perhaps lie other ten-times nobler con- 
quests ? 

Labor 

thomas caklyle 

[Ibid., "Book III, chapter xi] 

For there is a perennial nobleness, and 
even sacredness, in Work. Were he never 
so benighted, forgetful of his high calling, 
there is always hope in a man that actually 
and earnestly works: in Idleness alone is 
there perpetual despair. Work, never so 
Mammonish, mean, is in communication with 
Nature; the real desire to get Work done 
will itself lead one more and more to truth, 
to Nature's appointments and regulations, 
which are truth. 

The latest Gospel in this world is, Know 
thy work and do it. "Know thyself": long 
enough has that poor "self" of thine tor- 
mented thee ; thou wilt never get to "know" 
it, I believe ! Think it not thy business, this 
of knowing thyself ; thou art an unknowable 
individual : know what thou canst work at ; 
and work at it, like a Hercules! That will 
be thy better plan. 

It has been written, "an endless signifi- 
cance lies in Work" ; a man perfects himself 
by working. Foul jungles are cleared away, 
fair seedfields rise instead, and stately cities ; 
and withal the man himself first ceases to be 
a jungle and foul unwholesome desert there- 
by. Consider hoAv, even in the meanest sorts 
of Labor, the whole soul of a man is com- 
posed into a kind of real harmony, the in- 
stant he sets himself to work! Doubt, De- 
sire, Sorrow, Remorse, Indignation, Despair 
itself, all these like helldogs lie beleaguering 
the soul of the poor day worker, as of every 
man: but he bends himself with free valor 
against his task, and all these are stilled, all 
these shrink murmuring far off into their 
caves. The man is now a man. The blessed 
glow of Labor in him, is it not as purifying 
fire, wherein all poison is burnt up, and of 
sour smoke itself there is made bright blessed 
flame! 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



469 



Destiny, on the whole, has no other way 
of cultivating us. A formless Chaos, once 
set it revolving, grows round and ever 
rounder; ranges itself, by mere force of 
gravity, into strata, spherical courses; is no 
longer a Chaos, but a round compacted 
World. What would become of the Earth, 
did she cease to revolve? In the poor old 
Earth, so long as she revolves, all inequali- 
ties, irregularities disperse themselves; all 
irregularities are incessantly becoming regu- 
lar.' Hast thou looked on the Potter's wheel, 
— one of the venerablest objects; old as 
the Prophet Ezekiel and far older? Rude 
lumps of clay, how they spin themselves up, 
by mere quick whirling, into beautiful cir- 
cular dishes. And fancy the most assidu- 
ous Potter, but without his wheel; reduced 
to make dishes or rather amorphous botches, 
by mere kneading and baking ! Even such 
a Potter were Destiny, with a human soul 
that would rest and lie at ease, that would 
not work and spin ! Of an idle unrevolving 
man the kindest Destiny, like the most as- 
siduous Potter without wheel, can bake and 
knead nothing other than a botch; let her 
spend on him what expensive coloring, what 
gilding and enameling she will, he is but a 
botch. Not a dish; no, a bulging, kneaded, 
crooked, shambling, squint-cornered, amor- 
phous botch, — a mere enameled vessel of 
dishonor ! Let the idle think of this. 

Blessed is he who has found his work; 
let him ask no other blessedness. He has 
a work, a life-purpose; he has found it, 
and will follow it ! How, as a free-flowing 
channel, dug and torn by noble force 
through the sour mud-swamp of one's ex- 
istence, like an ever-deepening river there, 
it runs and flows; — di'aining-off the sour 
festering water, gradually from the root of 
the remotest grass-blade; making, instead 
of pestilential swamp, a green fruitful 
meadow with its clear-flowing stream. 
How blessed for the meadow itself, let the 
stream and its value be great or small! 
Labor is Life : from the inmost heart of the 
Worker rises his god-given Force, the 
sacred celestial Life-essence breathed into 
him by Almighty God; from his inmost 
heart awakens him to all nobleness, — to all 
knowledge, "self-knowledge" and much 
else, so soon as Work fitly begins. Knowl- 
edge? The knowledge that will hold good 
in working, cleave thou to that: for Nature 
herself accredits that, says Yea to that. 
Properly thou hast no other knowledge but 



what thou hast got by working : the rest 
is yet all a hypothesis of knowledge; a 
thing to be argued of in schools, a thing 
floating in the clouds, in endless logic- 
vortices, till we try it and fix it. "Doubt, 
of whatever kind, can be ended by Action 
alone." 

And again, hast thou valued Patience, 
Courage, Perseverance, Openness to light; 
readiness to own thyself mistaken, to do 
better next time? All these, all virtues, in 
wrestling with the dim brute Powers of 
Fact, in ordering of thy fellows in such 
wrestle, there and elsewhere not at all, thou 
wilt continually learn. Set down a brave 
Sir Christopher in the middle of black 
ruined Stone-heaps, of foolish unarchitec- 
tural Bishops, red-tape Officials, idle Nell- 
Gwyn Defenders of the Faith; and see 
whether he will ever raise a Paul's Cathe- 
dral out of all that, yea or no! Rough, 
rude, contradictory are all things and per- 
sons, from the mutinous masons and Irish 
hodmen, up to the idle Nell-Gwyn De- 
fenders, to blustering red-taj)e Officials, 
foolish unarcbitectural Bishops. All these 
things and persons are there not for 
Christopher's sake and his Cathedral's; 
they are there for their own sake mainly! 
Christopher will have to conquer and con- 
strain all these, — if he be able. All these 
are against him. Equitable Nature herself, 
who carries her mathematics and architec- 
tonics not on the face of her, but deep in 
the hidden heart of her, — Nature herself is 
but partially for him; will be wholly 
against him, if he constrain her not ! His 
very money, where is it to come from ? The 
pious munificence of England lies far-scat- 
tered, distant, unable to sj)eak, and say, 
"I am here"; — must be spoken to before 
it can speak. Pious munificence, and all 
help, is so silent, invisible like the gods; 
impediment, contradictions manifold are so 
loud and near! brave Sir Christopher, 
trust thou in those notwithstanding, and 
front all these; understand all these; by 
valiant patience, noble effort, insight, by 
man's-strength, vanquish and compel all 
these, — and, on the whole, strike down 
victoriously the last topstone of that Paul's 
Edifice; thy monument for certain cen- 
turies, the stamp "Great Man" impressed 
very legibly on Portland-stone there! — 

Yes, all manner of help, and pious re- 
sponse from Men or Nature, is always what 
we call silent; cannot speak or come to 



470 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



light, till it be seen, till it be spoken to. 
Every noble work is at first "impossible." 
In very truth, for every noble work the 
possibilities will lie diffused through Im- 
mensity; inarticulate, undiscoverable ex- 
cept to faith. Like Gideon thou shalt 
spread out thy fleece at the door of thy 
tent; see whether under the wide arch of 
Heaven there be any bounteous moisture, 
or none. Thy heart and life-purpose shall 
be as a miraculous Gideon's fleece, spread 
out in silent appeal to Heaven: and from 
the kind Immensities, what from the poor 
unkind Localities and town and country 
Parishes there never could, blessed dew- 
moisture to suffice thee shall have fallen ! 

Work is of a religious nature : — work is 
of a brave nature; which it is the aim of 
all religion to be. All work of man is as 
the swimmer's : a waste ocean threatens to 
devour him; if he front it not bravely, it 
will keep its word. By incessant wise de- 
fiance of it, lusty rebuke and buffet of it, 
behold how it loyally supports him, bears 
him as its conqueror along. "It is so," 
says Goethe, "with all things that man un- 
dertakes in this world." 

Brave Sea-captain, Norse Sea-king, — 
Columbus, my hero, royalest Sea-king of 
all ! it is no friendly environment this of 
thine, in the waste deep waters; around 
thee mutinous discouraged souls, behind 
fhee disgrace and ruin, before thee the un- 
penetrated veil of Night. Brother, these 
wild water-mountains, bounding from their 
deep bases (ten miles deep, I am told), 
are not entirely there on thy behalf! Me- 
seems they have other work than floating 
thee forward: — and the huge Winds, that 
sweep from L^rsa Major to the Tropics and 
Equators, dancing their giant-waltz through 
the kingdoms of Chaos and Immensity, they 
care little about filling rightly or filling 
wrongly the small shoulder-of-mutton sails 
in this cockle-skiff of thine! Thou art not 
among articulate-speaking friends, my 
brother; thou art among immeasurable 
dumb monsters, tumbling, howling wide as 
the world here. Secret, far off, invisible to 
all hearts but thine, there lies a help in 
them : see how thou wilt get at that. 
Patiently thou wilt wait till the mad 
Southwester spend itself, saving thyself 
by dextrous science of defense, the while : 
valiantly, with swift decision, wilt thou 
strike in, when the favoring East, the Pos- 
sible, springs up. Mjatiny of men thou wilt 



sternly repress; weakness, despondency, 
thou wilt cheerily encourage: thou wilt 
swallow down complaint, unreason, weari- 
ness, weakness of others and thyself; — 
how much wilt thou swallow down! There 
shall be a depth of Silence in thee, deeper 
than this Sea, which is but ten miles deep: 
a Silence unsoundable; known to God only. 
Thou shalt be a Great Man. Yes, my 
World-Soldier, thou of the World Marine- 
service, — thou wilt have to be greater than 
this tumultuous unmeasured World here 
round thee is; thou, in thy strong soul, as 
with wrestler's arms, shalt embrace it, har- 
ness it down; and make it bear thee on, — 
to new Americas, or whither God wills! 

Captains of Industry 

thomas carlyle 

[Ibid., Book IV, chapter iv] 

If I believed that Mammonism with its 
adjuncts was to continue henceforth the 
one serious principle of our existence, I 
should reckon it idle to solicit remedial 
measures from any Government, the dis- 
ease being insusceptible of remedy. Gov- 
ernment can do much, but it can in no wise 
do all. Government, as the most con- 
spicuous object in Society, is called upon 
to give signal of what shall be done; and, 
in many ways, to preside over, further, and 
command the doing of it. But the Gov- 
ernment cannot do, by all its signaling and 
commanding, what the Society is radically 
indisposed to do. In the long-run every 
Government is the exact symbol of its 
People, with their wisdom and unwisdom; 
we have to say, Like People like Govern- 
ment. — The main substance of this immense 
Problem of Organizing Labor, and first of 
all of Managing the Working Classes, will, 
it is very clear, have to be solved by those 
who stand practically in the middle of it; 
by those who themselves work and preside 
over work. Of all that can be enacted by 
any Parliament in regard to it, the germs 
must already lie potentially extant in those 
two Classes, who are to obey such enact- 
ment. A Human Chaos in which there is 
no light, you vainly attempt to irradiate 
by light shed on it : order never can arise 
there. 

But it is my firm conviction that the 
"Hell of England" will cease to be that of 
"not making money"; that we shall get a 



NINETEENTH CENTURY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



471 



nobler Hell and a nobler Heaven! I an- 
ticipate light in the Human Chaos, glim- 
mering, shining more and more; under 
manifold true signals from without Tliat 
light shall shine. Our deity no longer 
being Mammon, — Heavens, each man 
will then say to himself: "Why such dead- 
ly haste to make money? I shall not go to 
Hell, even if I do not make money! There 
is another Hell, I am told!" Competition, 
at railway-speed, in all branches of com- 
merce and work will then abate : — ^good 
felt-hats for the head, in every sense, in- 
stead of seven-feet lath-and-plaster hats on 
wheels, will then be discoverable! Bubble- 
periods, with their panics and commercial 
crises, will again become infrequent ; steady 
modest industry will take the place of 
gambling speculation. To be a noble 
Master, among noble Workers, will again 
be the first ambition with some few ; to be 
a rich Master only the second. How the 
Inventive Genius of England, with the 
whirr of its bobbins and billy-rollers 
shoved somewhat into the backgrounds of 
the brain, will contrive and devise, not 
cheaper produce exclusively, but fairer dis- 
tribution of the produce at its present 
cheapness ! By degrees, we shall again 
have a Society with something of Heroism 
in it, something of Heaven's Blessing on 
it; we shall again have, as my German 
friend asserts, "instead of Mammon- 
Feudalism with unsold cotton-shirts and 
Preservation of the Game, noble, just In- 
dustrialism and Government by the 
Wisest !" 

It is with the hope of awakening here 
and there a British man to know himself 
for a man and divine soul, that a few words 
of parting admonition, to all persons to 
whom the Heavenly Powers have lent 
power of any kind in this land, may now 
be addressed. And first to those same Mas- 
ter-Workers, Leaders of Industry; who 
stand nearest and in fact powerfulest, 
though not most prominent, being as yet in 
too many senses a Virtuality rather than an 
Actuality. 

The Leaders of Industry, if Industry is 
ever to be led, are virtually the Captains of 
the World; if there be no nobleness in 
them, there will never be an Aristocracy 
more. But let the Captains of Indu'&try 
consider: once again, are they born of 
other clay than the old Captains of 
Slaughter; doomed forever to be no Chiv- 



alry, but a mere gold-plated Doggery, — 
what the French well name Canaille, "Dog- 
gery" with more or less gold carrion at its 
disposal? Captains of Industry are the 
true Fighters, henceforth recognizable as 
the only true ones: Fighters against Chaos, 
Necessity, and the Devils and Jotuns; and 
lead on Mankind in that great, and alone 
true, and universal warfare; the stars in 
their courses fighting for them, and all 
Heaven and all Earth saying audibly. Well 
done! Let the Captains of Industry retire 
into their own hearts, and ask solemnly. 
If there is nothing but vulturous hunger, 
for fine wines, valet reputation, and gilt 
carriages, discoverable there? Of hearts 
made by the Almighty God I will not be- 
lieve such a thing. Deep-hidden under 
wretchedest God-forgetting Cants, Epi- 
curisms, Dead-Sea Apisms; forgotten as 
under foulest fat Lethe mud and weeds, 
there is yet, in all hearts born into this 
God's-World, a spark of the Godlike slum- 
bering. Awake, nightmare sleepers; 
awake, arise, or be forever fallen ! This 
is not playhouse poetry; it is sober fact. 
Our England, our world cannot live as it 
is. It will connect itself with a God again, 
or go down with nameless throes and fire- 
consummation to the Devils. Thou who 
feelest aught of such a Godlike stirring in 
thee, any faintest intimation of it as 
through heavy-laden dreams, follow it, I 
conjure thee. Arise, save thyself, be one 
of those that save thy country. 

Bucaniers, Chactaw Indians, whose su- 
preme aim in fighting is that they may get 
the scalps, the money, that they may amass 
scalps and money: out of such came no 
Chivalry, and never will ! Out of such came 
only gore and wreck, infernal rage and mis- 
ery; desperation quenched in annihilation. 
Behold it, I bid thee, behold there, and con- 
sider ! What is it that thou have a hundred 
thousand-pound bills laid-up in thy strong- 
room, a hundred scalps hung-up in thy wig- 
wam ? I value not them or thee. Thy scalps 
and thy thousand-pound bills are as yet noth- 
ing, if no nobleness from within irradiate 
them ; if no Chivalry, in action, or in embryo 
ever struggling towards birth and action, be 
there. 

Love of men cannot be bought by cash- 
payment; and without love men cannot en- 
dure to be together. You cannot lead a 
Fighting World without having it regi- 
mented, chivalried: the thing, in a day, 



472 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



becomes impossible ; all men in it, the high- 
est at first, the very lowest at last, dis- 
cern consciously, or by a noble instinct, 
this necessity. And can you any more con- 
tinue to lead a Working World unregi- 
mented, anarchic? I answer, and the 
Heavens and Earth are now answering, 
No ! The thing becomes not ''in a day" im- 
possible; but in some two generations it 
does. Yes, when fathers and mothers, in 
Stockport hunger-cellars, begin to eat their 
children, and Irish widows have to prove 
their relationship by dying of typhus-fever ; 
and amid Governing "Corporations of the 
Best and Bravest," busy to preserve their 
game by "bushing," dark millions of God's 
human creatures start up in mad Chartisms, 
impracticable Sacred-Months, and Man- 
chester Insurrections; — and there is a vir- 
tual Industrial Aristocracy as yet only half- 
alive, spell-bound amid money-bags and 
ledgers; and an actual Idle Aristocracy 
seemingly near dead in somnolent delusions, 
in trespasses and double-barrels ; "sliding," 
as on inclined-planes, which every new year 
they soap with new Hansard's- jargon un- 
der God's sky, and so . are "sliding," ever 
faster, towards a "scale" and balance-scale 
whereon is written Thou art found want- 
ing: — in such days, after a generation or 
two, I say, it does become, even to the low 
and simple, very palpably impossible! No 
Working World, any more than a Fighting 
World, can be led on without a noble Chiv- 
alry of Work, and laws and fixed rules 
which follow out of that, — far nobler than 
any Chivalry of Fighting was. As an an- 
archic multitude on mere Supply-and-de- 
mand, it is becoming inevitable that we 
dwindle in horrid suicidal convulsion and 
self -abrasion, frightful to the imagination, 
into Chactaw Workers. With wigwams 
and scalps, — with palaces and thousand- 
pound bills; with savagery, depopulation, 
chaotic desolation ! Good Heavens, will not 
one French Revolution and Reign of Ter- 
ror suffice us, but must there be two 1 There 
will be two if needed; there will be twenty 
if needed; there will be precisely as many 
as are needed. The Laws of Nature will 
have themselves' fulfilled. That is a thing 
certain to me. 

Your gallant battle-hosts and work-hosts, 
as the others did, will need to be made loy- 
ally yours ; they must and will be regulated, 
methodically secured in their just share of 
conquest under you; — joined with you in 



veritable brotherhood, sonhood, by quite 
other and deeper ties than those of tem- 
porary day's wages ! How would mere red- 
coated regiments, to say nothing of chiv- 
alries, fight for you, if you could discharge 
them on the evening of the battle, on pay- 
ment of the stipulated shillings, — and they 
discharge you on the morning of it! Chel- 
sea Hospitals, pensions, promotions, rigor- 
ous lasting covenant on the one side and 
on the other, are indispensable even for a 
hired fighter. The Feudal Baron, much 
more,- — how could he subsist with mere tem- 
porary mercenaries round him, at six-pence 
a day; ready to go over to the other side, 
if sevenpence were offered? He could not 
have subsisted; — and his noble instinct 
saved him from the necessity of even try- 
ing! The Feudal Baron had a Man's Soul 
in him; to which anarchy, mutiny, and the 
other fruits of temporary mercenaries, were 
intolei'able : he had' never been a Baron 
otherwise, but had continued a Chactaw and 
Bucanier. He felt it precious, and at last 
it became habitual, and his fruitful, enlarged 
existence included it as a necessity, to have 
men round him who in heart loved him; 
whose life he watched over with rigor yet 
with love; who were prepared to give their 
life for him, if need came. It was beau- 
tiful ; it was human ! Man lives not other- 
wise, nor can live contented, anywhere or 
anywhen. Isolation is the sum-total of 
wretchedness to man. To be cut off, to be 
left solitary : to have a world alien, not 
your world ; all a hostile camp for you ; not 
a home at all, of hearts and faces who 
are yours, whose you are ! It is the f right- 
f ulest enchantment ; too truly a work of the 
Evil One. To have neither superior, nor 
inferior, nor equal, united manlike to you. 
Without father, without child, without 
brother. Man knows no sadder destiny. 
"How is each of us," exclaims Jean Paul, 
"so lonely in the wide bosom of the All!" 
Encased each as in his transparent "iee- 
palac.e"; our brother visible in his, making 
signals and gesticulations to us; — visible, 
but forever unattainable: on his bosom we 
shall never rest, nor he on ours. It was 
not a God that did this; no! 

Awake, ye noble Workers, warriors in the 
one true war: all this must be remedied. 
It is you who are already half -alive, whom 
I will welcome into life; whom I will con- 
jure, in God's name, to shake off your en- 
chanted sleep, and live wholly! Cease to 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



478 



count scalps, gold-purses; not in these lies 
your or our salvation. Even these, if you 
count only these,, vpill not long be left. Let 
bucaniering be put far from you; alter, 
speedily abrogate all laws of the bucaniers, 
if you would gain any victory that shall 
endure. Let God's justice, let pity, noble- 
ness, and manly valor, with more gold- 
purses or with fewer, testify themselves 
in this your brief Life-transit to all the 
Eternities, the Gods, and Silences. It is to 
you I call; for ye are not dead, ye are 
already half -alive: there is in you a sleep- 
less, dauntless energy, the prime-matter of 
all nobleness in man. Honor to you in 
your kind. It is to you I call: ye know 
at least this. That the mandate of God to 
His creature man is: Work! The future 
Epic of the World rests not with those 
that are near dead, but with those that are 
alive, and those that are coming into life. 

Look around you. Your world-hosts are 
all in mutiny, in confusion, destitution; on 
the eve of fiery wreck and madness ! They 
will not march farther for you, on the six- 
pence a day and supply-and-demand prin- 
ciple : they will not ; nor ought they, nor 
can they. Ye shall reduce them to order, 
begin reducing them. To order, to just 
subordination; noble loyalty in return for 
noble guidance. Their souls are driven nigh 
mad; let yours be sane and ever saner. Not 
as a bewildered, bewildering mob ; but as a 
firm regimented mass, with real captains 
over them, will these men march any more. 
All human interests, combined human en- 
deavors, and social growths in this world, 
have, at a certain stage of their develop- 
ment, required organizing: and Work, the 
grandest of human interests, does now re- 
quire it. 

God knows, the task will be hard : but no 
noble task was ever easy. This task will 
wear away your lives, and the lives of your 



sons and grandsons: but for what purpose, 
if not for tasks like this, were lives given 
to men ? Ye shall cease to count your thou- 
sand-pound scalps, the noble of you shall 
cease! Nay the very scalps, as I say, will 
not long be left if you count only these. 
Ye shall cease wholly to be barbarous vul- 
turous Chactaws, and become noble Euro- 
pean Nineteenth-Century Men. Ye shall 
know that Mammon, in never such gigs and 
flunky "respectabilities," is not the alone 
God ; that of himself he is but a Devil, and 
even a Brute-god. 

Difficult? Yes, it will be difficult. The 
short-fiber cotton ; that too was difficult. The 
waste cotton-shrub, long useless, disobedient, 
as the thistle by the wayside, — have ye not 
conquered it: made it into beautiful ban- 
dana webs; white woven shirts for men; 
bright-tinted air-garments wherein flit god- 
desses? Ye have shivered mountains 
asunder, made the hard iron pliant to you 
as soft putty: the Forest-giants, Marsh- 
jotuns bear sheaves of golden-grain; ^gir 
the Sea-demon himself stretches his back 
for a sleek highway to you, and on Fire- 
horses and Windhorses ye career. Ye are 
most strong. Thor red-bearded, with his blue 
sun-eyes, with his cheery heart and strong 
thunder-hammer, he and you have prevailed. 
Ye are most strong, ye Sons of the icy 
North, of the far East, — far marching from 
your rugged Eastern Wildernesses, hither- 
ward from the gray Dawn of Time! Ye 
are Sons of the Jotun-land; the land of 
Difficulties Conquered. Difficult? You must 
try this thing. Once try it with the un- 
derstanding that it will and shall have to be 
done. Try it as ye ti-y the paltrier thing, 
making of money! I will bet on you once 
more, against all Jotuns, Tailor-gods, 
Double-barrelled Law-wards, and Denizens 
of Chaos whatsoever ! 



2. THE POET'S COMMENT 



The Song of the Shirt 
thomas hood 

With fingers weary and worn, 
With eyelids heavy and red, 

A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, 
Plying her needle and thread — 

Stitch! stitch! stitch! 



In poverty, hunger, and dirt. 
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch 
She sang the "Song of the Shirt." 

"Work ! work ! work ! 

While the cock is crowing aloof! 
And work — work — work, 

Till the stars shine through the roof! 



474 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



It's Oh ! to be a slave 

Along with the barbarous Turk, 
Where woman has never a soul to save, 

If this is Christian work! 

"Work — v/ork — work, 

Till the brain begins to swim ; 
Work — work — work. 

Till the eyes are heavy and dim ! 
Seam, and gusset, and band. 

Band, and gusset, and seam, 
Till over the buttons I fall asleep, 

And sew them on in a dream ! 

"Oh, Men, with Sisters dear! 

Oh, Men, with Mothers and Wives ! 
It is not linen you're wearing out 

But human creatures' lives ! 
Stitch — stitch — stitch. 

In poverty, hunger, and dirt. 
Sewing at once, with a double thread, 

A Shroud as well as a Shirt. 

"But why do I talk of Death? 

That Phantom of grisly bone, 
I hardly fear its terrible shape, 

It seems so like my own — 
It seems so like my own. 

Because of the fasts I keep ; 
Oh, God ! that bread should be so dear. 

And flesh and blood so cheap ! 

"Work — work — work ! 

My labor never flags; 
And what are its wages ? A bed of straw, 

A crust of bread — and rags. 
That shattered roof — this naked floor — • 

A table — a broken chair — 
And a wall so blank, my shadow I thank 

For sometimes falling there ! 

"Work — work — work ! 

From weary chime to chime, 
Work — work — work. 

As prisoners work for crime ! 
Band, and gusset, and seam, 

Seam, and gusset, and band. 
Till the heart is sick, and the brain be- 
numbed. 

As well as the weary hand. 

"Work — work — work. 

In the dull December light, 
And work — work — work, 

When the weather is warm and bright — 
While underneath the eaves 

The brooding swallows cling 



As if to show me their sunny backs 
And twit me with the spring. 

"Oh ! but to breathe the breath 

Of the cowslip and primrose sweet — 
With the sky above my head. 

And the grass beneath my feet; 
For only one short hour 

To feel as I used to feel. 
Before I knew the woes of want 

And the walk that costs a meal. 

"Oh! but for one short hour! 

A respite however brief! 
No blessed leisure for Love or Hope, 

But only time for Grief! 
A little weeping would ease my heart, 

But in their briny bed 
My tears must stop, for every drop ■ 

Hinders needle and thread!" 

With fingers weary and worn. 

With eyelids heavy and red, * 

A woman sat, in unwomanly rags, 

Plying her needle and thread — 
Stitch! stitch! stitch! 

In poverty, hunger, and dirt, 
And still with a voice of dolorous pitch, — 
Would that its tone could reach the Rich ! — " 

She sang this "Song of the Shirt !" 

(1843) 

West LoNDOisr 

MATTHEV^ ARNOLD 

Crouch'd on the pavement, close by Bel- 
grave Square, 

A tramp I saw, ill, moody, and tongue-tied. 

A babe was in her arms, and at her side 

A girl; their clothes were rags, their feet 
were bare. 

Some laboring men, whose work lay some- 
where there, 

Pass'd opposite; she touch'd her girl, who 

hied 
-Across, and begg'd, and came back satis- 
fled. 

The rich she had let pass with frozen stare. 

Thought I : "Above her state this spirit 
towers ; 

She will not ask of aliens, but of friends, 

Of sharers in a common human fate. 

She turns from that cold succor, which at- 
tends 

The unknown little from the unknowing 
great, 

And points us to a better time than ours." 

(1867) 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



475 



The Day Is Comiistg 
william morris 

Come hither, lads, and harken, for a tale 

there is to tell, 
Of the wonderful days a-coming, when all 

shall be better than well. 

And the tale shall be told of a country, a 
land in the naidst of the sea, 

And folk shall call it England in the days 
that are going to be. 

There more than one in a thousand in the 

days that are yet to come. 
Shall have some hope of the morrow, some 

joy of the ancient home. 

For then, laugh not, but listen to this 

strange tale of mine. 
All folk that are in England shall be better 

lodged than swine. 

Then a man shall work and bethink him, 
and rejoice in the deeds of his hand. 

Nor yet come home in the even too faint 
and weary to stand. 

Men in that time a-eoming shall work and 

have no fear 
For tomorrow's lack of earning and the 

hunger-wolf anear. 

I tell you this for a wonder, that no man 

then shall be glad 
Of his fellow's fall and mishap to snatch 

at the work he had. 

For that which the worker winneth shall 

then be his indeed. 
Nor shall half be reaped for nothing by him 

that sowed no seed. 

strange new wonderful justice ! But for 
whom shall we gather the gain? 

For ourselves and for each of our fellows, 
and no hand shall labor in vain. 

Then all Mine and all Thine shall be Ours, 
and no more shall any man crave 

For riches that serve for nothing but to 
fetter a friend for a slave. 

And what wealth then shall be left us when 

none shall gather gold 
To buy his friend in the market, and pinch 

and pine the sold? 



Nay, what save the lovely city, and the lit- 
tle house on the hill. 

And the wastes and the woodland beauty, 
and the happy fields we till; 

And the homes of ancient stories, the tombs 

of the mighty dead; 
And the wise men seeking out marvels, and 

the poet's teeming head; 

And the painter's hand of wonder; and 

the marvelous fiddle-bow. 
And the banded choirs of music: all those 

that do and know. 

For all these shall be ours and all men's; 

nor shall any lack a share 
Of the toil and the gain of living in the 

daj^s when the world grows fair. 

Ah! such are the days that shall be! But 

what are the deeds of today. 
In the days of the years we dwell in, that 

wear our lives away ? 

Why, then, and for what are we waiting? 

There are three words to speak; 
We will it^ and what is the foeman but 

the dream-strong wakened and weak? 

why and for what are we waiting? while 
oar brothers droop and die, 

And on every wind of the heavens a wasted 
life goes by. 

How long shall they reproach us where 
crowd oil crowd they dwell. 

Poor ghosts of the wicked city, the gold- 
crushed, hungry hell? 

Through squalid life they labored, in sordid 

grief they died. 
Those sons of a mighty mother, those props 

of England's pride. 

They are gone; there is none can undo it, 
nor save our souls from the curse; 

But many a million cometh, and shall they 
be better or worse ? 

It is we must answer and hasten, and open 

wide the door 
For the rich man's hurrying terror, and 

the slow-foot hope of the poor. 

Yea, the voiceless wrath of the wretched, 
and their unlearned discontent. 



476 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



We must give it voice and wisdom till the 
waiting-tide be spent. 

Come, then, since all things call us, the liv- 
ing and the dead, 

And o'er the weltering tangle a glimmering 
light is shed. 

Come, then, let us east off fooling, and put 

by ease and rest. 
For the Cause alone is worthy till the good 

days bring the best. 

Come, join in the only battle wherein no 

man can fail. 
Where whoso fadeth and dieth, yet his deed 

shall still prevail. 

Ah! come, cast off all fooling, for this, at 

least, we know : 
That the Dawn and the Day is coming, and 

forth the Banners go. (1885) 

Northern Farmer : New Style 
alfred tennyson 

Dosn't thou 'ear my 'erse's legs, as they 

canters awaay? 
Proputty, proputty, proputty — that's what 

I 'ears 'em saay. 
Proputty, proputty, proputty — Sam, thou's 

an ass for thy paains; 
Theer's moor sense i' one o' 'is legs nor in 

all thy braains. 

Woa — theer's a craw to pluck wi' tha, Sam : 
yon's parson's 'ouse — 

Dosn't thou knaw that a man mun be eather 
a man or a mouse? 

Time to think on it then ; for thou'll be twen- 
ty to weeak. 

Proputty, proputty — woa then, woa — let ma 
'ear mysen speak. 

Me an' thy muther, Sammy, 'as bean 

a-talkin' o' thee; 
Thou's bean talkin' to muther, an' she bean 

a-tellin' it me. 
Thou'll not marry for munny — thou's sweet 

upo' parson's lass — 
Noa — thou'll marry for luvv — an' we boath 

on us thinks tha an ass. 

Seea'd her to-daay goa by — Saaint's-daay — 

they was ringing the bells. 
She's a beauty, thou thinks — an' soa is 

scoors o' gells, 



Them as 'as munny an' all — wot's a beauty ? 

- — the flower as blaws. 
But proputty, proputty sticks, an' proputty, 

proputty, grows. 

Do'ant be stunt ; taake time. I knaws what 

maakes tha sa mad. 
Warn't I craazed fur the lasses mysen when 

I wur a lad? 
But I knaw'd a Quaaker feller as often 'as 

towd ma this: 
"Doant thou marry for munny, but goa 

wheer munny is !" 

An' I went wheer munny war; an' thy 

muther coom to 'and, 
Wi' lots o' munny laaid by, an' a nicetish 

bit o' land. 
Maaybe she warn't a beauty — I niver giv 

it a thowt — 
But warn't she as good to cuddle an' kiss as 

a lass as 'ant nowt? 

Parson's lass 'ant nowt, an' she weant 'a 

nowt when 'e 's dead, 
Mun be a guvness, lad, or summut, and 

addle her bread, 
Why? fur 'e 's nobbut a curate, an' weant 

niver git hissen clear. 
An' 'e maade the bed as 'e ligs on afoor 'e 

coom'd to the shere. 

An' thin 'e coom'd to the parish wi' lots 
o' Varsity debt, 

Stook to his taail they did, an' 'e 'ant got 
shut on 'em yet. 

An' 'e ligs on 'is back i' the grip, wi' noan 
to lend 'im a shove, 

Woorse nor a far-welter'd yowe; fur, Sam- 
my, 'e married fur luvv. 

Luvv? what's luvv? thou can luvv thy lass 

an' 'er munny too, 
Maakin' 'em goa togither, as they've good 

right to do. 
Couldn I luvv thy muther by cause 'o 'er 

munny laai'd by? 
Naay — fur I luvv'd 'er a vast sight moor 

fur it; reason why. 

Ay, an' thy muther says thou wants to 

marry the lass, 
Cooms of a gentleman burn; an' we boath 

on us thinks tha an ass. 
Woa then, proputty, wiltha? — an ass as 

near as mays nowt — 
Woa then, wiltha? dangtha! — the bees is as 

fell as owt. 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



477 



Break me a bit o' tlie esh for his 'ead, lad, 

out o' the fence ! 
Gentleman burn! what's gentleman burn? 

is it shillins an' pence'? 
Proputty, proputty's ivrything 'ere, an', 

Sammy, I'm blest 
If it is n't the saame cop yonder, fur them 

as 'as it 's the best. 

Tis'n them as 'as munny as breaks into 

'ouses an' steals, 
Them as 'as coats to their backs an' taakes 

their regular meals. 
Noa, but it's them as niver knaws wheer a 

meal's to be 'ad. 
Taake my word for it Sammy, the poor 

in a loomp is bad. 

Them or thir feythers, tha sees, mun 'a 

bean a laazy lot. 
Fur work mun 'a gone to the gittin' whin- 

iver munny was got. 



Feyther 'ad ammost nowt; leastways 'is 

munny was 'id. 
But 'e tued an' moil'd issen dead, an' 'e died 

a good un, 'e did. 

Loook thou theer wheer Wrigglesby beck 

cooms out by the 'ill ! 
Feyther run oop to the farm, an' I runs 

oop to the mill; 
An' I'll run oop to the brig, an' that thou'll 

live to see; 
And if thou marries a good un I'll leave 

the land to thee. 

Thim's my noations, Sammy, wheerby I 

means to stick; 
But if thou marries a bad un, I'll leave the 

land to Dick. — 
Coom oop, proputty, projDutty — that's what 

I 'ears 'im saay — 
Proputty, proputty, proputty — canter an' 

canter awaay. (1870) 



3. WEALTH AND COMMONWEALTH 



Traffic^ 



JOHN RUSKIN 



My good Yorkshire friends, you asked 
me down here among your hills that I might 
talk to you about this Exchange you are 
going to build: but earnestly and seriously 
asking you to pardon me, I am going to 
do nothing of the kind. I cannot talk, or 
at least can say very little, about this same 
Exchange. I must talk of quite other 
things, though not willingly; — I could not 
deserve your pardon, if when you invited 
me to speak on one subject, I willfully 
spoke on another. But I cannot speak, to 
purpose, of anything about which I do not 
care; and most simply and sorrowfully I 
have to tell you in the outset, that I do 
not care about this Exchange of yours. 

If, however, when you sent me your in- 
vitation, I had answered, "I won't come, I 
don't care about the Exchange of Brad- 
ford," you would have been justly offended 
with me, not knowing the reasons of so blunt 
a carelessness. So I have come down, hop- 
ing that you will patiently let me tell you 
why, on this, and many other such occasions, 

^A lecture delivered in the Town Hall, Brad- 
ford, afterwards included in The Crown of Wild 
Olive. 



I now remain silent, when formerly I should 
have caught at the opportunity of speak- 
ing to a gracious audience. 

In a word, then, I do not care about this 
Exchange, — because you don't; and because 
you know perfectly well I cannot make 
you. Look at the essential conditions of 
the case, which you, as business men, know 
perfectly well, though perhaps you think 
I forget them. You are going to spend 
£30,000, which to you, collectively, is noth- 
ing ; the buying a new coat is, as to the cost 
of it, a much more important matter of 
consideration to me than building a new 
Exchange is to you. But you think you 
may as well have the right thing for your 
money. You know there are a great many 
odd styles of architecture about; you don't 
want to do anything ridiculous; you hear 
of me, among others, as a resjoectable archi- 
tectural man-milliner; and you send for 
me, that I may tell you the leading fashion ; 
and what is, in our shops, for the moment, 
the newest and sweetest thing in pinnacles. 

Now, pardon me for telling you frankly, 
you cannot have good architecture merely 
by asking people's advice on occasion. All 
good architecture is the expression of na- 
tional life and character; and it is pro- 
duced by a prevalent and eager national 



478 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



taste, or desire for beauty. And I want 
you to think a little of the deep significance 
of this word "taste"; for no statement of 
mine has been more earnestly or oftener 
controverted than that good taste is essen- 
tially a moral quality. ''No," say many of 
my antagonists, "taste is one thing, morality 
is another. Tell us what is pretty : we shall 
be glad to know that; but we need no ser- 
mons even were you able to preach them, 
which may be doubted." 

Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old 
dogma of mine somewhat. Taste is not only 
a part and an index of morality — it is the 
ONLY morality. The first, and last, and 
closest trial question to any living creature 
is, "What do you like?" Tell me what 
you like, and I'll tell you what you are. 
Go out into the street, and ask the first man 
or woman you meet, what their "taste" is, 
and if they answer candidly, you know them, 
body and soul. "You, my friend in the 
rags, with the unsteady gait, what do you 
like?" "A pipe and a quartern of gin." 
I know you. "You, good woman, with the 
quick step and tidy bonnet, what do you 
like?" "A swept hearth and a clean tea- 
table, and my husband opposite me, and a 
baby at my breast." Good, I know you 
also. "You, little girl with the golden hair 
and the soft eyes, what do you like ?" "My 
canary, and a run among the wood hya- 
cinths." "You, little boy with the dirty 
hands and the low forehead, what do you 
like?" "A shy at the sparrows, and a game 
at pitch farthing." Good; we know them 
all now. What more need we ask? 

"Nay," perhaps you answer : "We need 
rather to ask what these people and children 
do, than what they like. If they do right, 
it is no matter that they like what is wrong ; 
and if they do wrong, it is no matter that 
they like what is right. Doing is the great 
thing; and it does not matter that the man 
likes drinking, so that he does not drink; 
nor that the little girl likes to be kind to 
her canary, if she will not learn her les- 
sons; nor that the little boy likes throw- 
ing stones at the sparrows, if he goes to the 
Sunday School." Indeed, for a short time, 
and in a provisional sense, this is true. For 
if, resolutely, people do what is right, in 
time they come to like doing it. But they 
only are in a right moral state when they 
have come to like doing it; and as long as 
they don't like it, they are still in a vicious 
state. The man is not in health of body 



who is always thinking of the bottle in the 
cupboard, though he bravely bears his thirst ; 
but the man who heartily enjoys water in 
the morning and wine in the evening, each 
in its proper quantity and time. And the 
entire object of true education is to make 
people not merely do the right things, but 
enjoy the right things — not merely indus- 
trious, but to love industry — not merely 
learned, but to love knowledge — not merely 
pure, but to love purity — not merely just, 
but to hunger and thirst after justice. 

But you may answer or think, "Is the 
liking for outside ornaments, — for pictures, 
or statues, or furniture, or architecture, — a 
moral quality?" Yes, most surely, if a 
rightly set liking. Taste for any pictures 
or statues is not a moral quality, but taste 
for good ones is. Only here again we have 
to define the word "good." I don't mean 
by "good," clever — or learned — or difficult 
in the doing. Take a picture by Teniers, 
of sots quarreling over their dice : it is an 
entirely clever picture; so clever that noth- 
ing in its kind has ever been done equal 
to it ; but it is also an entirely base and evil 
picture. It is an expression of delight in 
the prolonged contemplation of a vile thing, 
and delight in that is an "unmannered," or 
"immoral" quality. It is "bad taste" in the 
profoundest sense — it is the taste of the 
devils. On the other hand, a picture of 
Titian's, or a Greek statue, or a Greek coin, 
or a Turner landscape, expresses delight 
in the perpetual contemplation of a good 
and perfect thing. That is an entirely moral 
quality — it is the taste of the angels. And 
all delight in fine art, and all love of it, 
resolve themselves into simple love of that 
which deserves love. That deserving is the 
quality which we call "loveliness" — (we 
ought to have an opposite word, hateliness, 
to be said of the things which deserve to 
be hated) ; and it is not an indifferent nor 
optional thing whether we love this or that ; 
but it is just the vital function of all our 
being. What we like determines what we 
are, and is the sign of what we are; and 
to teach taste is inevitably to form char- 
acter. 

As I was thinking over this, in walking 
up Fleet Street the other day, my eye 
caught the title of a book standing open 
in a bookseller's window. It was — "On the 
necessity of the diffusion of taste among 
all classes." "Ah," I thought to myself, 
"my classifying friend, when you have dif- 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



479 



fused your taste, where will your classes be 1 
The man who likes what you like, belongs 
to the same class with you, I think. In- 
evitably so. You may put him to other 
work if you choose; but, by the condition 
you have brought him into, he will dislike 
the other work as much as you would your- 
self. You get hold of a scavenger, or a 
costermonger, who enjoyed the Newgate 
Calendar for literature, and 'Pop goes the 
Weasel' for music. You think you can 
make him like Dante and Beethoven? I 
wish you joy of your lessons; but if you 
do, you have made a gentleman of him: — 
he won't like to go back to his costermonger- 
ing." 

And so completely and unexceptionally is 
this so, that, if I had time tonight, I could 
show you that a nation cannot be affected 
by any vice, or weakness, without express- 
ing it, legibly, and forever, either in bad 
art, or by want of art ; and that there is no 
national virtue, small or great, which is not 
manifestly expressed in all the art which 
circumstances enable the people -possessing 
that virtue to produce. Take, for instance, 
your great English virtue of enduring and 
patient courage. You have at present in 
England only one art of any consequence — 
that is, iron-working. You know thor- 
oughly well how to cast and hammer iron. 
Now, do you think in those masses of lava 
which you build volcanic cones to melt, and 
which you forge at the mouths of the In- 
fernos you have created; do you think, on 
those iron plates, your courage and endur- 
ance are not written forever — not merely 
with an iron pen, but on iron parchment? 
A.nd take also your great English vice — 
European vice — vice of all the world — vice 
of all other worlds that roll or shine in 
heaven, bearing with them yet the atmo- 
sphere of hell — the vice of jealousy, which 
brings competition into your commerce, 
treachery into your councils, and dishonor 
into yovir wars — that vice which has ren- 
dered for you, and for your next neigh- 
boring nation, the daily occupations of ex- 
istence no longer possible but with the mail 
upon your breasts and the sword loose in 
its sheath ; so that at last, you have realized 
for all the multitudes of the two great 
peoples who lead the so-called civilization 
of the earth, — you have realized for them 
all, I say, in person and in policy, what was 
once true only of the rough Border riders 
of your Cheviot hills — 



They carved at the meal 
With gloves of steel. 
And they drank the red wine through the 
helmet barred; — 

do you think that this national shame and 
dastardliness of heart are not written as 
legibly on every rivet of your iron armor as 
the strength of the right hands that 
forged it 1 

Friends, I know not whether this thing 
be the more ludicrous or the more melan- 
choly. It is quite unspeakably both. Sup- 
pose, instead of being now sent for by you, 
I had been sent for by some private gentle- 
man, living in a suburban house, with his 
garden separated only by a fruit-wall from 
his next door neighbor's; and he had called 
me to consult with him on the furnishing 
of his drawing room. I begin looking about 
me, and find the walls rather bare; I think 
such and such a paper might be desirable — 
perhaps a little fresco here and there on the 
ceiling — a damask curtain or so at the win- 
dows. "Ah," says my employer, "damask 
curtains, indeed ! That's all very fine, but 
you know I can't afford that kind of thing 
just now !" "Yet the world credits you with 
a splendid income!" "Ah, yes," says my 
friend, "but do you know, at present, I am 
obliged to spend it nearly all in steel-traps ?" 
"Steel-traps! for whom?" "Why, for that 
fellow on the other side of the wall, you 
know: we're very good friends, but we are 
obliged to keep our traps set on both sides 
of the wall ; we could not possibly keep on 
friendly terms without them, and our spring 
guns. The worst of it is, we are both clever 
fellows enough; and there's never a day 
passes that we don't find out a new trap, 
or a new gun-barrel, or something; we 
spend about fifteen millions a year each in 
our traps, take it all together; and I don't 
see how we're to do with less." A highly 
comic state of life for two private gentle- 
men ! but for two nations, it seems to me, 
not wholly comic ? Bedlam would be comic, 
perhaiDS, if there were only one madman 
in it; and your Christmas pantomime is 
comic, when there is only one clown in it; 
but when the whole world turns clown, and 
paints itself red with its own heart's blood 
instead of vermilion, it is something else 
than comic, I think. 

Mind, I know a great deal of this is 
play, and willingly allow for that. You 
don't know what to do with yourselves for 



480 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



a sensation : fox-hunting and cricketing will 
not carry you through the whole of this 
unendurably long mortal life : you liked pop- 
guns when you were school-boys, and rifles 
and Armstrongs are only the same things 
better made : but then the worst of it is, that 
what was play to you when boys, was not 
play to the sparrows; and what is play to 
you now, is not play to the small birds of 
State neither; and for the black eagles, 
you are somewhat shy of taking shots at 
them, if I mistake not. 

I must get back to the matter in hand, 
however. Believe me, without farther in- 
stance, I could show you, in all time, that 
■ every nation's vice, or virtue, was written 
■in its art : the soldiership of early Greece ; 
the sensuality of late Italy; the visionary 
religion of Tuscany; the splendid human 
energy and beauty of Venice. I have no 
time to do this tonight (I have done it else- 
where before now) ; but I proceed to apply 
the principle to ourselves in a more search- 
ing manner. 

I notice that among all the new build- 
ings which cover your once wild hills, 
churches and schools are mixed in due, that 
is to say, in large proportion, with your 
mills and mansions; and I notice also that 
the churches and schools are almost always 
Gothic, and the mansions and mills are never 
Gothic. Will you allow me to ask precisely 
the meaning of this? For, remember, it is 
peculiarly a modern phenomenon. When 
Gothic was invented, houses were Gothic as 
well as churches ; and when the Italian style 
superseded the Gothic, churches were Italian 
as well as houses. If there is a Gothic spire 
to the cathedral of Antwerp, there is a 
Gothic belfry to the Hotel de Ville at Brus- 
sels ; if Inigo Jones builds an Italian White- 
hall, Sir Christopher Wren builds an Italian 
St. Paul's. But now you live under one 
school of architecture, and worship under 
another. What do you mean by doing this 1 
Am I to understand that you are thinking 
of changing your architecture back to 
Gothic; and that you treat your churches 
experimentally, because it does not matter 
what mistakes you make in a church? Or 
am I to understand that you consider Gothic 
a preeminently sacred and beautiful mode 
of building, which you think, like the fine 
frankincense, should be mixed for the tab- 
ernacle only, and reserved for your religious 
services ? For if this be the feeling, though 
it may seem at first as if it were graceful 



and reverent, at the root of the matter, it 
signifies neither more nor less than that you 
have separated your religion from your 
life. 

For consider what a wide significance this 
fact has; and remember that it is not you 
only, but all the people of England, who 
are behaving thus just now. 

You have all got into the habit of calling 
the church "the house of God." I have seen, 
over the doors of many churches, the legend 
actually carved, "This is the house of God, 
and this is the gate of heaven." Now, note 
where that legend comes from, and of what 
place it was first spoken. A boy leaves his 
father's house to go on a long journey on 
foot, to visit his uncle; he has to cross a 
wild hill-desert ; just as if one of your own 
boys had to cross the wolds to visit an un- 
cle at Carlisle. The second or third day 
your boy finds himself somewhere between 
Hawes and Brough, in the midst of the 
moors, at sunset. It is stony ground, and 
boggy; he cannot go one foot farther that 
night. Down he lies, to sleep, on Wharn- 
side, where best he may, gathering a few 
of the stones together to put under his 
head; — so wild the place is, he cannot get 
anything but stones. And there, lyiftg un- 
der the broad night, he has a dream ; and he 
sees a ladder set up on the earth, and the 
top of it reaches the heaven, and the angels 
of God are seen ascending and descending 
upon it. And when he wakes out of his 
sleep, he says, "How dreadful is this place ; 
surely, this is none other than the house of 
God, and this is the gate of heaven." This 
PLACE, observe; not this church; not this 
city; not this stone, even, which he puts up 
for a memorial — the piece of flint on which 
his head has lain. But this place; this 
windy slope of Wharnside; this moorland 
hollow, torrent-bitten, snow-blighted; this 
any place where God lets down the ladder. 
And how are you to know where that will 
be? or how are you to determine where it 
may be, but by being ready for it always? 
Do you know where the lightning is to 
fall next? You do know that, partly; you 
can guide the lightning; but you cannot 
guide the going forth of the Spirit, which is 
as that lightning when it shines from the 
east to the west. 

But the perpetual and insolent warping 
of that strong verse to serve a merely eccle- 
siastical purpose, is only one of the thou- 
sand instances in which we sink back into 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



481 



gross Judaism. We call our churches "tem- 
ples." Now, you know perfectly well they 
are not temples. They have never had, 
never can have, anything whatever to do 
with temples. They are "synagogues" — 
"gathering places" — where you gather your- 
selves together as an assembly; and by not 
calling them so, you again miss the force 
of another mighty text — "Thou, when thou 
prayest, shalt not be as the hypocrites are; 
for they love to pray standing in the 
churches" (we should translate it), "that 
they may be seen of men. But thou, when 
thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when 
thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy 
Father," — which is, not in chancel nor in 
aisle, but "in secret." 

Now, you feel, as I say this to you — I 
know you feel — as if I were trying to take 
away the honor of your churches. Not so; 
I am trying to jarove to you the honor of 
your houses and your hills; not that the 
Church' is not sacred — but that the whole 
Earth is. I would have you feel, what 
careless, what constant, what infectious sin 
there is in all modes of thought, whereby, in 
calling your churches only "holy," you call 
your hearths and homes "profane"; and 
have separated yourselves from the heathen 
by casting all your household gods to the 
ground, instead of recognizing, in the place 
of their many and feeble Lares, the presence 
of your One and Mighty Lord and Lar. 

"But what has all this to do with our 
Exchange?" you ask me, impatiently. My 
dear friends, it has just everything to do 
with it; on these inner and great questions 
depend all the outer and little ones; and 
if you have asked me down here to speak 
to you, because you had before been inter- 
ested in anythirrg I have written, you must 
know that all I have yet said about archi- 
tecture was to show this. The book I called 
"The Seven Lamps" was to show that certain 
right states of temper and moral feeling 
were the magic powers by which all good 
architecture, without exception, had been 
produced. "The Stones of Venice" had, 
from beginning to end, no other aim than 
to show that the Gothic architecture of Ven- 
ice had arisen out of, and indicated in all its 
features, a state of pure national faith, and 
of domestic virtue ; and that its Renaissance 
architecture had arisen out of, and in all 
its features indicated, a state of concealed 
national infidelity, and of domestic cor- 
ruption. And now, you ask me what style 



is best to build in ; and how can I answer, 
knowing the meaning of the two styles, but 
by another question — do you mean to build 
as Christians or as Infidels ? And still more 
— do you mean to build as honest Chris- 
tians or as honest Infidels? as thoroughly 
and confessedly either one or the other? 
You don't like to be asked such rude ques- 
tions. I cannot help it; they are of much 
more importance than this Exchange busi- 
ness; and if they can be at once answered, 
the Exchange business settles itself in a mo- 
ment. But, before I press them farther, 
I must ask leave to explain one point 
clearly. 

In all my past work, my endeavor has 
been to show that good architecture is es- 
sentially religious — the production of a 
faithful and virtuous, not of an infidel and 
corrupted peojole. But in the course of 
doing this, I have had also to show that 
good architecture is not ecclesiastical. Peo- 
ple are so apt to look ujDon religion as the 
business of the clergy, not their own, that 
the moment they hear of anything depending 
on "religion," they think it must also have 
depended on the priesthood; and I have 
had to take what place was to be occupied 
between these two errors, and fight both, 
often with seeming contradiction. Good 
architecture is the work of good and believ- 
ing men; therefore, you say, at least some 
people say, "Good architecture must essen- 
tially have been the work of the clergy, not 
of the laity." No — a thousand times no; 
good architecture has always been the work 
of the commonalty, not of the clergy. What, 
you say, those glorious cathedrals — the pride 
of Europe — did their builders not form 
Gothic architecture? No; they corrupted 
Gothic architecture. Gothic was formed in 
the baron's castle, and the burgher's street. 
It was formed by the thoughts, and hands, 
and powers of free citizens and warrior 
kings. By the monk it was used as an in- 
strument for the aid of his superstition ; 
when the superstition became a beautiful 
madness, and the best hearts of Europe 
vainly dreamed and joined in their cloister, 
and vainly raged and i^erished in the cru- 
sade — through that fury of perverted faith 
and wasted war, the Gothic rose also to its 
loveliest, most fantastic, and, finally, most 
foolish dreams; and, in those dreams, was 
lost. 

I hope, now, that there is no risk of your 
misunderstanding me when I come to the 



482 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



gist of what I want to say tonight; — ^when 
I repeat, that every great national archi- 
tecture has been the result and exponent of 
a great national religion. You can't have 
bits of it here, bits there — ^you must have 
it everywhere, or nowhere. It is not the 
monopoly of a clerical company — ^it is not 
the exponent of a theological dogma — it is 
not the hieroglyphic writing of an initiated 
priesthood; it is the manly language of a 
people inspired by resolute and common 
purpose, and rendering resolute and com- 
mon fidelity to the legible laws of an un- 
doubted God. 

Now, there have as yet been three dis- 
tinct schools of European architecture. I 
say, European, because Asiatic and African 
architectures belong so entirely to other 
races and climates, that there is no ques- 
tion of them here; only, in passing, I will 
simply assure you that whatever is good or 
great in Egypt, and Syria, and India, is 
just good or great for the same reasons 
as the buildings on our side of the Bos- 
phorus. We Europeans, then, have had 
three great religions: the Greek, which was 
the worship of the God of Wisdom and 
Power; the Medieval, which was the Wor- 
ship of the God of Judgment and Con- 
solation; the Renaissance, which was the 
worship of the God of Pride and Beauty; 
these three we have had — they are past, — 
and now, at last, we English have got a 
fourth religion, and a God of our own, 
about which I want to ask you. But I must 
explain these three old ones first. 

I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially wor- 
shiped the God of Wisdom; so that what- 
ever contended against their religion, — to 
the Jews a stumbling block, — was, to the 
Greeks — Foolishness. 

The first Greek idea of Deity was that 
expressed in the word, of which we keep 
the remnant in our words "Dt-urnal" and 
''Di-vine" — the god of Day, Jupiter the re- 
vealer. Athena is his daughter, but espe- 
cially daughter of the Intellect, springing 
armed from the head. We are only with 
the help of recent investigation beginning 
to penetrate the depth of meaning couched 
under the Athenaic symbols : but I may note 
rapidly, that her segis, the mantle with the 
serpent fringes, in which she often, in the 
best statues, is represented as folding up 
her left hand for better guard, and the 
Gorgon on her shield, are both representa- 
tive mainly of the chilling horror and sad- 



ness (turning men to stone, as it were,) of 
the outmost and superficial spheres of 
knowledge — that knowledge which sepa- 
rates, in bitterness, hardness, and sorrow, 
the heart of the full-grown man from the 
heart of the child. For out of imperfect 
knowledge spring terror, dissension, danger, 
and disdain; but from perfect knowledge, 
given by the full-revealed Athena, strength 
and peace, in sign of which she is crowned 
with the olive spray, and bears the resistless 
spear. 

This, then, was the Greek conception of 
purest Deity, and every habit of life, and 
every form of his art developed them- 
selves from the seeking this bright, serene, 
resistless wisdom; and setting himself, as a 
man, to do things evermore rightly and 
strongly; not with any ardent affection or 
ultimate hope ; but with a resolute and con- 
tinent energy of will, as knowing that for 
failure there was no consolation, and for sin 
there was no remission. And the Greek 
architecture rose unerring, bright, clearly 
defined, and self-contained. 

Next followed in Europe the great Chris- 
tian faith, which was essentially the religion 
of Comfort. Its great doctrine is the remis- 
sion of sins ; for which cause it happens, too 
often, in certain phases of Christianity, that 
sin and sickness themselves are partly glori- 
fied, as if, the more you had to be healed of, 
the more divine was the healing. The prac- 
tical result of this doctrine, in art, is a con- 
tinual contemplation of sin and disease, and 
of imaginary states of purification from 
them; thus we have an architecture con- 
ceived in a mingled sentiment of melancholy 
and aspiration, partly severe, partly luxuri- 
ant, which will bend itself to every one of 
our needs, and every one of our fancies, and 
be strong or weak with us, as we are strong 
or weak ourselves. It is, of all architecture, 
the basest, when base people build it — of 
all, the noblest, when built by the noble. 

And now note that both these religions — 
.Greek and Medieval — perished by falsehood 
in their own main purpose. The Greek re- 
ligion of Wisdom perished in a false philoso- 
phy — "Oppositions of science, falsely so 
called." The Medieval religion of Consola- 
tion perished in false comfort ; in remission 
of sins given lyingly. It was the selling of 
absolution that ended the Medieval faith; 
and I can tell you more, it is the selling of 
absolution which, to the end of time, will 
mark false Christianity. Pure Christianity 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



483 



gives her remission of sins only by ending 
them ; but false Christianity gets her remis- 
sion of sins by compounding for them. And 
there are many ways of compounding for 
them. We English have beautiful little quiet 
•ways of buying absolution, whether in low 
Church, or high, far more cunning than any 
of Tetzel's trading. 

Then, thirdly, there followed the religion 
of Pleasure, in which all Europe gave itself 
to luxury, ending in death. First, bals 
masques in every saloon, and then guillo- 
tines in every square. And all these three 
worships issue in vast temple building. Your 
Greek worshiped Wisdom, and built you the 
Parthenon — the Virgin's temple. The 
Medieval worshiped Consolation, and built 
you Virgin temples also — but to our Lady 
of Salvation. Then the Revivalist worshiped 
beauty, of a sort, and built you Versailles, 
and the Vatican. Now, lastly, will you tell 
me what we worship, and what we build? 

You know we are speaking always of the 
real, active, continual, national worship; 
that by which men act while they live; not 
that which they talk of when they die. Now, 
we have, indeed, a nominal religion, to 
which we pay tithes of property and sev- 
enths of time ; but we have also a practical 
and earnest religion, to which we devote 
nine-tenths of our property and sixth-sev- 
enths of our time. And we dispute a great 
deal about the nominal religion ; but we are 
all unanimous about this practical one, of 
which I think you will admit that the ruling 
goddess may be best generally described as 
the "Goddess of Getting-on," or "Britannia 
of the Market." The Athenians had an 
"Athena Agoraia," or Athena of the Market ; 
but she was a subordinate type of their 
goddess, while our Britannia Agoraia is the 
principal type of ours. And all your great 
architectural works, are, of course, built to 
her. It is long since you built a great 
cathedral ; and how you would laugh at me, 
if I proposed building a cathedral on the 
top of one of these hills of yours, to make 
it an Acropolis ! But your railroad mounds, 
vaster than the walls of Babylon ; your rail- 
road stations, vaster than the temple of 
Ephesus, and innumerable; your chimneys 
how much more mighty and costly than 
cathedral spires! your harbor piers; your 
warehouses ; your exchanges ! — all these are 
built to your gTeat Goddess of "Getting-on" ; 
and she has formed, and will continue to 
form, your architecture, as long as you wor- 



ship her ; and it is quite vain to ask me to 
tell you how to build to her; you know far 
better than I. 

There might indeed, on some theories, be 
a conceivably good architecture for Ex- 
changes — that is to say, if there were any 
heroism in the fact or deed of exchange, 
which might be typically carved on the out- 
side of your building. For, you know, all 
beautiful architecture must be adorned with 
sculpture or painting; and for sculpture or 
painting, you must have a subject. And 
hitherto it has been a received opinion among 
the nations of the world that the only right 
subjects for either, were heroisms of some 
sort. Even on his pots and his flagons, the 
Greek put a Hercules slaying lions, or an 
Apollo slaying serpents, or Bacchus slaying 
melancholy giants, and earth-born despond- 
encies. On his temples, the Greek put con- 
tests of great warriors in founding states, or 
of gods with evil spirits. On his houses 
and temples alike, the Christian put carvings 
of angels conquering devils; or of hero- 
martyrs exchanging this world for another; 
subjects inappropriate, I think, to our di- 
rection of exchange here. And the Master 
of Christians not only left his followers 
without any orders as to the sculpture of 
affairs of exchange on the outside of build- 
ings, but gave some strong evidence of his 
dislike of affairs of exchange within them. 
And yet there might surely be a heroism in 
such affairs; and all commerce become a 
kind of selling of doves, not impious. The 
wonder has always been great to me that 
heroism has never been supposed to be in 
anywise consistent with the practice of sup- 
plying people with food, or clothes; but 
rather with that of quartering one's self 
upon them for food, and stripping them of 
their clothes. Spoiling of armor is a heroic 
deed in all ages; but the selling of clothes, 
old or new, has never taken any color of 
magnanimity. Yet one does not see why 
feeding the hungry and clothing the naked 
should ever become base business, even when 
engaged in on a large scale. If one could 
contrive to attach the notion of conquest to 
them anyhow ! so that, supposing there were 
anywhere an obstinate race, who refused to 
be comforted, one might take some pride in 
giving them compulsory comfort ! and as 
it were, ^'occupying a country" with one's 
gifts, instead of one's armies? If one could 
only consider it as much a victory to get a 
barren field sown, as to get an eared field 



484 



THE GKEAT TRADITION 



stripped ; and contend who should build vil- 
lages, instead of who should "carry" them ! 
Are not all forms of heroism conceivable 
in doing these serviceable deeds ? You doubt 
who is strongest? It might be ascertained 
by push of spade, as well as push of sword. 
Who is wisest? There are witty things to 
be thought of in planning other business 
than campaigns. Who is bravest? There 
are always the elements to fight with, 
stronger than men ; and nearly as merciless. 

The only absolutely and unapproachably 
heroic element in the soldier's work seems to 
be — that he is paid little for it — and regu- 
larly : while you traffickers, and exchangers, 
and others occupied in presumably benevo- 
lent business, like to be paid much for it — 
and by chance. I never can make out how 
it is that a knight-evrant does not expect to 
be paid for his trouble, but a peddler-errant 
always does; — that people are willing to 
take hard knocks for nothing, but never to 
sell ribbons cheap ; — that they are ready to 
go on fervent crusades to recover the tomb 
of a buried God, but never on any travels 
to fulfil the orders of a living one; — that 
they will go anywhere barefoot to preach 
their faith, but must be well bribed to prac- 
tice it, and are perfectly ready to give the 
Gospel gratis, but never the loaves and fishes. 

If you choose to take the matter up on 
any such soldierly principle, to do your com- 
merce, and your feeding of nations, for fixed 
salaries; and to be as particular about giv- 
ing people the best food, and the best cloth, 
as soldiers are about giving them the best 
gunpowder, I could carve something for you 
on your exchange worth looking at. But I 
can only at present suggest decorating its 
frieze with pendent purses ; and making its 
pillars broad at the base, for the sticking of 
bills. And in the innermost chambers of it 
there might be a statue of Britannia of the 
Market, who may have, perhaps advisably, 
a partridge for her crest, typical at once of 
her courage in fighting for noble ideas, and 
of her interest in game ; and round its neck 
the inscription in golden letters, Perdix fovit 
quae non peperit. Then, for her spear, she 
might have a weaver's beam; and on her 
shield, instead of St. George's Cross, the 
Milanese boar, semi-fleeeed, with the town of 
Gennesaret proper, in the field, and the 
legend "In the best market," and her corselet, 
of leather, folded over her heart in the 
shape of a purse, with thirty slits in it for 
a piece of money to go in at, on each day 



of the month. And I doubt not but that 
people would come to see your exchange, 
and its goddess, with applause. 

Nevertheless, I want to point out to you 
certain strange characters in this goddess 
of yours. She differs from the great Greek ' 
and Medieval deities essentially in two 
things — first, as to the continuance of her 
presumed power; secondly, as to the ex- 
tent of it. 

1st, as to the Continuance. 

The Greek Goddess of Wisdom gave con- 
tinual increase of wisdom, as the Christian 
Spirit of Comfort (or Comforter) continual 
increase of comfort. There was no question, 
with these, of any limit or cessation of func- 
tion. But with your Agora Goddess, that is 
just the most important question. Getting 
on — but where to ? Gathering together — but 
how much? Do you mean to gather always 
— never to spend? If so, I wish you joy of 
your goddess, for I am just as well off as 
you, without the trouble of worshiping her 
at all. But if you do not spend, somebody 
else will — somebody else must. And it is 
because of this (among many other such 
errors) that I have fearlessly declared your 
so-called science of Political Economy to 
be no science; because, namely, it has 
omitted the study of exactly the most im- 
portant branch of the business — the study 
of spending. For spend you must, and as 
much as you make, ultimately. You gather 
corn : — will you bury England under a heap 
of grain ; or will you, when you have gath- 
ered, finally eat? You gather gold: — will 
you make your house-roofs of it, or pave 
your streets with it? That is still one way 
of spending it. But if you keep it, that you 
may get more, I'll give you more; I'll give 
you all the gold you want — all you can 
imagine — if you can tell me what you'll do 
with it. You shall have thousands of gold 
pieces ; — thousands of thousands — ^millions 
— mountains of gold: where will you keep 
them? Will you put an Olympus of silver 
upon a golden Pelion — make Ossa like a 
wart? Do you think the rain and dew 
would then come down to you, in the streams 
from such mountains, more blessedly than 
they will down the mountains which God has 
made for you, of moss and whinstone ? But 
it is not gold that you want to gather! 
What is itl greenbacks? No; not those 
neither. What is it then — is it ciphers after 
a capital I? Cannot you practice writing 
ciphers, and write as many as you want? 
Write ciphers for an hour every morning, 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



485 



in a big book, and say every evening, I am 
worth all those naughts more than I was 
yesterday. Won't that do? Well, what in 
the name of Plutus is it you want? Not 
gold, not greenbacks, not ciphers after a 
capital I? You will have to answer, after 
all, *'No; we want, somehow or other, 
money's worth." Well, what is that? Let 
your Goddess of Getting-on discover it, and 
let her learn to stay therein. 

II. But there is yet another question to 
be asked resi^ecting this Goddess of Getting- 
on. The first was of the continuance of her 
power; the second is of its extent. 

Pallas and the Madonna were supposed to 
be all the world's Pallas, and all the world's 
Madonna. They could teach all men, and 
they could comfort all men. But, look 
strictly into the nature of the power of your 
Goddess of Getting-on; and you will find 
she is the Goddess — not of everybody's get- 
ting on — but only of somebody's getting on. 
This is a vital, or rather deathful, distinc- 
tion. Examine it in your OAvn ideal of the 
state of national life which this Goddess is 
to evoke and maintain. I asked you what 
it was, when I was last here; — you have 
never told me. JSTow, shall I try to tell 
you? 

Your ideal of human life then is, I think, 
that it should be passed in a pleasant un- 
dulating world, with iron and coal every- 
where underneath it. On each pleasant bank 
of this world is to be a beautiful mansion, 
with two wings; and stables, and coach- 
houses; a moderately sized park; a large 
garden and hothouses ; and pleasant carriage 
drives through the shrubberies. In this man- 
sion are to live the favorite votaries of the 
Goddess; the English gentleman, with his 
gracious wife, and his beautiful family; 
always able to have the boudoir and the 
jewels for the wife, and the beautiful ball 
dresses for the daughters, and hunters for 
the sons, and a shooting in the Highlands for 
himself. At the bottom of the bank, is to 
be the mill ; not less than a quarter of a mile 
long, with a steam engine at each end, and 
two in the middle, and a chimney three hun- 
dred feet high. In this mill are to be in con- 
stant employment from eight hundred to a 
thousand workers, who never drink, never 
strike, always go to church on Sunday, and 
always express themselves in respectful lan- 
guage. 

Is not that, broadly, and in the main 
features, the kind of thing you propose to 
yourselves? It is very pretty indeed^ seen 



from above ; not at all so pretty, seen from 
below. For, observe, while to one family 
this deity is indeed the Goddess of Getting- 
on, to a thousand families she is the Goddess 
of not Getting-on. "Nay," you say, "they 
have all their chance," Yes, so has every 
one in a lottery, but there must always be 
the same number of blanks. "Ah ! but in a 
lottery it is not skill and intelligence which 
take the lead, but blind chance." What 
then! do you think the old practice, that 
"they should take who have the power, and 
they should keep who can," is less iniquitous, 
when the power has become power of brains 
instead of fist ? and that, though we may not 
take advantage of a child's or a woman's 
weakness, we may of a man's foolishness? 
"Nay, but finally, work must be done, and 
some one must be at the top, some one at 
the bottom." Granted, my friends. Work 
must always be, and captains of work must 
always be ; and if you in the least remember 
the tone of any of my writings, you must 
know tliat they are thought unfit for this 
age, because they are always insisting on 
need of government, and speaking with scorn 
of liberty. But I beg you to observe that 
there is a wide difference between being cap- 
tains or governors of work, and taking the 
profits of it. It does not follow, because you 
are general of an army, that you are to take 
all the treasure, or land, it wins (if it fight 
for treasure or land) ; neither, because you 
are king of a nation, that you are to con- 
sume all the profits of the nation's work. 
Real kings, on the contrary, are known in- 
variably by their doing quite the reverse of 
this, — by their taking the least possible quan- 
tity of the nation's work for themselves. 
There is no test of real kinghood so in- 
fallible as that. Does the crowned creature 
live simply, bravely, unostentatiously? 
probably he is a King. Does he cover his 
body with jewels, and his table with deli- 
eates? in all probability he is not a King. 
It is possible he may be, as Solomon was; 
but that is when the nation shares his 
splendor with him. Solomon made gold, not 
only to be in his own palace as stones, but 
to be in Jerusalem as stones. But even so, 
for the most part, these splendid kinghoods 
expire in ruin, and only the true kinghoods 
live, which are of royal laborers governing 
loyal laborers; who, both leading rough 
lives, establish the true dynasties. Con- 
clusively you will find that because you are 
king of a nation, it does not follow that you 
are to gather for yourself all the wealth of 



486 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



that nation ; neither, beause you are king of 
a small part of the nation, and lord over the 
means of its maintenance — over field, or mill, 
or mine, — are you to take all the produce 
of that piece of the foundation of national 
existence for yourself. 

You will tell me I need not preach against 
these things, for I cannot mend them. No, 
good friends, I cannot; but you can, and 
you will; or something else can and will. 
Even good things have no abiding power — 
and shall these evil things persist in vic- 
torious evil? All history shows, on the con- 
trary, that to be the exact thing they never 
can do. Change must come ; but it is ours to 
determine whether change of growth, or 
change of death. Shall the Parthenon be 
in ruins on its rock, and Bolton priory in 
its meadow, but these mills of yours be the 
consummation of the buildings of the earth, 
and their wheels be as the wheels of eternity ? 
Think you that ''men may come, and men 
may go," but — mills — go on forever? Not 
so ; out of these, better or worse shall come ; 
and it is for you to choose which. 

I know that none of this wrong is done 
with deliberate purpose. I know, on the 
contrary, that you wish your workmen well ; 
that you do much for them, and that you 
desire to do more for them, if you saw your 
way to such benevolence safely. I know 
that even all this wrong and misery are 
brought about by a warped sense of duty, 
each of you striving to do his best ; but un- 
happily, not knowing for whom this best 
should be done. And all our hearts have 
been betrayed by the plausible impiety of 
the modern ecouomist, that "To do the best 
for yourself, is finally to do the best for 
others." Friends, our great Master said not 
so; and most absolutely we shall find this 
world is not made so. Indeed, to do the best 
for others, is finally to do the best for our- 
selves; but it will not do to have our eyes 
fixed on that issue. The Pagans had got 
beyond that. Hear what a Pagan says of 
this matter; hear what were, perhaps, the 
last written words of Plato, — if not the last 
actually written (for this we cannot know), 
yet assuredly in fact and jDower his parting 
words — in which, endeavoring to give full 
crowning and harmonious close to all his 
thoughts, and to speak the sum of them by 
the imagined sentence of the Great Spirit, 
his strength and his heart fail him, and the 
words cease, broken off forever. 

They are at the close of the dialogue 
called "Critias," in which he describes, part- 



ly from real tradition, partly in ideal dream, 

the early state of Athens; and the genesis, 
and order, and religion, of the fabled isle of 
Atlantis; in which genesis he conceives the 
same first perfection and final degeneracy of 
man, which in our own Scriptural tradition 
is expressed by saying that the Sons of God 
intermarried with the daughters of men, for 
he supposes the earliest race to have been 
indeed the children of God : and to have cor- 
rupted themselves, until "their spot was not 
the spot of his children." And this, he says, 
was the end; that indeed "through many 
generations, so long as the God's nature in 
them yet was full, they were submissive to 
the sacred laws, and carried themselves lov- 
ingly to all that had kindred with them in 
divineness; for their uttermost spirit was 
faithful and true, and in every wise great; 
so that, in all meekness of wisdom, they dealt 
with each other, and took all the chances of 
life; and despising all things except virtue, 
they cared little what happened day by day, 
and bore lightly the burden of gold and of 
possessions ; for they saw that, if only their 
common love and virtue increased, all these 
things would be increased together with 
them; but to set their esteem and ardent 
pursuit upon material possession would be 
to lose that first, and their virtue and affec- 
tion together with it. And by such reason- 
ing, and what of the divine nature remained 
in them, they gained all this greatness of 
which we have already told; but when the 
God's part of them faded and became ex- 
tinct, being mixed again and again, and 
effaced by the prevalent mortality; and the 
human nature at last exceeded, they then be- 
came unable to endure the courses of for- 
tune ; and fell into shapelessness of life, and 
baseness in the sight of him who could see, 
having lost everything that was fairest of 
their honor ; while to the blind hearts which 
could not discern the true life, tending to 
happiness, it seemed that they were then 
chiefly noble and happy, being filled with all 
iniquity of inordinate possession and power. 
Whereupon, the God of gods, whose King- 
hood is in laws, beholding a once just nation 
thus cast into misery, and desiring to lay 
such punishment upon them as might make 
them repent into restraining, gathered to- 
gether all the gods into his dwelling-place, 
which from heaven's center overlooks what- 
ever has part in creation; and having as- 
sembled them, he said" — 

The rest is silence. Last words of the 
chief wisdom of the heathen, spoken of this 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



487 



idol of riches ; this idol of yours ; this golden 
image high by measureless cubits, set up 
where your green fields of England are fur- 
nace-burnt into the likeness of the plain of 
Dura : this idol, forbidden to us, first of all 
idols, by our own Master and faith ; forbid- 
den to us also by every human lip that has 
ever, in any .age or people, been accounted 
of as able to speak according to the pur^Doses 
of God. Continue to make that forbidden 
deity your principal one, and soon no more 
art, no more science, no more pleasure will 
be possible. Catastrophe will come; or 
worse than catastrophe, slow moldering and 
withering into Hades, But if you can fix 
some conception of a true human state of 
life to be striven for — life good for all men 
as for yourselves — if you can determine 
some honest and simple order of existence; 
following those trodden ways of wisdom, 
which are pleasantness, and seeking her 
quiet and withdrawn paths, which are peace ; 
— then, and so sanctifying wealth into "com- 
monwealth," all your art, your literature, 
your daily labors, your domestic affection, 
and citizen's duty, will join and increase 
into one magnificent harmony. You will 
know then how to build, well enough; you 
will build with stone well, but with flesh 
better; temples not made with hands, but 
riveted of hearts; and that kind of marble, 
crimson-veined, is indeed eternal. 

The Soldier^s Duty to His Country 

john ruskin 

[From an address delivered at the Royal 
Military Academy] 

What I want you to see, and to be assured 
of, is, that the ideal of soldiership is not 
mere passive obedience and bravery; that, 
so far from this, no country is in a healthy 
state which has separated, even in a small 
degree, her civil from her military power. 
All states of the world, however great, fall 
at once when they use mercenary armies; 
and although it is a less instant form of 
error (because involving no national taint 
of cowardice), it is yet an error no less 
ultimately fatal — it is the error especially 
of modern times, of which we cannot yet 
know all the calamitous consequences — to 
take away the best blood and strength of the 
nation, all the soul-substanee of it that is 
brave, and careless of reward, and scornful 
of pain, and faithful in trust; and to cast 



that into steel, and make a mere sword of 
it; taking away its voice and will; but to 
keep the worst part of the nation — whatever 
is cowardly, avaricious, sensual, and faith- 
less — and to give to this the voice, to this 
the authority, to this the chief privilege, 
where there is least capacity, of thought. 
The fulfilment of your vow for the defense 
of England will by no means consist in car- 
rying out such a system. You are not true 
soldiers, if you only mean to stand at a 
shop door, to protect shop-boys who are 
cheating inside. A soldier's vow to his 
country is that he will die for the guardian- 
ship of her domestic virtue, of her righteous 
laws, and of her anyway challenged or en- 
dangered honor. A state without virtue, 
without laws, and without honor, he is bound 
not to defend ; nay, bound to redress by his 
own right hand that which he sees to be base 
in her. So stern is the law of Nature and 
life, that a nation once utterly corrupt can 
only be redeemed by a military despotism — 
never by talking, nor by its free effort. And 
the health of any state consists simply in 
this: that in it, those who are wisest shall 
also be strongest; its rulers should be also 
its soldiers; or, rather, by force of intellect 
more than of sword, its soldiers its rulers. 
Whatever the hold which the aristocracy of 
England has on the heart of England, in 
that they are still always in front of her 
battles, this hold will not be enough, unless 
they are also in front of her thoughts. And 
truly her thoughts need good captain's read- 
ing now, if ever! Do you know what, by 
this beautiful division of labor (her brave 
men fighting, and her cowards thinking) , she 
has come at last to think? Here is a bit of 
paper in my hand, a good one too, and an 
honest one; quite representative of the best 
common public thought of England at this 
moment; and it is holding forth in one of 
its leaders upon our "social welfare" — upon 
our "vivid life" — upon the "political su- 
premacy of Great Britain." And what do 
you think all these are owing to ? To what 
our English sires have done for us, and 
taught us, age after age ? No : not to that. 
To our honesty of heart, or coolness of head, 
or steadiness of will? No: not to these. 
To our thinkers, or our statesmen, or our 
poets, or our captains, or our martyrs, or 
the patient labor of our poor? No: not to 
these; or at least not to these in any chief 
measure. Nay, says the Journal, "more than 
any agency, it is the cheapness and abun- 



488 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



dance of our coal whicli liave made us what 
we are." If it be so, then "ashes to ashes" 
be our epitaph, and the sooner the better. I 
tell you, gentlemen of England, if ever you 
would have your country breathe the pure 
breath of heaven again, and receive again a 
soul into her body, instead of rotting into 
a carcase, blown up in the belly with carbonic 
acid (and great that way), you must think, 
and feel, for your England, as well as fight 
for her: you must teach her that all the 
true greatness she ever had, or ever can 
have, she won while her fields were green and 
her faces ruddy — that greatness is still pos- 
sible for Englishmen, even though the 
ground be not hollow under their feet, nor 
the sky black over their heads; — and that, 
when the day comes for their country to lay 
her honors in the dust, her crest will not 
rise from it more loftily because it is dust 
of coal. Gentlemen, I tell you, solemnly, 
that the day is coming when the soldiers 
of England must be her tutors; and the 
captains of her army, captains also of her 
mind. 

And now, remember, you soldier youths, 
who are thus in all ways the hope of your 
country ; or must be, if she have any hope : 
remember that your fitness for all future 
trust depends upon what you are now. No 
good soldier in his old age was ever careless 
or indolent in his youth. Many a giddy and 
thoughtless boy has become a good bishop, 
or a good lawyer, or a good merchant ; but no 
such an one ever became a good general. I 
challenge you, in all history, to find a record 
of a good soldier who was not grave and 
earnest in his youth. And, in general, I 
have no patience with people who talk about 
"the thoughtlessness of youth" indulgently. 
I had infinitely rather hear of thoughtless 
old age, and the indulgence due to that. 
When a man has done his work, and nothing 
can any way be materially altered in his 
fate, let him forget his toil, and jest with 
his fate, if he will ; but what excuse can you 
find for wilfulness of thought, at the very 
time when every crisis of future fortune 
hangs on your decisions ? A youth thought- 
less ! when all the happiness of his home for- 
ever depends on the chances, or the passions, 
of an hour ! A youth thoughtless ! when the 
career of all his days depends on the oppor- 
tunity of a moment ! A youth thoughtless ! 
when his every act is a foundation-stone of 
future conduct, and every imagination a 
fountain of life or death! Be thoughtless 



in any after years, rather than now — though, 
indeed, there is only one place where a man 
may be nobly thoughtless, — his death-bed. 
No thinking should ever be left to be done 
there. 

Having, then, resolved that you will not 
waste recklessly, but earnestly use, these 
early days of yours, remember that all the 
duties of her children to England may be 
summed in two words — industry, and honor. 
I say first, industry, for it is in this that 
soldier youth are especially tempted to fail. 
Yet, surely, there is no reason, because your 
life may possibly or probably be shorter 
than other men's, that you should therefore 
waste more recklessly the portion of it that 
is granted you ; neither do the duties of your 
profession, which require you to keep your 
bodies strong, in any wise involve the keep- 
ing of your minds weak. So far from that, 
the experience, the hardship, and the activity 
of a soldier's life render his powers of 
thought more accurate than those of other 
men ; and while, for others, all knowledge is 
often little more than a means of amuse- 
ment, there is no form of science which a 
soldier may not at some time or qther find 
bearing on business of life and death. A 
young mathematician may be excused for 
languor in studying curves to be described 
only with a pencil; but not in tracing those 
which are to be described with a rocket. 
Your knowledge of a wholesome herb may 
involve the feeding of an army; and ac- 
quaintance with an obscure point of geogra- 
phy, the success of a campaign. Never waste 
an instant's time, therefore ; the sin of idle- 
ness is a thousand-fold greater in you than 
in other youths; for the fates of those who 
will one day be under your command hang 
upon your knowledge; lost moments now 
will be lost lives then, and every instant 
which you carelessly take for play, you buy 
with blood. But there is one way of wasting 
time, of all the vilest, because it wastes, not 
time only, but the interest and energy of 
your minds. Of all the ungentlemanly habits 
into which you can fall, the vilest is betting, 
or interesting yourselves in the issues of bet- 
ting. It unites nearly every condition of folly 
and vice ; you concentrate your interest upon 
a matter of chance, instead of upon a subject 
of true knowledge; and you back opinions 
which you have no grounds for forming, 
merely because they are your own. All the 
insolence of egotism is in this; and so far 
as the love of excitement is complicated with 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



489 



the hope of winning money, you turn your- 
selves into the basest sort of tradesmen — 
those who live by speculation. Were there 
no other ground for industry, this would be 
a sufficient one; that it protected you from 
the temptation to so scandalous a vice. Work 
faithfully, and you will put yourselves in 
possession of a glorious and enlarging hap- 
piness ; not such as can be won by the speed 
of a horse, or marred by the obliquity of a 
ball. 

First, then, by industry you must fulfil 
your vow to your country; but all industry 
and earnestness will be useless unless they 
are consecrated by your resolution to be in 
all things men of honor; not honor in the 
common sense only, but in the highest. Rest 
on the force of the two main words in the 
great verse, integer vit«, scelerisque purus. 
You have vowed your life to England; give 
it her wholly — a bright, stainless, perfect 
life — a knightly life. Because you have to 
fight with machines instead of lances, there 
may be a necessity for more ghastly danger, 
but there is none for less worthiness of char- 
acter, than in olden time. You may be true 
knights yet, though perhaps not equites; 
you may have to call yourselves "eannonry" 
instead of "chivalry," but that is no reason 
why you should not call yourselves true men. 
So the first thing you have to see to in be- 
coming soldiers is that you make yourselves 
wholly true. Courage is a mere rnatter of 
course among any ordinarily well-born 
youths; but neither truth nor gentleness is 
matter of course. You must bind them like 
shields about your necks; you must write 
them on the tables of your hearts. Though 
it be not exacted of you, yet exact it of 
yourselves, this vow of stainless truth. Your 
hearts are, if you leave them unstirred, as 
tombs in which a god lies buried. Vow your- 
selves crusaders to I'edeem that sacred sepul- 
cher. And remember, before all things — for 
no other memory will be so protective of 
you — that the highest law of this knightly 
truth is that under which it is vowed to 
women. Whomsoever else you deceive, 
whomsoever you injure, whomsoever you 
leave unaided, you must not deceive, nor 
injure, nor leave unaided, according to your 
power, any woman of whatever rank. Be- 
lieve me, every virtue of the higher phases 
of manly character begins in this ; — in truth 
and modesty before the face of all maidens ; 
in truth and pity, or truth and reverence, to 
all womanhood. 



The White-Thorn Blossom 

john ruskin 

[From Fors Clavigera] 

For lo, the winter is past, 

The rain is over and gone, 

The flowers appear on the earth, 

The time of the singing of birds is come. 

Arise, O my fair one, my dove. 

And come. 

Denmark Hill^ 1st May, 1871. 
My Friends: 

It has been asked of me, very justly, why 
I have hitherto written to you of things you 
were likely little to care for, in words which 
it was difficult for you to understand. I 
have no fear but that you will one day un- 
derstand all my poor words — the saddest of 
them perhaps too well. But I have great 
fear that you may never come to under- 
stand these written above, which are a part 
of a king's love-song, in one sweet May, of 
many long since gone. I fear that for you 
the wild winter's rain may never pass, the 
flowers never appear on the earth; that for 
you no bird may ever sing ; for you no per- 
fect Love arise and fulfil your life in peace. 
"And why not for us as for others ?" Will 
you answer me so and take my fear for you 
as an insult? Nay, it is no insult; nor am 
I happier than you. For me the birds do 
not sing, nor ever will. But they would for 
you, if you cared to have it so. When I 
told you that you would never understand 
that love-song, I meant only that you would 
not desire to understand it. 

Are you again indignant with me? Do 
you think, though you should labor and 
grieve and be trodden down in dishonor, all 
your days, at least you can keep that one 
joy of Love, and that one honor of Home? 
Had you, indeed, kept that, you had kept 
all. But no men yet, in the history of the 
race, have lost it so piteously. In many a 
country and many an age, women have been 
compelled to labor for their husbands' 
wealth or bread; but never until now were 
they so homeless as to say, like the poor 
Samaritan, "I have no husband." Women 
of every country and people have sustained 
without complaint the labor of fellowship; 
for the women of the latter days in England 
it has been reserved to claim the privilege 
of isolation. 

This, then, is the end of your universal 
education and civilization, and contempt of 
the ignorance of the Middle Ages and of 



490 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



their chivalry. Not only do you declare your- 
selves too indolent to labor for daughters 
and vpives, and too poor to support them, 
but you have made the neglected and dis- 
tracted creatures hold it for an honor to be 
independent of you and shriek for some 
hold of the mattock for themselves. Believe 
it or not, as you may, there has not been so 
low a level of thought reached by any race 
since they grew to be male and female out 
of star-fish, or chickweed, or whatever else 
they have been made from by natural selec- 
tion — according to modern science. 

That modern science, also, economic and 
of other kinds, has reached its climax at 
last. For it seems to be the appointed func- 
tion of the nineteenth century to exhibit in 
all things the elect pattern of perfect Folly, 
for a warning to the farthest future. Thus 
the statement of principle which I quoted to 
you in my last letter, from the circular of 
the Emigration Society, that it is overpro- 
duction which is the cause of distress, is ac- 
curately the most foolish thing, not only 
hitherto ever said by men, but which it is 
possible for men ever to say, respecting their 
own business. It is a kind of opposite pole 
(or negative acme of mortal stupidity) to 
Newton's discovery of gravitation as an 
acme of mortal wisdom : as no wise being 
on earth will ever be able to make such 
another wise discovery, so no foolish being 
on earth will ever be capable of saying such 
another foolish thing, through all the ages. 

And the same crisis has been exactly 
reached by our natural science and by our 
art. It has several times chanced to me, 
since I began these papers, to have the exact 
thing shown or brought to me that I wanted 
for illustration, just in time; and it hap- 
pened that, on the very day on which I pub- 
lished my last letter, I had to go to the Ken- 
sington Museum, and there I saw the most 
perfectly and roundly ill-done thing which 
as yet in my whole life I ever saw produced 
by art. It had a tablet in front of it, bear- 
ing this inscription : — 

"Statue in black and white marble, a New- 
foundland Dog standing on a Serpent, which 
rests on a marble cushion, the pedestal 
ornamented with pietra dura fruits in relief. 
— English, Present Century. No. I." 

It was so very right for me, the Kensing- 
ton people having been good enough to num- 
ber it "I," the thing itself being almost in- 
credible in its one-ness, and, indeed, such a 
punctual accent over the iota of Miscrea- 



tion, so absolutely and exquisitely miscreant, 
that I am not myself capable of conceiving 
a Number Two or Three, or any rivalship or 
association with it whatsoever. The extrem- 
ity of its unvirtue consisted, observe, mainly 
in the quantity of instruction which was 
abused in it. It showed that the persons who 
produced it had seen everything, and prac- 
ticed everything; and misunderstood every- 
thing they saw, and misapplied everything 
they did. They had seen Roman work, and 
Florentine work, and Byzantine work, and 
Gothic work; and misunderstanding of 
everything had passed through them as the 
mud does through earthworms, and here at 
last was their worm-cast of a Production. 
But the second chance that came to me 
that day was more significant still. From 
the Kensington Museum I went to an after- 
noon tea, at a house where I was sure to 
meet some nice people. And among the first 
I met was an old friend who had been hear- 
ing some lectures on botany at the Kensing- 
ton Museum, and been delighted by them. 
She is the kind of person who gets good out 
of everything, and she was quite right in 
being delighted; besides that, as I found 
by her account of them, the lectures were 
really interesting, and pleasantly given. She 
had expected botany to be dull, and had not 
found it so, and "had learned so much." On 
hearing this I proceeded naturally to in- 
quire what; for my idea of her was that 
before she went to the lectures at all she 
had known more botany than she was likely 
to learn by them. So she told me that she 
had learned first of all that "there were 
seven sorts of leaves." Now I have always 
a great suspicion of the number Seven; be- 
cause, when I wrote The Seven Lamps of 
Architecture, it required all the ingenuity 
I was master of to prevent them from be- 
coming Eight, or even Nine, on my hands. 
So I thought to myself that it would be 
very charming if there were only seven sorts 
of leaves, but that, perhaps, if one looked 
the woods and forests of the world carefully 
through, it was just possible that one might 
discover as many as eight sorts; and then 
where would my friend's new knowledge of 
botany be ? Sol said, "That was very pret- 
ty; but what more?" Then my friend told 
me that the lecturer said "the object of his 
lectures would be entirely aceomiDlished if he 
could convince his hearers that there was 
no such thing as a fiower." Now in that 
sentence you have the most perfect and ad- 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



491 



mirable summary given you of the general 
temper and purposes of modern science. It 
gives lectures on Botany, of which the object 
is to show that there is no such thing as a 
Flower; on Humanity, to show that there 
is no such thing as a Man ; and on Theology, 
to show there is no such thing as a God. 
No such thing as a Man, but only a Mechan- 
ism; no such thing as a God, but only a 
series of Forces. The two faiths are essen- 
tially one: if you feel yourself to be only 
a machine, constructed to be a regulator of 
minor machinery, you will put your statue 
of such science on your Holborn Viaduct, 
and necessarily recognize only major ma- 
chinery as regulating you. 

I must explain the real meaning to you, 
however, of that saying of the botanical lec- 
. turer, for it has a wide bearing. Some fifty 
years ago the poet Goethe discovered that all 
the parts of plants had a kind of common 
nature and would change into each other. 
Now, this was a true discovery and a nota- 
ble one; and you will find that, in fact, all 
plants are composed of essentially two parts 
— the leaf and root ; one loving the light, the 
other darkness; one liking to be clean, the 
other to be dirty ; one liking to grow for the 
most part up, the other for the most part 
down; and each having faculties and pur- 
poses of its own. But the pure one, which 
loves the light, has, above all things, the pur- 
pose of being married to another leaf, and 
having child-leaves and children's children 
of leaves, to make the earth fair forever. 
And when the leaves marry, they put on 
wedding-robes, and are more glorious than 
Solomon in all his glory, and they have 
feasts of honey ; and we call them "Flowers." 

In a certain sense, therefore, you see the 
botanical lecturer was quite right. There 
are no such things as Flowers — there are 
only gladdened Leaves. Nay, farther than 
this, there may be a dignity in the less happy 
but unwithering leaf, which is, in some sort, 
better than the brief lily in its bloom ; which 
the great poets always knew well, Chaucer 
before Goethe, and the writer of the First 
Psalm before Chaucer. The botanical lec- 
turer was, in a deeper sense than he knew, 
right. 

But in the deepest sense of all, the botani- 
cal lecturer was, to the extremity of wrong- 
ness, wrong; for leaf and root and fruit 
exist, all of them, only that there may be 
flowers. He disregarded the life and pas- 
sion of the creature, which were its essence. 



Had he looked for these, he would have rec- 
ognized that in the thought of Nature her- 
self there is in a plant nothing else but its 
flowers. 

Now, in exactly the sense that modern 
science declares there is no such thing as a 
Flower, it has declared there is no such 
thing as a Man, but only a transitional form 
of Ascidians and apes. It may or may not 
be true — it is not of the smallest conse- 
quence whether it be or not. The real fact 
is that, rightly seen with human eyes, there 
is nothing else but Man; that all animals 
and beings beside him are only made that 
they may change into him; that the world 
truly exists only in the presence of Man, 
acts only in the passion of Man. The essence 
of Light is in his eyes, the center of Force 
in his soul, the pertinence of Action in his 
deeds. And all true science — which my 
Savoyard guide rightly scorned me when he 
thought I had not — all true science is savoir 
vivre. But all your modern science is the 
contrary of that. It is savoir mourir. 

And of its very discoveries, such as they 
are, it cannot make use. 

That telegraphic signaling was a discov- 
ery, and conceivably, some day, may be a 
useful one. And there was some excuse for 
your being a little proud when, about last 
sixth of April (Coeur de Lion's death-day, 
and Albert Diirer's), you knotted a copper 
wire all the way to Bombay, and flashed a 
message along it, and back. But what was 
the message, and what the answer ? Is India 
the better for what you said to her? Are 
you the better for what she replied? If not, 
you have only wasted an all-around-the- 
world's length of copper wire— which is, in- 
deed, about the sum of your doing. If you 
had had perchance, two words of common 
sense to say, though you had taken weari- 
some time and trouble to send them, — though 
you had written them slowly in gold, and 
sealed them with a hundred seals, and sent 
a squadron of ships of the line to carry the 
scroll, and the squadron had fought its way 
round the Cape of Good Hope, through a 
year of storms, with loss of all its ships but 
one, — the two words of common sense would 
have been worth the carriage, and more. 
But you have not anything like so much as 
that to say, either to India or to any other 
place. 

You think it a great triumph to make the 
sun draw brown landscapes for you. That 
was also a discovery, and some day may be 
useful. But the sun had drawn landscapes 



492 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



before for you, not in brown, but in green 
and blue and all imaginable colors, here in 
England. Not one of you ever looked at 
them then ; not one of you cares for the loss 
of them now, when you have shut the sun 
out with smoke, so that he can draw nothing 
more except brown biota through a hole in 
a box. Tlaere was a rocky valley between 
Buxton and Bakewell, once upon a time, 
divine as the Vale of Tempe; you might 
have seen the gods there morning and even- 
ing — AjDollo and all the sweet Muses of the 
light — walking in fair procession on the 
lawns of it and to and fro among the pin- 
nacles of its crags. You cared neither for 
gods nor grass, but for cash (which you did 
not know the way to get) ; you thought you 
could get it by what the Times calls "Rail- 
road Enterprise." You Enterprised a Rail- 
road through the valley — ^j'ou blasted rocks 
away, heaped thousands of tons of shale 
into its lovely stream. The valley is gone, 
and the gods with it ; and now every fool in 
Buxton can be at Bakewell in half an hour, 
and every fool in Bakewell at Buxton ; which 
you think a lucrative process of exchange — 
you Pools Everjrvvhere. 

To talk at a distance, when you have 
nothing to say though you were ever so 
near; to go fast from this place to that, 
with nothing to do either at one or the other : 
— these are powers certainly. Much more, 
power of increased Production, if you in- 
deed had got it, would be something to boast 
of. But are you so entirely sure that you 
have got it — that the mortal disease of 
plenty, and afflictive affluence of good things, 
are all you have to dread ? 

Observe. A man and a woman, with their 
children, properly trained, are able easily to 
cultivate as much ground as will feed them, 
to build as much wall and roof as will lodge 
them, and to spin and weave as much cloth 
as will clothe them. They can all be per- 
fectly happy and healthy in doing this. 
Supposing that they invent machinery which 
will build, plow, thresh, cook, and weave, 
and that they have none of these things any 
more to do, but may read, or play croquet 
or cricket, all day long, I believe myself that 
they will neither be so good nor so happy as 
without the machines. But I waive my 
belief in this matter for the time. I will 
assume that they become more refined and 
moral persons, and that idleness is in future 
to be the mother of all good. But observe, 
I repeat, the power of your machine is only 
in enabling them to be idle. It will not 



enable them to live better than they did 
before, nor to live in greater numbers. Get 
your heads quite clear on this matter. Out 
of so much ground only so much living is to 
be got, with or without machinery. You 
may set a million of steam-plows to work 
on an acre, if you like — out of that acre only 
a given number of grains of corn will grow, 
scratch or scorch it as you will. So that the 
question is not at all Avhether, by having 
more machines, more of you can live. No 
machines will increase the possibilities of 
life. Suppose, for instance, you could get 
the oxen in your plow driven by a goblin, 
who would ask for no pay, not even a cream 
bowl (you have nearly managed to get it 
driven by an iron goblin, as it is) ; well, your 
furrow will take no more seeds than if you 
had held the stilts yourself. But instead 
of holding them you sit, I presume, on a 
bank beside the field, under an eglantine, — 
watch the goblin at his work, and read 
poetry. Meantime, your wife in the house 
has also got a goblin to weave and wash for 
her. And she is lying on the sofa, reading 
poetry. 

Now, as I said, I don't believe you would 
be happier so, but I am willing to believe it ; 
only, since you are already such brave 
mechanists, show me at least oiie or two 
places where you are happier. Let me see 
one small example of approach to this ser- 
aphic condition. I can show you examples, 
millions of them, of happy people made 
happy by their own industry. Farm after 
farm I can show you, in Bavaria, Switzer- 
land, the Tyrol, and such other places, -where 
men and women are perfectly happy and 
good, without any iron servants. Show me, 
therefore, some English family, with its fiery 
familiar, happier than these. Or bring me 
— for I am not inconvineible by any kind of 
evidence — ^bring me the testimony of an 
English family or two to their increased 
felicity. Or if you cannot do so much as 
that, can you convince even themselves of it ? 
They are perhaps happy, if only they knew 
how happy they were; Virgil thought so, 
long ago, of simple rustics ; but you hear at 
present your steam-propelled rustics are 
crying out that they are anything else than 
happy, and that they regard their boasted 
progress "in the light of a monstrous Sham." 
I must tell you one little thing, however, 
which greatly perplexes my imagination of 
the relieved plowman sitting under his rose- 
bower, reading poetry. I have told it you 
before, indeed, but I forget where. There 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



493 



was really a great festivity, and expression 
of satisfaction in the new order of things, 
down in Cumberland, a little while ago; 
some first of May, I think it was, a country 
festival such as the old heathens, who had 
no iron servants, vised to keep with jDiping 
and dancing. So I thought, from the lib- 
erated cou.ntry people — their work all done 
for them by goblins — we should have some 
extraordinary piping and dancing. But 
there was no dancing at all, and they could 
not even provide their own piping. They 
had their goblin to pipe for them. They 
walked in procession after their steam-plow, 
and their steam-plow whistled to them oc- 
casionally in the most melodious manner it 
could. Which seemed to me, indeed, a re- 
•turn to more than Arcadian simplicity; for 
in old Arcadia plow-boys truly whistled as 
they went, for want of thought ; whereas 
here was verily a large company walking 
without thought, but not having any more 
even the capacity of doing their own 
whistling. 

But next, as to the inside of the house. 
Before you got your power-looms, a woman 
could always make herself a chemise and 
petticoat of bright and pretty appearance. 
I have seen a Bavarian peasant-woman at 
church in Munich, looking a much grander 
creature, and more beautifully dressed, than 
any of the crossed and embroidered angels 
in Hesse's high-art frescoes (which hap- 
pened to be just above her, so that I could 
look from one to the other). Well, here you 
are, in England, served by household 
demons, with five hundred fingers at least, 
weaving, for one that used to weave in the 
days of Minerva. You ought to be able to 
show me five hundred dresses for one that 
used to be; tidiness ought to have become 
five-hundredfold tidier; ta^oestry should be 
increased into cinque-cento-fold iridescence 
of tapestry. Not only your peasant-girl 
ought to be lying on the sofa, reading poetry, 
but she ought to have in her wardrobe five 
hundred petticoats instead of one. Is that, 
indeed, your issue? or are you only on a 
curiously crooked way to it? 

It is just possible, indeed, that you may 
not have been allowed to get the use of the 
goblin's work — that other people may have 
got the use of it, and you none; because, 
perhaps, you have not been able to evoke 
goblins wholly for your own personal service, 
but have been borrowing goblins from the 
capitalist, and paying interest in the "posi- 



tion of William," on ghostly self-going 
planes. But suppose you had laid by capi- 
tal enough, yourselves, to hire all the demons 
in the world — nay all that are inside of it ; 
are you quite sure you know what you 
might best set them to work at, and what 
"useful things" you should command them 
to make for you? I told you, last month, 
that no economist going (whether by steam 
or ghost) knew what are useful things and 
what are not. Very few of you know, 
yourselves, except by bitter experience of 
the want of them. And no demons, either 
of iron or spirit, can ever make them. 
. There are three material things, not only 
useful but essential to life. No one "knows 
how to live" till he has got them. 

These are Pure Air, Water, and Earth. 

There are three immaterial things, not 
only useful, but essential to life. No one 
knows how to live till he has got them also. 

These are Admiration, Hope, and Love. 

Admiration — the power of discerning and 
taking delight in what is beautiful in visible 
Form and lovely in human Character, and, 
necessarily, striving to produce what is 
beautiful in form and to become what is 
lovely in character. 

Hope — the recognition, by true foresight, 
of better things to be reached hereafter, 
whether by ourselves or others; necessarily 
issuing in the straightforward and undisap- 
pointable effort to advance, according to our 
proper powei-, the gaining of them. 

Love — both of family and neighbor, faith- 
ful and satisfied. 

These are the six chiefly useful things to 
be got by Political Economy, when it has 
become a science. I will briefly tell you 
what modern Political Economy — the great 
savoir mourir — is doing with them. 

The first three, I said, are Pure Air, 
Water, and Earth. 

Heaven gives you the main elements of 
these. You can destroy them at your pleas- 
ure, or increase, almost without limit, the 
available quantities of them. 

You can vitiate the air by your manner of 
life and of death, to any extent. You might 
easily vitiate it so as to bring such a pesti- 
lence on the globe as would end all of j^ou. 
You, or your fellows, German and French, 
are at present vitiating it to the best of your 
power in every direction — chiefly at this 
moment with corpses, and animal and veget- 
able ruin in war, changing men, horses, and 
garden-stuff into noxious gas. But every- 



494 



THE GEEAT TKADITION 



where, and all day long, you are vitiating it 
with foul chemical exhalations ; and the hor- 
rible nests, which you call towns, are little 
more than laboratories for the distillation 
into heaven of venomous smokes and smells, 
mixed with effluvia from decaying animal 
matter and infectious miasmata from puru- 
lent disease. 

On the other hand, your power of purify- 
ing the air, by dealing properly and swiftly 
with all substances in corruption, by abso- 
lutely forbidding noxious manufactures, and 
by planting in all soils the trees which 
cleanse and invigorate earth and atmosphere, 
is literally infinite. You might make every 
breath of air you draw, food. 

Secondly, your power over the rain and 
river-waters of the earth is infinite. You 
can bring rain where you will, by planting 
wisely and tending carefully; drought 
where you will, by ravage of woods and 
neglect of the soil. You might have the 
rivers of England as pure as the crystal of 
the rock ; beautiful in falls, in lakes, in living 
pools; so full of fish that you might take 
them out with your hands instead of nets. 
Or you may do always as you have done 
now — turn every river of England into a 
common sewer, so that you cannot so much 
as baptize an English baby but with filth, 
unless you hold its face out in the rain; 
and even that falls dirty. 

Then for the third, earth, meant to be 
nourishing for you and blossoming. You 
have learned about it that there is no such 
thing as a flower, and as far as your scien- 
tific hands and scientific brains, inventive 
of explosive and deathful instead of blos- 
soming and life-giving dust, can contrive, 
you have turned the Mother Earth, Demeter, 
into the Avenger Earth, Tisiphone — with 
the voice of your brother's blood crying out 
of it in one wild harmony round all its 
murderous sphere. 

That is what you have done for the Three 
Material Useful Things. 

Then for the Three Immaterial Useful 
Things. For Admiration, you have learned 
contempt and conceit. There is no lovely 
thing ever yet done by man that you care 
for, or can understand; but you are per- 
suaded you are able to do much finer things 
yourselves. You gather an exhibit together, 
as if equally instructive, what is infinitely 
bad with what is infinitely good. You do 
not know which is which; you instinctively 
prefer the Bad, and do more of it. You 



instinctively hate the Good, and destroy it. 

Then, secondly, for Hope. You have not 
so much spirit of it in you as to begin any 
plan which will not pay for ten years; nor 
so much intelligence of it in you (either 
politicians or workmen) as to be able to 
form one clear idea of what you would 
like your country to become. 

Then, thirdly, for Love. You were or- 
dered by the Founder of your religion to 
love your neighbor as yourselves. You 
have founded an entire science of Political 
Economy on what you have stated to be the 
constant instinct of man — the desire to de- 
fraud his neighbor. And you have driven 
your women mad, so that they ask no more 
for Love nor for fellowship with you, but 
stand against you, and ask for "justice." 

Are there any of you who are tired of all 
this? Any of you. Landlords or Tenants?, 
Employers or Workmen? Are there any 
landlords, any masters, who would like bet- 
ter to be served by men than by iron devils? 
Any tenants, any workmen, who can be 
true . to their leaders and to each other ? 
who can vow to work and to live faithfully, 
for the sake of the joy of their homes? 

Will any such give the tenth of what they 
have, and of what they earn, not to emigrate 
with, but to stay in England with, and do 
what is in their hands and hearts to make 
her a happy England? 

I am not rich (as people now estimate 
riches), and great part of what I have is 
already engaged in maintaining art-work- 
men, or for other objects more or less of 
public utility. The tenth of whatever is 
left to me, estimated as accurately as I 
can (you shall see the accounts), I will make 
over to you in perpetuity, with the best 
security that English law can give, on 
Christmas Day of this year, with engage- 
ment to add the tithe of whatever I earn 
afterwards. Who else will help, with little 
or much? the object of such fund being to 
begin, and gradually — no matter how 
slowly — to increase the buying and secur- 
ing of land in England, which shall not 
be built upon, but cultivated by English- 
men with their own hands and such help 
of force as they can find in wind and wave. 
I do not care with how many or how few 
this thing is begun, nor on what inconsid- 
erable scale — if it be but in two or three 
poor men's gardens. So much, at least, I 
can buy, myself, and give them. If no 
help come, I have done and said what I 



NINETEENTH CENTURY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



495 



could, and there will be an end. If any 
help come to me, it is to be on the follow- 
ing conditions : 

We will try to make some small piece of 
English ground beautiful, peaceful, and 
fruitful. We will have no steam-engines 
upon it, and no railroads; we will have no 
untended or unthought-of creatures on it; 
none wretched but the sick; none idle but 
the dead. We will have no liberty upon it, 
but instant obedience to known law and 
appointed persons ; no equality upon it, but 
recognition of every betterness that we 
can find, and reprobation of every worse- 
ness. When we want to go anywhere, we 
will go there quietly and safely, not at 
forty miles an hour in the risk of our lives ; 
when we want to carry anything anywhere, 
we will carry it either on the backs of beasts, 
or on our own, or in carts or boats. We 
will have plenty of flowers and vegetables 
in our gardens, plenty of corn and grass 
in our fields, — and few bricks. We will 
have some music and poetry; the children 
shall learn to dance to it and sing it; per- 



haps some of the old people, in time, may 
also. We will have some art, moreover; we 
will at least try if, like the Greeks, we can't 
make some pots. The Greeks used to paint 
pictures of gods on their pots. We, prob- 
ably, cannot do as much; but we may put 
some pictures of insects on them, and rep- 
tiles — butterflies and frogs, if nothing bet- 
ter. There was an excellent old potter in 
France who used to put frogs and vipers 
into his dishes, to the admiration of man- 
kind; we can surely put something nicer 
than that. Little by little, some higher art 
and imagination may manifest themselves 
among us, and feeble rays of science may 
dawn for us: — botany, though too dull to 
dispute the existence of flowers; and his- 
tory, though too simple to question the na- 
tivity of men; nay, even perhaps an un- 
calculating and uncovetous wisdom, as of 
rude Magi, presenting, at such nativity, gifts 
of gold and frankincense. 

Faithfully yours, 
John Ruskin. 



4. THE MINISTRY OF CULTURE 



Sweetness and Light 
matthew arnold 

The disparagers of culture make its mo- 
tive curiosity ; sometimes, indeed, they make 
its motive mere exelusiveness and vanity. 
The culture which is suppx)sed to plume 
itself on a smattering of Greek and Latin 
is a culture which is begotten by nothing 
so intellectual as curiosity; it is valued 
either out of sheer vanity and ignorance or 
else as an engine of social and class dis- 
tinction, separating its holder, like a badge 
or title, from other people who have not 
got it. No serious man would call this cul- 
ture, or attach any value to it, as culture, at 
all. To find the real ground for the very 
differing estimate which serious people will 
set upon culture, we must find some motive 
for culture in the terms of which may lie 
a real ambiguity; and such a motive the 
word curiosity gives us. 

I have before now pointed out that we 
English do not, like the foreigners, use this 
word in a good sense as well as in a bad 
sense. With us the word is always used in 
somewhat disapproving sense. A liberal and 



intelligent eagerness about the things of the 
mind may be meant by a foreigner when he 
speaks of curiosity, but with us the word 
always conveys a certain notion of frivolous 
and unedifying activity. In the Quarterly 
Review, some little time ago, was an estimate 
of the celebrated French critic, M. Sainte- 
Beuve, and a very inadequate estimate it in 
my judgment was. And its inadequacy con- 
sisted chiefly in this : that in our English 
way it left out of sight the double sense 
really involved in the word curiosity, think- 
ing enough was said to stamp M. Sainte- 
Beuve with blame if it was said that he was 
impelled in his operations as a critic by 
curiosity, and omitting either to perceive 
that M. Sainte-Beuve himself, and many 
other people with him, would consider that 
this was praiseworthy and not blameworthy, 
or to point out why it ought really to be 
accounted worthy of blame and not of 
praise. For as there is a curiosity about 
intellectual matters which is futile, and 
merely a disease, so there is certainly a 
curiosity, — a desire after the things of the 
mind simply for their own sakes and for 
the pleasure of seeing them as tbey are, — 



496 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



which is, in an intelligent being, natural- 
and laudable. Nay, and the very desire to 
see things as they are, implies a balance 
and regulation of mind which is not often 
attained without fruitful effort, and which 
is the very opposite of the blind and dis- 
eased impulse of mind which is what we 
mean to blame when we blame curiosity. 
Montesquieu says : "The first motive which 
ought to impel us to study is the desire 
to augment the excellence of our nature, and 
to render an intelligent being yet more in- 
telligent." This is the true ground to as- 
sign for the genuine scientific passion, how- 
ever manifested, and for culture, viewed 
simply as a fruit of this passion ; and it is 
a Avorthy ground, even though we let the 
term curiosity stand to describe it. 

But there is of culture another view, in 
which not solely the scientific passion, the 
sheer desire to see things as they are, natural 
and proper in an intelligent being, appears 
as the ground of it. There is a view in 
which all the love of our neighbor, the im- 
pulses towards action, help, and beneficence, 
the desire for removing human error, clear- 
ing human confusion, and diminishing hu- 
man misery, the noble aspiration to leave 
the world better and happier than w^e found 
it, — ^motives eminently such as are called 
social, — come in as part of the grounds of 
culture, and the main and preeminent part. 
Culture is then properly described not as 
having its origin in curiosity, but as having 
its origin in the love of perfection; it is a 
study of perfection. It moves by the force, 
not merely or primarily of the scientific 
passion for pure knowledge, but also of the 
moral and social passion for doing good. 
As, in the first view of it, we took for its 
worthy motto Montesquieu's words: "To 
render an intelligent being yet more in- 
telligent !" so, in the second view of it, there 
is no better motto which it can have than 
these words of Bishop Wilson: "To make 
reason and the will of God prevail !" 

Only, whereas the i3assion for doing good 
is apt to be overhasty in determining what 
reason an'd the will of God say, because its 
turn is for acting rather than thinking and 
it wants to be beginning to act ; and where- 
as it is apt to take its own conceptions, which 
proceed from its own state of development 
and share in all the imperfections and in- 
maturities of this, for a basis of action; 
what distinguishes culture is, that it is pos- 
sessed by the scientific passion as well as by 



the passion of doing good; that it demands 
worthy notions of reason and the will of 
God, and does not readily suffer its own 
crude conceptions to substitute themselves 
for them. And knowing that no action 
or institution can be salutary and stable 
which is not based on reason and the will 
of God, it is not so bent on acting and in- 
stituting, even with the great aim of dimin- 
ishing human error and misery ever before 
its thoughts, but that it can remember that 
acting and instituting are of little use, un- 
less we know how and what we ought to 
act and to institute. 

" This culture is more interesting and more 
far-reaching than that other, which is 
founded solely on the scientific passion for 
knowing. But it needs times of faith and 
ardor, times when the intellectual horizon 
is opening and widening all around us, to 
flourish in. And is not the close and 
bounded intellectual horizon within which 
we have long lived and moved noAv lifting 
ujD, and are not new lights finding free 
passage to shine in upon us? For a long 
time there was no passage for them to make 
their way in upon us, and then it was of 
no use to think of adajDting the world's 
action to them. Where Avas the hope of 
making reason and the will of God pre- 
vail among people who had a routine which 
they had christened reason and the will of 
God, in which they were inextricably bound, 
and beyond which they had no power of 
looking? But now the iron force of ad- 
hesion to the old routine, — social, political, 
religious, — has wonderfully yielded ; the iron 
force of exclusion of all which is new has 
wonderfully yielded. The danger now is, 
not that people should obstinately refuse to 
allow anything but their old rou^tine to pass 
for reason and the will of God, but either 
that they should allow some novelty or other 
to pass for these too easily, or else that they 
should underrate the importance of them 
altogether, and think it enough to follow 
action for its own sake, without troubling 
themselves to make reason and the will of 
God prevail therein. Now, then, is the 
moment for culture to be of service, culture 
which believes in making reason and the will 
of God prevail, believes in perfection, is 
the study and i3ursuit of perfection, and is 
no longer debarred, by a rigid invincible 
exclusion of whatever is new, from getting 
acceptance for its ideas, simply because they 
are new. 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



497 



The moment this view of culture is seized, 
the moment it is regarded not solely as the 
endeavor to see things as they are, to draw 
towards a knowledge of the universal order 
which seems to be intended and aimed at in 
the world, and which it is a man's happi- 
ness to go along with or his misery to go 
counter to, — to learn, in short, the will of 
God, — the moment, I say, culture is con- 
sidered not merely as the endeavor to see 
and learn this, but as the endeavor, also, to 
make it prevail, the moral, social, and benefi- 
cent character of culture becomes manifest. 
The mere endeavor to see and learn the truth 
for our own joersonal satisfaction is in- 
deed a commencement for making it pre- 
vail, a preparing the way for this, which 
always serves this, and is wrongly, there- 
fore, stamped with blame absolutely in 
itself and not only in its caricature and de- 
generation. But perhaj)s it has got stamped 
with blame, and disparaged with the du- 
bious title of curiosity, because in com- 
parison with this wider endeavor of such 
great and plain utility it looks selfish, petty, 
and unprofitable. 

And religion, the greatest and most im- 
portant of the efforts by which the hu- 
man race has manifested its impulse to per- 
fect itself, — religion, that voice of the deep- 
est human experience, — does not only en- 
join and sanction the aim which is the great 
aim of culture, the aim of setting ourselves 
to ascertain what perfection is and to make 
it prevail; but also, in determining gen- 
erally in what human perfection consists, 
religion comes to a conclusion identical 
with that which culture, — culture seeking 
the determination of this question through 
all the voices of human experience which 
have been heard uiDon it, of art, science, 
poetry, philosophy, history, as well as of 
religion, in order to give a greater fulness 
and certainty to its solution, — likewise 
reaches. Religion says: The kingdom of 
God is within you; and culture, in like man- 
ner, places human perfection in an internal 
condition, in the growth and predominance 
of our humanity proper, as distinguished 
from our animality. It places it in the 
ever-increasing efficacy and in the general 
harmonious expansion of those gifts of 
thought and feeling, which make the pe- 
culiar dignity, wealth, and happiness of 
human nature. As I have said on a former 
occasion : "It is in making endless additions 
to itself, in the endless expansion of its pow- 



ers, in endless growth in wisdom and beauty, 
that the spirit of the human race finds its 
ideal. To reach this ideal, culture is an in- 
dispensable aid, and that is the true value 
of culture." Not a having and a resting, 
but a growing and a becoming, is the char- 
acter of perfection as culture conceives it; 
and here, too, it coincides with religion. 

And because men are all members of one 
great whole, and the sympathy which is in 
human nature will not allow one member 
to be indifferent to the rest or to have a 
perfect welfare independent of the rest, 
the expansion of our humanity, to suit 
the idea of perfection which culture forms, 
must be a general expansion. Perfection, as 
culture conceives it, is not possible while 
the individual remains isolated. The in- 
dividual is required, under pain of being 
stunted and enfeebled in his own devel- 
opment if he disobeys, to carry others along 
with him in his march toAvards perfection, 
to be continually doing all he can to enlarge 
and increase the volume of the human 
stream sweeping thitherward. And, here, 
once more, culture lays on us the same obli- 
gation as religion, which says, as Bishop 
Wilson has admirably put it, that "to pro- 
mote the kingdom of God is to increase 
and hasten one's own happiness." 

But, finally, perfection, — as culture from 
a thorough, disinterested study of human 
nature and human experience learns to con- 
ceive it, — is a harmonious expansioil of all 
the powers which make the beauty and 
worth of human nature, and is not consistent 
with the over-development of any one power 
at the expense of the rest. Here culture 
goes beyond religion as religion is generally 
conceived by us. 

If culture, then, is a study of perfection, 
and of harmonious perfection, general per- 
fection, and perfection which consists in be- 
coming something" rather than in having 
something, in an inward condition of the 
mind and spirit, not in an outward set of 
circumstances, — it is clear that culture, in- 
stead of being the frivolous and useless 
thing which Mr. Bright, and Mr. Frederic 
Harrison, and many other Liberals are apt 
to call it, has a very important function 
to fulfil for mankind. And this function 
is particularly important in our modern 
world, of which the whole civilization is, to a 
much greater degree than the civilization of 
Greece and Rome, mechanical and external, 
and tends constantly to become more so. 



498 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



But above all in our own country has cul- 
ture a weighty part to perform, because 
here that mechanical character, which civil- 
ization tends to take everywhere, is shown 
in the most eminent degree. Indeed nearly 
all the characters of perfection, as culture 
teaches us to fix them, meet in this country 
with some powerful tendency which thwarts 
them and sets them at defiance. The idea 
of perfection as an inward condition of the 
mind and spirit is at variance with the 
mechanical and material civilization in es- 
teem with us, and nowhere, as I have said, 
so much in esteem as with us. The idea of 
perfection as a general expansion of the 
human family is at variance with our strong 
individualism, our hatred of all limits to the 
unrestrained swing of the individual's per- 
sonality, our maxim of "every man for 
himself." Above all, the idea of perfection 
as a harmonious expansion of human na- 
ture is at variance with our want of flexi- 
bility, with our inaptitude for seeing more 
than one side of a thing, with our intense 
energetic absorption in the particular pur- 
suit we happen to be following. So culture 
has a rough task to achieve in this country. 
Its preachers have, and are likely long to 
have, a hard time of it, and they will much 
oftener be regarded, for a great while to 
come, as elegant or spurious Jeremiahs than 
as friends and benefactors. That, however, 
will not prevent their doing in the end 
good service if they persevere. And, mean- 
while, the mode of action they have to pur- 
sue, and the sort of habits they must fight 
against, ought to be made quite clear for 
every one to see, who may be willing to 
look at the matter attentively and dispas- 
sionately. 

Faith in machinery is, I said, our beset- 
ting danger; often in machinery most ab- 
surdly disproportioned to the end which this 
machinery, if it is to do any good at all, is 
to serve; but always in machinery, as if 
it had a value in and for itself. What is 
freedom but machinery? what is popula- 
tion but machinery"? what is coal but ma- 
chinery ? what are railroads but machinery ? 
what is wealth but machinery? what are, 
even religious organizations but machinery 1 
Now almost every voice in England is ac- 
customed to speak of these things as if 
they were precious ends in themselves, and 
therefore had some of the characters of 
perfection indisputably joined to them, I 
have before now noticed Mr. Roebuck's 



stock argument for proving the greatness 
and happiness of England as she is, and 
for quite stopjaing the mouths of all gain- 
sayers. Mr. Roebuck is never weary of 
reiterating this argument of his, so I do not 
know why I should be weary of noticing 
it. ''May not every man in England say 
what he likes?" — Mr. Roebuck perpetually 
asks ; and that, he thinks, is quite sufficient, 
and when every man may say what he likes, 
our aspirations ought to be satisfied. But 
the asjjirations of culture, which is the 
study of perfection, are not satisfied, unless 
what men say, when they may say what they 
like, is worth saying,— has good in it, and 
more good than bad. In the same way the 
Times, replying to some foreign strictures 
on the dress, looks, and behavior of the 
English abroad, urges that the English ideal 
is that every one should be free to do and 
to look just as he likes. But culture inde- 
fatigably tries, not to make what each raw 
person may like, the rule by which he fash- 
ions himself; but to draw ever nearer to 
a sense of what is indeed beautiful, graceful, 
and becoming, and to get the raw person 
to like that. 

And in the same way with respect to rail- 
roads and coal. Every one mvist have ob- 
served the strange language current during 
the late discussions as to the possible failure 
of our supplies of coal. Our coal, thou- 
sands of people were saying, is the real basis 
of our national greatness; if our coal runs 
short, there is an end of the greatness of 
England. But what is greatness? — culture 
makes us ask. Greatness is a spiritual con- 
dition worthy to excite love, interest, and 
admiration ; and the outward proof of pos- 
sessing greatness is that we excite love, in- 
terest, and admiration. If England were 
swallowed up by the sea of tomorrow, which 
of the two, a hundred years hence, would 
most excite the love, interest, and admira- 
tion of mankind, — would most, therefore, 
show the evidences of having possessed 
greatness, — the England of the last twenty 
years, or the England of Elizabeth, of a 
time of splendid spiritual effort, but when 
our coal, and our industrial operations de- 
pending on coal, were very little developed? 
Well, then, what an unsound habit of mind 
it must be which makes us talk of things 
like coal or iron as constituting the great- 
ness of England, and how salutary a friend 
is culture, bent on seeing things as they 
are, and thus dissipating delusions of this 



NINETEENTH CENTURY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



499 



kind and fixing standards of perfection that 
are real ! 

Wealth, again, that end to which our 
prodigious works for material advantage are 
directed, — the commonest of commonplaces 
tells us how men are always apt to regard 
wealth as a precious end in itself: and cer- 
tainly they have never been so apt thus 
to regard it as they are in England at the 
present time. Never did people believe any- 
thing more firmly than nine Englishmen out 
of ten at the i3resent day believe that our 
greatness and welfare are proved by our be- 
ing so very rich. Now, the use of culture 
is that it helps us, by means of its spiritual 
standard of perfection, to regard wealth 
as but machinery, but really to j)erceive and 
a matter of words that we regard wealth 
as but machinery, but really to perceive and 
feel that it is so. If it were not for this 
purging etSeet wrought upon our minds by 
culture, the whole world, the future as well 
as the present, would inevitably belong to 
the Philistines. The people who believe 
most that our greatness and welfare are 
proved by our being very rich, and who 
most give their lives and thoughts to be- 
coming rich, are just the very people whom 
we call Philistines. Culture says : "Consider 
these people, then, their way of life, their 
habits, their manners, the very tones of their 
voice ; look at them attentively ; observe the 
literature they read, the things which give 
them pleasure, the words which come forth 
out of their mouths, the thoughts which 
make the furniture of their minds; would 
any amount of wealth be worth having with 
the condition that one was to become just 
like these people by having if?" And thus 
culture begets a dissatisfaction which is of 
the highest possible value in. stemming the 
common tide of men's thoughts in a wealthy 
and industrial community, and which saves 
the future, as one may hope, from being 
vulgarized, even if it cannot save the pres- 
ent. 

Population, again, and bodily health and 
vigor, are things which are nowhere treated 
in such an unintelligent, misleading, exag- 
gerated way as in England. Both are really 
machinery ; yet how mai:iy people all around 
us do we see rest in them and fail to look 
beyond them! Why, one has heard people, 
fresh from reading certain articles of the 
Times on the Registrar-General's return's of 
marriages and births in this country, who 
would talk of our large English families 



in quite a solemn strain, as if they had 
something in itself beautiful, elevating, and 
meritorious in them; as if the British Phil- 
istine would have only to present himself 
before the Great Judge with his twelve 
children, in order to be received among the 
sheep as a matter of right ! 

But bodily health and vigor, it may be 
said, are not to be classed with wealth and 
population as mere machinery; they have a 
more real and essential value. True; but 
only as they are more intimately connected 
with a perfect spiritual condition than 
wealth or population are. The moment we 
disjoin them from the idea of a perfect 
spiritual condition, and pursue them, as we 
do pursue them, for their own sake and as 
ends in themselves, our worship of them 
becomes as mere worship of machinery, as 
our worship of wealth or population, and 
as unintelligent and vulgarizing a wor- 
ship as that is. Every one with anything 
like an adequate idea of human perfection 
has distinctly marked this subordination to 
higher and spiritual ends of the cultiva- 
tion of bodily vigor and activity. "Bodily 
exercise profiteth little; but godliness is 
profitable unto all things," says the author 
of the Epistle to Timothy. And the util- 
itarian Franklin says just as explicitly: — 
"Eat and drink such an exact quantity as 
suits the constitution of thy body, in ref- 
erence to the services of the mind." But 
the point of view of culture, keeping the 
mark of human perfection simply and 
broadly in view, and not assigning to this 
perfection, as religion or utilitarianism as- 
signs to it, a special and limited character, 
this point of view, I say, of culture is best 
given by these words of Epictetus : "It is a 
sign of acfiVLa" says he, — that is, of 
a nature not finely tempered, — "to give 
yourselves up to things which relate to the 
body; to make, for instance, a gTeat fuss 
about exercise, a great fuss about eating, 
a great fuss about di'inking, a great fuss 
about walking, a great fuss about riding. 
All these things ought to be done merely 
by the way: the formation of the spirit 
and character must be our real concern." 
This is admirable; and, indeed, the Greek 
word evc^vla, a finely tempered nature, gives 
exactly the notion of perfection as culture 
brings us to conceive it : a harmonious per- 
fection, a perfection in which the charac- 
ters of beauty and intelligence are both 
present, which unites "the two noblest of 



500 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



things," — as Swift, who of one of the two, 
at any rate, had himself all too little, most 
happily calls them in his Battle of the Books, 
— "the two noblest of things, sweetness and 
light." The ev4)vr)<i is the man who tends 
towards sweetness and light; the a4>v7]<i, on 
the other hand, is our Philistine. The im- 
mense s^Diritual significance of the Greeks 
is due to their having been insjDired with 
this central and happy idea of the essen- 
tial character of human perfection; and 
Mr. Bright's misconception of culture, as 
a smattering of Greek and Latin, comes it- 
self, after all, from this wonderful signifi- 
cance of the Greeks having affected the very 
machinery of our education, and is in itself 
a kind of homage to it. 

In thus making sweetness and light to be 
characters of perfection, culture is of like 
spirit with poetry, follows one law with 
poetry. Far more than on our freedom, our 
population, and our industrialism, many 
amongst us rely upon our religious organi- 
zations to save .us, I have called religion 
a yet more important manifestation of hu- 
man nature than poetry, because it has 
worked on a broader scale for perfection, 
and with greater masses of men. But the 
idea of beauty and of human nature perfect 
on all its sides, which is the dominant idea 
of poetry, is a true and invaluable idea, 
though it has not yet had the success that 
the idea of conquering the obvious faults 
of our animality, and of a human nature 
perfect on the moral side, — which is the 
dominant idea of religion, — has been enabled 
to have ; and it is destined, adding to itself 
the religious idea of a devout energy, to 
transform and govern the other. 

The best art and poetry of the Greeks, 
in which religion and poetry are one, in 
which the idea of beauty and of a human 
nature perfect on all sides adds to itself 
a religious and devout energy, and works 
in the strength of that, is on this account 
of such suri^assing interest and instructive- 
ness for us, though it was, — as, having re- 
gard to the human race in general, and, in- 
deed, haAdng regard to the Greeks them- 
selves, we must own, — a premature attempt, 
an attempt which for success needed the 
moral and religious fiber in humanity to be 
more braced and developed than it had yet 
been. But Greece did not err in having the 
idea of beauty, harmony, and complete 
human perfection, so present and para- 
mount. It is impossible to have this idea 



too present and paramount ; only, the moral 
fiber must be braced too. And we, because 
we have braced the moral fiber, are not on 
that account in the right way, if at the same 
time the idea of beauty, harmony, and com- 
plete human perfection, is wanting or mis- 
ai^prehended amongst us; and evidently it 
is wanting or misapprehended at present. 
And when we rely as we do on our religious 
organizations, which in themselves do not 
and cannot give us this idea, and think we 
have done enough if we make them spread 
and prevail, then, I say, we fall into our 
common fault of overvaluing machinery. 

Nothing is more common than for people 
to confound the inward peace and satisfac- 
tion which follows the subduing of the obvi- 
ous faults of our animality with what I 
may call absolute inward peace and satis- 
faction, — the peace and satisfaction which 
are reached as we draw near to complete 
spiritual perfection, and not merely to moral 
perfection, or rather to relative moral per- 
fection. No people in the world have done 
more and struggled more to attain this 
relative moral iDerfeetion than our English 
race has. For no people in the world has 
the command to resist the devil, to overcome 
the wicked one, in the nearest and most 
obvious sense of those words, had such a 
pressing force and reality. And we have 
had our reward, not only in the great 
worldly prosperity which our obedience to 
this command has brought us, but also far 
more, in great inward peace and satisfac- 
tion. But to me few things are more pa- 
thetic than to see people, on the strength of 
the inward peace and satisfaction which 
their rudimentary efforts towards perfection 
have brought them, emj^loy, concerning 
their incomplete perfection and the religious 
organizations within which they have found 
it, language which properly applies only 
to complete perfection, and is a far-off echo 
of the human soul's prophecy of it. Re- 
ligion itself, I need hardly say, sujDplies 
them in abundance with this grand language. 
And very freely do they use it; yet it is 
really the severest possible criticism of such 
an incomplete perfection as alone we have 
yet reached through oup religious organiza- 
tions. 

The impulse of the English race towards 
moral development and self-conquest has 
nowhere so powerfully manifested itself as 
in Puritanism. Nowhere has Puritanism 
found so adequate an expression as in the 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



501 



religious organization of the Independents. 
The modern Independents have a newspa- 
per, the Nonconformist, _ written with great 
sincerity and ability. The motto, the stand- 
ard, the profession of faith which this organ 
of theirs carries aloft, is: "The Dissidenee 
of Dissent and the Protestantism of the 
Protestant religion." There is sweetness and 
light, and an ideal of complete harmonious 
human perfection! One need not go to 
culture and poetry to find language to judge 
it. Religion, with its instinct for perfec- 
tion, suj^plies language to judge it, lan- 
guage, too, which is in our mouths every 
day. "Finally, be of one mind, united in 
feeling," says St. Peter. There is an ideal 
which judges the Puritan ideal: "The Dis- 
sidenee of Dissent and the Protestantism 
of the Protestant religion !" And religious 
organizations like this are what people be- 
lieve in, rest in, would give their li\:es for! 
Such, I say, is the wonderful virtue of even 
the beginnings of joerfection, of having 
conquered even the ]Dlain faults of our ani- 
mality, that the religious organization which 
has helped us to do it can seem to us some- 
thing precious, salutary, and to be propa- 
gated, even when it wears such a brand of 
imperfection on its forehead as this. And 
men have got such a habit of giving to the 
language of religion a special application, 
of making it a mere jargon, that for the 
condemnation which religion itself passes 
on the shortcomings of their religious or- 
ganizations they have no ear ; they are sure 
to cheat themselves and to explain this con- 
demnation away. They can only be reached 
by the criticism which culture, like poetry, 
speaking a language not to be sophisticated, 
and resolutely testing these organizations by 
the ideal of a human perfection complete 
on all sides, applies to them. 

But men of culture and poetry, it will 
be said, are again and again failing, and fail- 
ing conspicuously, in the necessary first stage 
to a harmonious perfection, in the subduing 
of the great obvious faults of our animality, 
which it is the glory of these religious or- 
ganizations to have helped us to subdue. 
Ti'ue, they do often so fail. They have often 
been without the virtues as well as the faults 
of the Puritan; it has been one of their 
dangers that they so felt the Puritan's faults 
that they too much neglected the practice 
of his virtues. I will not, however, excul- 
pate them at the Puritan's expense. They 
have often failed in morality, and morality 



is indispensable. And they have been pun- 
ished for their failure, as the Puritan has 
been rewarded for his performance. They 
have been punished wherein they erred; but 
their ideal of beauty, of sweetness and light, 
and a human nature comjjlete on all its 
sides, remains the true ideal of perfection 
still; just as the Puritan's ideal of perfec- 
tion remains narrow and inadequate, al- 
though for what he did well he has been 
richly rewarded. Notwithstanding the 
mighty results of the Pilgrim Fathers' voy- 
age, they and their standard of perfection 
are rightly judged when we figure to our- 
selves Shakespeare or Virgil, — souls in 
whom sweetness and light, and all that in 
human nature is most humane, were emi- 
nent, — accompanying them on their voyage, 
and think what intolerable company Shake- 
speare and Virgil would have found them ! 
In the same way let us judge the religious 
organizations which we see all around us. 
Do not let us deny the good and the happi- 
ness which they have accomplished; but do 
not let us fail to see clearly that their idea 
of hiTman i^erfection is narrow and inade- 
quate, and that the Dissidenee of Dissent 
and the Protestantism of the Pi-otestant re- 
ligion will never bring humanity to its true 
goal. As I said with regard to wealth : Let 
us look at the life of those who live in and 
for it, — so I say with regard to the religious 
organizations. Look at the life imaged in 
such a newspaper as the Nonconformist, — 
a life of jealousy of the Establishment, dis- 
putes, tea-meetings, openings of chapels, 
sermons; and then think of it as an ideal 
of a human life completing itself on all 
sides, and aspiring with all its organs after 
sweetness, light, and perfection! 

Another newsjDaper, representing, like the 
Nonconformist, one of the religious organi- 
zations of this country, was a short time 
ago giving an account of the crowd at Ep- 
som on the Derby day, and of all the vice 
and hideousness which was to be seen in 
that crowd; and then the writer turned 
suddenly round upon Professor Huxley, and 
asked him how he proposed to cure all this 
vice and hideousness without religion. I 
confess I felt disposed to ask the asker this 
question: and how do you propose to cure 
it with such a religion as yours? How is 
the ideal of a life so unlovely, so unattrac- 
tive, so incomplete, so narrow, so far re- 
moved from a true and satisfying ideal of 
human perfection, as is the life of your 



502 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



religious organization as you yourself re- 
flect it, to conquer and transform all this 
vice and hideousness ? Indeed, the strongest 
plea for the study of perfection as pursued 
by culture, the clearest proof of the actual 
inadequacy of the idea of perfection held 
by the religious organizations, — expressing, 
as I have said, the most widespread effort 
which the human race has yet made after 
perfection, — is to be found in the state of 
our life and society with these in posses- 
sion of it, and having been in possession 
of it I know not how many hundred years. 
We are all of us included in some religious 
organization or other; we all call ourselves, 
in the sublime and aspiring language of 
religion which I have before noticed, chil- 
dren of God. Children of God; — it is an 
immense pretension ! — and how are we to 
justify it 1 By the works which we do, and 
the words which we speak. And the work 
which we collective children of God do, our 
grand center of life, our city which we have 
builded for us to dwell in, is London ! Lon- 
don, with its unutterable external hideous- 
ness, and with its internal canker of puhlice 
egestas, privatim opulentia, — to use the 
words which Sallust puts into Cato's mouth 
about Rome, — unequalled in the world! 
The word, again, which we children of God 
speak, the voice which most hits our collec- 
tive thought, the newspaper with the largest 
circulation in England, nay, with the largest 
circulation in the whole world, is the Daily 
Telegraph! I say that when our religious 
organizations — which I admit to express the 
most considerable effort after perfection 
that our race has yet made — land us in no 
better result than this, it is high time to 
examine carefully their idea of perfection, 
to see whether it does not leave out of ac- 
count sides and forces of human nature 
which we might turn to great use ; whether 
it would not be more operative if it were 
more complete. And I say that the English 
reliance on our religious organizations and 
on their ideas of human perfection just as 
they stand, is like our reliance on freedom, 
on muscular Christianity, on population, on 
coal, on wealth, — mere belief in machinery, 
and unfruitful; and that it is wholesomely 
counteracted by culture, bent on seeing 
things as they are, and on drawing the hu- 
man race onwards to a more complete, a 
harmonious perfection. 

Culture, however, shows its single-minded 
love of perfection, its desire simply to make 



reason and the will of God prevail, its free- 
dom from fanaticism, by its attitude towards 
all this machinery, even while it insists that 
it is machinery. Fanatics, seeing the mis- 
chief men do themselves by their blind be- 
lief in some machinery or other, — whether it 
is wealth and industrialism, or whether it 
is the cultivation of bodily strength and ac- 
tivity, or whether it is a political organ- 
ization, — or whether it is a religious or- 
ganization, — oppose with might and main 
the tendency to this or that political and re- 
ligious organization, or to games and ath- 
letic exercises, or to wealth and industrial- 
ism, and try violently to stop it. But the 
flexibility which sweetness and light give, 
and which is one of the rewards of culture 
pursued in good faith, enables a man to see 
that a tendency may be necessary, and even, 
as a preparation for something in the fu- 
ture, salutary, and yet that the generations 
or individuals who obey this tendency are 
sacrificed to it, that they fall short of the 
hope of perfection by following it ; and that 
its mischiefs are to be criticized, lest it 
should take too firm a hold and last after 
it has served its purpose. 

Mr. Gladstone well pointed out, in a 
speech at Paris, — and others have pointed 
out the same thing, — how necessary is the 
present great movement towards wealth and 
industrialism, in order to lay broad founda- 
tions of material well-being for the so- 
ciety of the future. The worst of these 
justifications is, that they are generally ad- 
dressed to the very people engaged, body 
and soul, in the movement in question; at 
all events, that they are always seized with 
the greatest avidity by these people, and 
taken by them as quite justifying their life ; 
and that thus they tend to harden them in 
their sins. Now, culture admits the neces- 
sity of the movement towards fortune-mak- 
ing and exaggerated industrialism, readily 
allows that the future may derive benefit 
from it; but insists, at the same time, that 
the passing generations of industrialists, — 
forming, for the most part, the stout main 
body of Philistinism, — are sacrificed to it. 
In the same way, the result of all the games 
and sports which occupy the passing gen- 
eration of boys and young men may be the 
establishment of a better and sounder physi- 
cal type for the future to work with. Cul- 
ture does not set itself against the games 
and sports; it congratulates the future, and 
hopes it will make a good use of its im- 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



503 



proved physical basis ; but it points out that 
our passing generation of boys and young 
men is, meantime, sacrificed. Puritanism 
was perhaps necessary to develop the moral 
fiber of the English race, Nonconformity 
to break the yoke of ecclesiastical domina- 
tion over men's minds and to prepare the 
way for freedom of thought in the distant 
future; still, culture points out that the 
harmonious perfection of generations of 
Puritans and Nonconformists has been, 
in consequence, sacrificed. Freedom of 
speech may be necessary for the society 
of the future, but the young lions of the 
Daily Telegraph in the meanwhile are 
sacrificed. A voice for every man in his 
country's government may be necessary 
for the society of the future, but mean- 
while Mr. Beales and Mr. Bradlaugh are 
sacrificed. 

Oxford, the Oxford of the past, has many 
faults; and she has heavily paid for them 
in defeat, in isolation, in want of hold 
upon the modern world. Yet we in Oxford, 
brought up amidst the beauty and sweet- 
ness of that beautiful place, have not failed 
to seize one truth, — the truth that beauty 
and sweetness are essential characters of a 
complete human perfection. When I insist 
on this, I am all in the faith and tradition 
of Oxford. I say boldly that this our senti- 
ment for beauty and sweetness, our senti- 
ment against hideousness and rawness, has 
been at the bottom of our attachment to so 
many beaten causes, of our opposition to so 
many triumphant movements. And the sen- 
timent is true, and has never been wholly 
defeated, and has shown its power even in 
its defeat. We have not won our political 
battles, we have not carried our main points, 
we have not stopped our adversaries' ad- 
vance, we have not inarched victoriously 
with the modern world; but we have told 
silently upon the mind of the country, we 
have prepared currents of feeling which 
sap our adversaries' position when it seems 
gained, we have kept up our own com- 
munications with the future. Look at the 
course of the gi'eat movement which shook 
Oxford to its center some thirty years ago ! 
It was directed, as any one who reads Dr. 
Newman's Apology may see, against what 
in one word may be called "Liberalism." 
Liberalism prevailed; it was the appointed 
force to do the work of the hour; it was 
necessary, it was inevitable that it should 
prevail. The Oxford movement was broken. 



it failed; our wrecks are scattered on every 
shore : — 

Qu£e regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ? 

But what was it, this liberalism, as Dr. New- 
man saw it, and as it really broke the Ox- 
ford movement? It was the gTeat middle- 
class liberalism, which had for the cardinal 
points of its belief the Reform Bill of 1832, 
and local self-government, in politics; in 
the social sphere, free-trade, unrestricted 
competition, and the making of large in- 
dustrial fortunes; in the religious sphere, 
the Dissidenee of Dissent and the Prot- 
estantism of the Protestant religion. I do 
not say that other and more intelligent 
forces than this were not opposed to the 
Oxford movement: but this was the force 
which really beat it; this was the force 
which Dr. Newman felt himself fighting 
with ; this was the force which till only the 
other day seemed to be the paramount force 
in this country, and to be in possession 
of the future; this was the force whose 
achievements fill Mr. Lowe with such in- 
expressible admiration, and whose rule he 
was so horror-struck to see threatened. And 
where is this great force of Philistinism 
now"? It is thrust into the second rank, it 
is become a power of yesterday, it has lost 
the future. A new power has suddenly 
appeared, a power which it is impossible 
yet to judge fully, but which is certainly 
a wholly different force from middle-class 
liberalism; different in its cardinal points 
of belief, different in its tendencies in every 
sphere. It loves and admires neither the 
legislation of middle-class Parliaments, nor 
the local self-government of middle-class 
vestries, nor the unrestricted competition of 
middle-class industrialists, nor the dissidenee 
of middle class Dissent and the Protestantism 
of middle-class Protestant religion. I am 
not now praising this new force, or saying 
that its own ideals are better; all I say 
is, that they are wholly different. And 
who will estimate how much the currents 
of feeling created by Dr. Newman's move- 
ments, the keen desire for beauty and sweet- 
ness which it nourished, the deep aversion 
it manifested to the hardness and vulgarity 
of middle-class liberalism, the strong light 
it turned on the hideous and grotesque il- 
lusions of middle-class Protestantism, — who 
will estimate how much all these contributed 
to swell the tide of secret dissatisfaction 



504 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



which has mined the ground under self- 
confident liberalism of the last thirty years, 
and has prepared the way for its sudden 
collapse and suppression? It is in this 
manner that the sentiment of Oxford for 
beauty and sweetness conquers, and in this 
manner long may it continue to conquer ! 

In this manner it works to the same end 
as culture, and there is plenty of work for 
it yet to do. I have said that the new and 
more democratic force which is now su- 
perseding our old middle-class liberalism 
cannot yet be rightly judged. It has its 
main tendencies still to form. We hear 
promises of its giving us administrative 
reform, law reform, reform of education, 
and I know not what; but those promises 
come rather from its advocates, wishing to 
make a good plea for it and to justify it 
for superseding middle-class liberalism, than 
from clear tendencies which it has itself yet 
developed. But meanwhile it has plenty of 
well-intentioned friends against whom cul- 
ture may with advantage continue to up- 
hold steadily its ideal of human perfection ; 
that this is an inward spiritual activity, 
having for its characters increased sweetness, 
increased light, increased life, increased sym- 
pathy. Mr. Bright, who has a foot in both 
worlds, the world of middle-class liberalism 
and the world of democracy, but who brings 
most of his ideas from the world of middle- 
class liberalism in which he was bred, al- 
ways inclines to inculcate that faith in ma- 
chinery to which, as we have seen. English- 
men are so prone, and which has been the 
bane of middle-class liberalism. He com- 
plains with a sorrowful indignation of peo- 
ple who "appear to have no proper estimate 
of the value of the franchise" ; he leads his 
disciples to believe — what the Englishman 
is always too ready to believe — that the 
having a vote, like the having a large family, 
or a large business, or large muscles, has 
in itself some edifying and perfecting effect 
upon human nature. Or else he cries out 
to the democracy, — "the men," as he calls 
them, "upon whose shoulders the greatness 
of England rests," — he cries out to them : 
"See what you have done ! I look over this 
country and see the cities you have built, 
the railroads you have made, the manufac- 
tures you have produced, the cargoes which 
freight the ships of the greatest mercantile 
navy the world has ever seen ! I see that 
you have converted by your labors what was 
once a wilderness, these islands, into a 



fruitful garden; I know that you have 
created this wealth, and are a nation whose 
name is a word of power throughout all 
the world." Why, this is just the very . 
style of laudation with which Mr. Roebuck 
or Mr. Lowe debauches the minds of the 
middle classes, and makes such Philistines 
of them. It is the same fashion of teach- 
ing a man to value himself not on what 
he is, not on his progress in sweetness and 
light, but on the number of the railroads 
he has constructed, or the bigness of the 
tabernacle he has built. Only the middle 
classes are told they have done it all with 
their energy, self-reliance, and capital, and 
the democracy are told they have done it 
all with their hands and sinews. But teach- 
ing the democracy to put its trust in achieve- 
ments of this kind is merely training them 
to be Philistines to take the place of the 
Philistines whom they are superseding ; and 
they, too, like the middle class, will be en- 
couraged to sit down at the banquet of the 
future without having on a wedding gar- 
ment, and nothing excellent can then come 
from them. Those who know their besetting 
faults, those who have watched them and 
listened to them, or those who will read the 
instructive account recently given of them 
by one of themselves, the Journeyman En- 
gineer, will agree that the idea which culture 
sets before us of perfection, — an increased 
spiritual activity, having for its characters 
increased sweetness, increased light, in- 
creased life, increased sjnnpathy, — is an idea 
which the new democracy needs far more 
than the idea of the blessedness of the fran- 
chise, or the wonderfulness of its own in- 
dustrial performances. 

Other well-meaning friends of this new 
power are for leading it, not in the old 
ruts of middle-class Philistinism, but in 
ways which are naturally alluring to the 
feet of democracy, though in this country 
they are novel and untried ways. I may 
call them the ways of Jacobinism. Violent 
indignation with the past, abstract systems 
of renovation applied wholesale, a new 
doctrine drawn up in black and white for 
elaborating down to the very smallest de- 
tails a rational society for the future, — 
these are the ways of Jacobinism. Mr. 
Frederic Harrison and other disciples of 
Comte, — one of them, Mr. Congreve, is an 
old friend of mine, and I am glad to have 
an opportunity of publicly expressing my 
respect for his talents and character, — are 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



505 



among the friends of democracy who are for 
leading it in paths of this kind. Mr. Fred- 
eric Harrison is very hostile to culture, and 
from a natural enough motive; for culture 
is the eternal opponent of the two things 
which are the signal marks of Jacobinism, — 
its fierceness, and its addiction to an ab- 
stract system. Culture is always assigning 
to system-makers and systems a smaller 
share in the bent of human destiny than 
their friends like. A current in people's 
minds sets towards new ideas; people are 
dissatisfied with their old narrow stock of 
Philistine ideas, Anglo-Saxon ideas, or any 
other; and some man, some Bentham or 
Comte, who has the real merit of having 
early and strongly felt and helped the new 
current, but who brings plenty of narrow- 
ness and mistakes of his own into his feel- 
ing and help of it, is credited with being 
the author of the whole current, the fit per- 
son to be entrusted with its regulation and 
to guide the human race. 

The excellent German historian of the 
mythology of Rome, Preller, relating the 
introduction at Rome under the Tarquins 
of the worship of Apollo, the god of light, 
healing, and reconciliation, will have us ob- 
serve that it was not so much the Tarquins 
who brought to Rome the new worship of 
Apollo, as a current in the mind of the 
Roman people which set powerfully at that 
time towards a new worship of this kind, 
and away from the old run of Latin and 
Sabine religious ideas. In a similar way, 
culture directs our attention to the natural 
current there is in human affairs, and to 
its continual working, and will not let us 
rivet our faith upon any one man and his 
doings. It makes us see not only his good 
side, but also how much in him was of 
necessity limited and transient ; nay, it even 
feels a pleasure, a sense of an increased 
freedom and of an ampler future, in so 
doing. 

I remember, when I was under the influ- 
ence of a mind to which I feel the great- 
est obligations, the mind of a man who 
was the very incarnation of sanity and clear 
sense, a man the most considerable, it seems 
to me, whom America has yet produced, — 
Benjamin Franklin, — I remember the relief 
with which, after long feeling the sway of 
Franklin's imperturbable common-sense, I 
came upon a project of his for a new ver- 
sion of the Book of Job, to replace the old 
version, the style of which, says Franklin, 



has become obsolete, and thence less agree- 
able. "1 give," he continues, "a few verses, 
which may serve as a sample of the kind 
of version I would recommend." We all 
recollect the famous verse in our transla- 
tion : "Then Satan answered the Lord and 
said: 'Doth Job fear God for nought?'" 
Franklin makes this : "Does your Majesty 
imagine that Job's good conduct is the ef- 
fect of mere personal attachment and af- 
fection?" I well remember how, when first 
I read that, I drew a deep breath of re- 
lief and said to myself : "After all, there is a 
stretch of humanity beyond Franklin's vic- 
torious good sense !" So, after hearing 
Bentham cried loudly up as the renovator of 
modern society, and Bentham's mind and 
ideas proposed as the rulers of our future, 
I open the Deontology. There I read: 
"While Xenophon was writing his history 
and Euclid teaching geometry, Socrates and 
Plato were talking nonsense under pretense 
of talking wisdom and morality. This 
morality of theirs consisted in words; this 
wisdom of theirs was the denial of matters 
known to every man's experience." From 
the moment of reading that, I am delivered 
from the bondage of Bentham ! the fanati- 
cism of his adherents can touch me no 
longer. I feel the inadequacy of his mind 
and ideas for supplying the rule of human 
society, for perfection. 

Culture tends always thus to deal with the 
men of a system, of disciples, of a school; 
with men like Comte, or the late Mr. Buckle, 
or Mr. Mill. However much it may find 
to admire in these personages, or in some 
of them, it nevertheless remembers the text : 
"Be not ye called Rabbi !" and it soon passes 
on from any Rabbi. But Jacobinism loves 
a Rabbi; it does not want to pass on from 
its Rabbi in pursuit of a future and still 
unreached perfection ; it wants its Rabbi and 
his ideas to stand for perfection, that they 
may with the more authority recast the 
world; and for Jacobinism, therefore, cul- 
ture, — eternally passing onwards and seek- 
ing, — is an impertinence and an offence. But 
culture, just because it resists this tendency 
of Jacobinism to impose on us a man with 
limitations and errors "of his own along with 
the true ideas of which he is the organ, 
really does the world and Jacobinism itself 
a service. 

So, too. Jacobinism, in its fierce hatred 
of the past and of those whom it makes 
liable for the sins of the past, cannot away 



506 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



with the inexhaustible indulgence proper 
to culture, the consideration of circum- 
stances, the severe judgment of actions 
joined to the merciful judgment of persons. 
"The man of culture is in politics," cries 
Mr. Frederic Harrison, "one of the poorest 
mortals alive!" Mr. Frederic Harrison 
wants to be doing business, and he com- 
plains that the man of culture stops him 
with a "turn for small fault-finding, love 
of selfish ease, and indecision in action." 
Of what use is culture, he asks, except for 
"a critic of new books or a professor of 
belles-lettres?" Why, it is of use because, 
in presence of the fierce exasperation which 
breathes, or rather, I may say, hisses 
through the whole production in which Mr. 
Frederic Harrison asks that question, it re- 
minds us that the perfection of human 
nature is sweetness and light. It is of use, 
because, like religion, — that other effort 
after perfection, — it testifies that, where bit- 
ter envying and strife are, there is confusion 
and every evil work. 

The pursuit of perfection, then, is the 
pursuit of sweetness and light. He who 
works for sweetness and light, works to 
make reason and the will of God prevail. 
He who works for machinery, he who works 
for hatred, works only for confusion. Cul- 
ture looks beyond machinery, culture hates 
hatred; culture has one gTeat passion, the 
passion for sweetness and light. It has one 
even yet greater ! — the passion for making 
them prevail. It is not satisfied till we all 
come to a perfect man; it knows that the 
sweetness and light of the few must be im- 
perfect until the raw and unkindled masses 
of humanity are touched with sweetness and 
light. If I have not shrunk from saying 
that we must work for sweetness and light, 
so neither have I shrunk from saying that 
we must have a broad basis, must have 
sweetness and light for as many as possible. 
Again and again I have insisted how those 
are the happy moments of humanity, how 
those are the marking epochs of a people's 
life, how those are the flowering times for 
literature and art and all the creative power 
of genius, when there is a national glow of 
life and thought, when the whole of society 
is in the fullest measure permeated by 
thought, sensible to beauty, intelligent and 
alive. Only it must be real thought and 
real beauty; real sweetness and real light. 
Plenty of people will try to give the masses, 
as they call them, an intellectual food pre- 



pared and adapted in the way they think 
proper for the actual condition of the 
masses. The ordinary popular literature is 
an example of this way of working on the 
masses. Plenty of people will try to in- 
doctrinate the masses with the set of ideas 
and judgments constituting the creed of 
their own profession or party. Our re- 
ligious and political organizations give an 
example of this way of working on the 
masses. I condemn neither way; but cul- 
ture works differently. It does not try to 
teach down to the level of inferior classes; 
it does not try to win them for this or that 
sect of its own, with ready-made judgments 
and watchwords. It seeks to do away with 
classes; to make the best that has been 
thought and known in the world current 
everywhere; to make all men live in an 
atmosphere of sweetness and light, where 
they may use ideas, as it uses them itself, 
freely, — nourished, and not bound by them. 
This is the social idea; and the men of 
culture are the true apostles of equality. 
The great men of culture are those who have 
had a passion for diffusing, for making pre- 
vail, for carrying from one end of society 
to the other, the best knowledge, the best 
ideas of their time; who have labored to 
divest knowledge of all that was harsh, un- 
couth, difficult, abstract, professional, ex- 
clusive; to humanize it, to make it efficient 
outside the clique of the cultivated and 
learned, yet still remaining the best knowl- 
edge and thought of the time, and a true 
source, therefore, of sweetness and light. 
Such a man was Abelard in the Middle 
Ages, in spite of all his imperfections; and 
thence the boundless emotion and enthusiasm 
which Abelard excited. Such were Lessing 
and Herder in Germany, at the end of the 
last century; and their services to Germany 
were in this way inestimably precious. Gen- 
erations will pass, and literary monuments 
will accumulate, and works far more perfect 
than the works of Lessing and Herder will 
be produced in Germany ; and yet the names 
of these two men will fill a German with a 
reverence and enthusiasm such as the names 
of the most gifted masters will hardly 
awaken. And why? Because they human- 
ized knowledge ; because they broadened the 
basis of life and intelligence; because they 
worked powerfully to diffuse sweetness and 
light, to make reason and the will of God 
prevail.- With Saint Augustine they said: 
"Let us not leave thee alone to make in the 



NINETEENTH CENTURY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



507 



secret of thy knowledge, as thou didst be- 
fore the creation of the firmament, the di- 
vision of light from darkness; let the chil- 
dren of thy spirit, placed in their firmament, 
make their light shine upon the earth, mark 
the division of night and day, and announce 
the revolution of the times ; for the old order 



is passed, and the new arises; the night is 
spent, the day is come forth ; and thou shalt 
crown the year with thy blessing, when thou 
shalt send forth laborers into thy harvest 
sown by other hands than theirs ; when thou 
shalt send forth new laborers to new seed- 
times, whereof the harvest shall be not yet." 



III. SCIENCE AND FAITH 



1. THE PROBLEM STATED 



The Physical Basis of Life 

thomas henry huxley 

[From an address delivered in Edinburgh 
in 1868; and published in "Lay Sermons," 
1870.] 

In order to make the title of this dis- 
course generally intelligible, I have trans- 
lated the term ''Protoplasm," which is the 
scientific name of the substance of which I 
am about to speak, by the words "the physi- 
cal basis of life." I suppose that, to many, 
the idea that there is such a thing as a physi- 
cal basis, or matter, of life may be novel — 
so widely spread is the conception of life 
as a something which works through matter, 
but is independent of it ; and even those who 
are aware that matter and life are insepara- 
bly connected, may not be prepared for the 
conclusion plainly suggested by the phrase, 
"the physical basis or matter of life," that 
there is some one kind of matter which is 
common to all living beings, and that their 
endless diversities are bound together by a 
physical, as well as an ideal, unity. In fact, 
when first apprehended, such a doctrine as 
this appears almost shocking to common 
sense. 

What, truly, can seem to be more obvious- 
ly different from one another, in faculty, in 
form, and in substance, than the various 
kinds of living beings? What community 
of faculty can there be between the brightly- 
colored lichen, which so nearly resembles a 
mere mineral incrustation of the bare rock 
on which it grows, and the painter, to whom 
it is instinct with beauty, or the botanist, 
whom it feeds with knowledge? 

Again, think of the microscopic fungus — 
a mere infinitesimal ovoid particle, which 
finds space and duration enough to multiply 
into countless millions in the body of a liv- 



ing fly; and then of the wealth of foliage, 
the luxuriance of flower and fruit, which lies 
between this bald sketch of a plant and the 
giant pine of California, towering to the 
dimensions of a cathedral spire, or the 
Indian fig, which covers acres with its pro- 
found shadow, and endures while nations 
and empires come and go around its vast cir- 
cumference. Or, turning to the other half 
of the world of life, picture to yourselves 
the great Pinner whale, hugest of beasts that 
live, or have lived, disporting his eighty or 
ninety feet of bone, muscle, and blubber, 
with easy roll, among waves in which the 
stoutest ship that ever left dockyard would 
flounder hopelessly; and contrast him with 
the invisible animalcules — mere gelatinous 
specks, multitudes of which could, in fact, 
dance upon the point of a needle with the 
same ease as the angels of the Schoolmen 
could, in imagination. With these images 
before your minds, you may well ask, what 
community of form, or structure, is there 
between the animalcule and the whale; or 
between the fungus and the fig-tree? And, 
a fortiori, between all four? 

Finally, if we regard substance, or ma- 
terial composition, what hidden bond can 
connect the flower which a girl wears in her 
hair and the blood which courses through her 
youthful veins ; or, what is there in common 
laetween the dense and resisting mass of the 
oak, or the strong fabric of the tortoise, and 
those broad disks of glassy jelly which may 
be seen pulsating through the waters of a 
calm sea, but which drain away to mere 
films in the hand which raises them out of 
their element? 

Such objections as these must, I think, 
arise in the mind of every one who ponders, 
for the first time, upon the conception of a 
single physical basis of life underlying all 
the diversities of vital existence ^ but I pro- 



508 



THE GKEAT TRADITION 



pose to demonstrate to you that, notwith- 
standing these apparent difficulties, a three- 
fold unity — namely, a unity of power or fac- 
ulty, a unity of form, and a unity of sub- 
stantial composition — does pervade the 
whole living world. 

No very abstruse argumentation is needed^ 
in the first place, to prove that the powers, 
or faculties, of all kinds of living matter, 
diverse as they may be in degree, are sub- 
stantially similar in kind. 

Goethe has condensed a survey of all pow- 
ers of mankind into the well-known epi- 
gram : — 

"Warum treibt sich das Volk so und schreit ? 
Es will sich ernahren, Kinder zeugen, 
und die nahren so gut es vermag. 

* * * * * 1^ 

Weiter bringt es kein Mensch, stell' er sich 
wie er auch will." ^ 

In physiological language this means, that 
all the multifarious and complicated activi- 
ties of man are comprehensible under three 
categories. Either they are immediately di- 
rected towards the maintenance and develop- 
ment of the body, or they effect transitory 
changes in the relative positions of parts of 
the body, or they tend towards the contin- 
uance of the species. Even those manifesta- 
tions of intellect, of feeling, and of will, 
which we rightly name the higher faculties, 
are not excluded from this classification, in- 
asmuch as to every one but the subject of 
them, they are known only as transitory 
changes in the relative positions of parts of 
the body. Speech, gesture, and every other 
form of human action are, in the long run, 
resolvable into muscular contraction, and 
muscular contraction is but a transitory 
change in the relative positions of the parts 
of a muscle. But the scheme which is large 
enough to embrace the activities of the high- 
est form of life, covers all those of the lower 
creafeares. The lowest plant, or animalcule, 
feeds, grows, and reproduces its kind. In 
addition, all animals manifest those tran- 
sitory changes of form which we class under 
irritability and contractility ; and it is more 
than probable that when the vegetable world 
is thoroughly explored, we shall find all 
plants in possession of the same powers, at 

^ Why does the populace rush so and make 
clamor? It wishes to eat, bring forth children, 
and feed these as well as it may. . . . No 
man can do better, strive how he will. 



one time or other of their existence. I am 
not now alluding to such phenomena, at 
once rare and conspicuous, as those ex- 
hibited by the leaflets of the sensitive plants, 
or the stamens of the barberry, but to much 
more widely spread, and at the same time, 
more subtle and hidden, manifestations of 
vegetable contractility. You are doubtless 
aware that the common nettle owes its sting- 
ing property to the innumerable stiff and 
needle-like, though exquisitely delicate, hairs 
which cover its surface. Each stinging- 
needle tapers from a broad base to a slender 
summit, which, though rounded at the end, 
is of such microscopic fineness that it read- 
ily penetrates, and breaks off in, the skin. 
The whole hair consists of a very delicate 
outer case of wood, closely applied to the 
inner surface of which is a layer of semi- 
fluid matter, full of innumerable granules 
of extreme minuteness. This semi-fluid lin- 
ing is protoplasm, which thus constitutes a 
kind of bag, full of a limpid liquid, and 
roughly corresponding in form with the in- 
terior of the hair which it fills. When 
viewed with a sufficiently high magnifying 
power, the protoplasmic layer of the nettle 
hair is seen to be in a condition of unceas- 
ing activity. Local contractions of the whole 
thickness of its substance pass slowly and 
gradually from point to point, and give rise 
to the appearance of progressive waves, just 
as the bending of successive stalks of corn 
by a breeze produces the apparent billows 
of a corn-field. 

But, in addition to these movements, and 
independently of them, the granules are 
driven, in relatively rapid streams, through 
channels in the protoplasm which seem to 
have a considerable amount of persistence. 
Most commonly, the currents in adjacent 
parts of the protoplasm take similar direc- 
tions; and, thus, there is a general stream 
up one side of the hair and down the other. 
But this does not prevent the existence of 
partial currents which take different routes ; 
and sometimes trains of granules may be 
seen coursing swiftly in opposite directions 
within a twenty-thousandth of an inch of 
one another; while, occasionally, opposite 
streams come into direct collision, and, after 
a longer or shorter struggle, one pre- 
dominates. The cause of these currents 
seems to lie in contractions of the protoplasm 
which bounds the channels in which they 
flow, but which are so minute that the best 
microscopes show only their effects, and not 
themselves. 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



509 



The spectacle afforded by the wonderful 
energies prisoned within the compass of the 
microscopic hair of a plant, which we com- 
monly regard as a merely passive organism, 
is not easily forgotten by one who has 
watched its display, continued hour after 
hour, without pause or sign of weakening. 
The possible complexity of many other or- 
ganic forms, seemingly as simple as the 
protoplasm of the nettle, daAvns upon one; 
and the comparison of such a protoplasm 
to a body with an internal circulation, which 
has been put forward by an eminent physi- 
ologist, loses much of its startling character. 
Currents similar to those of the hairs of 
the nettle have been observed in a great 
multitude of very different plants, and 
weighty authorities have suggested that they 
probably occur, in more or less perfection, 
in all young vegetable cells. If such be the 
ease, the wonderful noonday silence of a 
tropical forest is, after all, due only to the 
dullness of our hearing; and could our ears 
catch the murmur of these tiny Maelstroms, 
as they whirl in the innumerable myriads of 
living cells which constitute each tree, we 
should be stunned, as with the roar of a 
great city. 

Among the lower plants, it is the rule 
rather than the exception, that contractility 
should be still more openly manifested at 
some periods of their existence. The pro- 
toplasm of AlgcB and Fungi becomes, under 
many circumstances, partially, or complete- 
ly, freed from its woody case, and exhibits 
movements of its whole mass, or is pro- 
pelled by the contractility of one, or more, 
hair-like prolongations of its body, which 
are called vibratile cilia. And, so far as 
the conditions of the manifestation of the 
phenomena of contractility have yet been 
studied, they are the same for the plant 
as for the animal. Heat and electric shocks 
influence both, and in the same way, though 
it may be in different degrees. It is by no 
means my intention to suggest that there 
is no difference in faculty between the 
lowest plant and the highest, or between 
plants and animals. But the difference be- 
tween the powers of the lowest plant, or 
animal, and those of the highest, is one of 
degree, not of kind, and depends, as Milne- 
Edwards long ago so well pointed out, upon 
the extent to which the principle of the 
division of labor is carried out in the living 
economy. In the lowest organism all parts 
are competent to perform all functions, and 
one and the same portion of protoplasm 



may successfully take on the function of 
feeding, moving, or reproducing apparatus. 
In the highest, on the contrary, a great 
number of parts combine to perfoi-m each 
function, each part doing its allotted share 
of the work with great accuracy and effi- 
ciency, but being useless for any other pur- 
pose. 

On the other hand, notwithstanding all 
the fundamental resemblances which exist 
between the powers of the protoplasm in 
plants and in animals, they present a strik- 
ing difference (to which I shall advert more 
at length presently), in the fact that plants 
can manufacture fresh protoplasm out of 
mineral compounds, whereas animals are 
obliged to procure it ready made, and hence, 
in the long run, depend upon plants. Upon 
what condition this difference in the pow- 
ers of the two gTeat divisions of the world 
of life depends, nothing is at present 
known. 

With such qualifieations as arise out of the 
last-meutioned fact, it may be truly said that 
the acts of .all living things are fundamen- 
tally one. Is any such unity predicable of 
their forms? Let us seek in easily verified 
facts for a reply to this question. If a 
drop of blood be drawn by pricking one's 
finger, and viewed with proper precautions, 
and under a sufficiently high microscopic 
power, there will be seen, among the in- 
numerable multitude of little, circular, dis- 
coidal bodies, or corpuscles, which float in 
it and give it its color, a comparatively 
small number of colorless corpuscles, of 
somewhat larger size and very irregular 
shape. If the drop of blood be kept at the 
temperature of the body, these colorless cor- 
puscles will be seen to exhibit a marvellous 
activity, changing their forms with great 
rapidity, drawing in and thrusting out pro- 
longations of their substance, and creeping 
about as if they were independent organ- 
isms. 

The substance which is thus active is a 
mass of protoplasm, and its activity dif- 
fers in detail, rather than in principle, 
from that of the protoplasm of the nettle. 
Under sundry circumstances the corpuscle 
dies and becomes distended into a round 
mass, in the midst of which is seen a smaller 
spherical body, which existed, but was more 
or less hidden, in the living corpuscle, and 
is called its nucleus. Corpuscles of essen- 
tially similar structure are to be found in 
the skin, in the lining of the mouth, and 
scattered through the whole framework of 



510 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



the body. Nay, more : in the earliest condi- 
tion of the human organism, in that state 
in which it has but just become distinguish- 
able from the egg in which it arises, it is 
nothing but an aggregation of such cor- 
puscles, and every organ of the body was, 
once, no more than such an aggregation. 

Thus a nucleated mass of protoplasm 
turns out to be what may be termed the 
structural unit of the human body. As a 
matter of fact, the body, in its earliest state, 
is a mere multiple of such units ; and in its 
perfect condition, it is a multiple of such 
units, variously modified. 

But does the formula which expresses the 
essential structural character of the high- 
est animal cover all the rest, as the state- 
ment of its powers and faculties covered 
that of all others ? Very nearly. Beast and 
fowl, reptile and fish, moUusk, worm, and 
polyp, are all composed of structural units 
of the same character, namely, masses of 
protoplasm with a nucleus. There are 
sundry very low animals, each of which, 
structurally, is a mere colorless blood-cor- 
puscle, leading an independent life. But, 
at the very bottom of the animal scale, even 
this simplicity becomes simplified, and all 
the phenomena of life are manifested by a 
particle of protoplasm without a nucleus. 
Nor are such organisms insignificant by 
reason of their want of complexity. It 
is a fair question whether the protoplasm 
of those simplest forms of life, which peo- 
ple an immense extent of the bottom of the 
sea, would not outweigh that of all the 
higher living beings which inhabit the land 
put togethei\ And in ancient times, no less 
than at the present day, such living beings 
as these have been the greatest of rock 
builders. 

What has been said of the animal world 
is no less true of plants. Imbedded in the 
protoplasm at the broad, or attached, end 
of the nettle hair, there lies a spheroidal 
nucleus. Careful examination further proves 
that the whole substance of the nettle is 
made up of a repetition of such masses of 
nucleated protoplasm, each contained in a 
wooden case, which is modified in form, 
sometimes into a woody fiber, sometimes 
into a duct or spiral vessel, sometimes into 
a pollen grain, or an ovule. Traced back 
to its earliest state, the nettle arises as the 
man does, in a particle of nucleated proto- 
plasm. And in the lowest plants, as in 
the lowest animals, a single mass of such 
protoplasm may constitute the whole plant, 



or the protoplasm may exist without a nu- 
cleus. 

Under these circumstances it may well be 
asked, how is one mass of non-nucleated 
protoplasm to be distinguished from an- 
other? why call one "plant" and the other 
"animal" ? 

_ The only reply is that, so far as form is 
concerned, plants and animals are not sep- 
arable, and that, in many cases, it is a 
mere matter of convention whether we call 
a given organism an animal or a plant. 
There is a living body called jEthalium sep- 
ticum, which appears upon decaying vege- 
table substances, and, in one of its forms, 
is common upon the surfaces of tan-pits. 
In this condition it is, to all intents and 
purposes, a fungus, and formerly was al- 
ways regarded as such; but the remarkable 
investigations of De Bary have shown that, 
in another condition, the JEthalium is an 
actively locomotive creature, and takes in 
solid matters, upon which, apparently, it 
feeds, thus exhibiting the most characteris- 
tic feature of animality. Is this a jDlant; 
or is it an animal? Is it both; or is it 
neither? Some decide in favor of the last 
supposition, and establish an intermediate 
kingdom, a sort of biological No Man's 
Land for all these questionable forms. But, 
as it is admittedly impossible to draw any 
distinct boundary line between this no man's 
land and the vegetable world on the one 
hand, or the animal on the other, it appears 
to me that this proceeding merely doubles 
the difficulty which, before, was single. 

ProtoiDlasm, simple or nucleated, is the 
formal basis of all life. It is the clay of 
the potter : which, bake it and paint it as he 
will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and 
not by nature, from the commonest brick or 
sun-dried clod. 

Thus it becomes clear that all living pow- 
ers are cognate, and that all living forms 
are fundamentally of one character. The 
researches of the chemist have revealed a 
no less striking uniformity of material com- 
position in living matter. 

In perfect strictness, it is true that chemi- 
cal investigation can tell us little or noth- 
ing, directly, of the composition of living 
matter, inasmuch as such matter must needs 
die in the act of analysis, — and upon this 
very obvious gTound, objections, which I 
confess seem to me to be somewhat frivo- 
lous, have been raised to the drawing of any 
conclusions whatever respecting the compo- 
sition of actually living matter, from that of 



NINETEENTH CENTURY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



511 



the dead matter of life, which alone is ac- 
cessible to us. But objectors of this class 
do not seem to reflect that it is also, in 
strictness, true that we know nothing about 
the composition of any body whatever, as 
it is. The statement that a crystal of calc- 
spar consists of carbonate of lime, is quite 
true, if we only mean that, by appropriate 
processes, it may be resolved into carbonic 
acid and quicklime. If you pass the same 
carbonic acid over the very quicklime thus 
obtained, you will obtain carbonate of lime 
again; but it will not be eale-spar, nor 
anything like it. Can it, therefore, be said 
that chemical analysis teaches nothing about 
the chemical composition of calc-spar? 
Such a statement would be absurd ; but it is 
hardly more so than the talk one occasion- 
ally hears about the uselessness of apply- 
ing the results of chemical analysis to the 
living bodies which have yielded them. 

One fact, at any rate, is out of reach 
of such refinements, and this is, that all 
tte forms of protoplasm which have yet 
bTOn examined contain the four elements, 
carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, in 
very complex union, and that they behave 
similarly towards several reagents. To this 
complex combination, the nature of which 
has never been determined with exactness, 
the name of Protein has been applied. And 
if we use this term with such caution as 
may properly arise out of our comparative 
ignorance of the things for which it stands, 
it may be truly said that all protoi3lasm is 
proteinaceous, or, as the white, or albumen, 
of an egg is one of the commonest examples 
of a nearly pure protein matter, we may 
say that all living matter is more or less 
albuminoid. 

Perhaps it would not yet be safe to say 
that all forms of protoplasm are affected 
by the direct action of electric shocks; and 
yet the number of eases in which the con- 
traction of protoplasm is shown to be af- 
fected by this agency increases every day. 

Nor can it be affirmed with perfect con- 
fidence, that all forms of protoplasm are 
liable to undergo that peculiar coagulation 
at a temperature of 40°— 50° Centigrade, 
which has been called "heat-stiffening," 
though Kiihne's beautiful researches have 
proved this occurrence to take place in so 
many and such diverse living beings, that 
it is hardly rash to expect that the law holds 
good for all. 

Enough has, perhaps, been said, to prove 
the existence of a general uniformity in the 



character of the protoplasm, or physical 
basis, of life, in whatever group of living 
beings it may be studied. But it will be 
understood that this general uniformity by 
no means excludes any amount of special 
modifications of the fundamental substance. 
The mineral, carbonate of lime, assumes an 
immense diversity of characters, though no 
one doubts that, under all these Protean 
changes, is one and the same thing. 

And now, what is the ultimate fate, and 
what the origin, of the matter of life? 

Is it, as some of the older naturalists 
supposed, diffused throughout the universe 
in molecules, which are indestructible and 
unchangeable in themselves; but, in endless 
transmigration, unite in innumerable per- 
mutations, into the diversified forms of life 
we know? Or, is the matter of life com- 
posed of ordinary matter, differing from it 
only in the manner in which its atoms are 
aggregated? Is it built up of ordinary 
matter, and again resolved into ordinary 
matter when its work is done? 

Modern science does not hesitate a mo- 
ment between these alternatives. Physiology 
writes over the portals of life — 

"Debemur morti nos nostraque,"^ 

with a profounder meaning than the Roman 
poet attached to the melancholy line. Un- 
der whatever disguise it takes refuge, 
whether fungus or oak, worm or man, the 
living protoplasm not only ultimately dies 
and is resolved into its mineral and lifeless 
constituents, but is always dying, and, 
strange as the paradox may sound, could 
not live unless it died. 

In the wonderful story of the Peau de 
Chagrin, the hero becomes possessed of a 
magical wild ass' skin, which yields him the 
means of gratifying all his wishes. But its 
surface represents the duration of the pro- 
prietor's life ; and for every satisfied desire 
the skin shrinks in proportion to the inten- 
sity of fruition, until at length life and the 
last handbreadth of the peau de chagrin, 
disappear with the gratification of a last 
wish. 

Balzac's studies had led him over a wide 
range of thought and si^eeulation, and his 
shadowing forth of physiological truth in 
this strange story may have been intentional. 
At any rate, the matter of life is a veritable 
peau de chagrin, and for every vital act 
it is somewhat the smaller. All work im- 

1 We and ours must die. 



512 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



plies waste, and the work of life results, 
directly or indirectly, in the waste of pro- 
toplasm. 

Every word uttered by a sjDeaker costs 
him some physical loss; and, in the strict- 
est sense, he burns that others may have 
light — so much eloquence, so much of his 
body resolved into carbonic acid, water, and 
urea. It is clear that this process of ex- 
penditure cannot go on forever. But, hap- 
pily, the jDrotoplasmic peau de chagrin dif- 
fers from Balzac's in its capacity of being 
repaired, and brought back to its full size, 
after every exertion. 

For example, this present lecture, what- 
ever its intellectual worth to you, has a cer- 
tain physical value to me, which is, con- 
ceivably, expressible by the number of 
grains of protoplasm and other bodily sub- 
stance wasted in maintaining my vital proc- 
esses during its delivery. My peau de 
chagrin will be distinctly smaller at the end 
of the discourse than it was at the begin- 
ning. By and by, I shall probably have re- 
course to the substance commonly called 
mutton, for the purpose of stretching it back 
to its original size. Now this mutton was 
once the living protoplasm, more or less 
modified, of another animal — a sheep. As 
I shall eat it, it is the same matter altered, 
not only by death, but by exposure to sun- 
dry artificial operations in the process of 
cooking. 

But these changes, whatever be their ex- 
tent, have not rendered it incompetent to 
resume its old functions as matter of life. 
A singular inward laboratory, which I pos- 
sess, will dissolve a certain portion of the 
modified protoplasm ; the solution so formed 
will i^ass into my veins; and the subtle in- 
fluences to which it will then be subjected 
will convert the dead protoplasm into living 
protoplasm, and transubstantiate sheep into 
man. 

Nor is this all. If digestion were a thing 
to be trifled with, I might sup upon lobster, 
and the matter of life of the crustacean 
would undergo the same wonderful meta- 
morphosis into humanity. And were I to 
return to my own place by sea, and un- 
dergo shipwreck, the crustacean might, and 
probably would return the compliment, and 
demonstrate our common nature by turning 
my protoplasm into living lobster. Or, if 
nothing better were to be had, I might sup- 
ply my wants with mere bread, and I should 
find the protoplasm of the wheat-plant to 
-be convertible into man with no more trou- 



ble that than of the sheep, and with far 
less, I fancy, than that of the lobster. 

Hence it appears to be a matter of no 
great moment what animal, or what plant, 
I lay under contribution for protoplasm, 
and the fact speaks volumes for the gen- 
eral identity of that substance in all living 
beings. I share this catholicity of assimila- 
tion with other animals, all of which, so 
far as we know, could thrive equally well 
on the protoplasm of any of their fellows, 
or of any plant; but here the assimilative 
powers of the animal world cease. A solu- 
tion of smelling-salts in water, with an in- 
finitesimal proportion of some other saline 
matters, contains all the elementary bodies 
which enter into the composition of proto- 
plasm; but, as I need hardly say, a hogs- 
head of that fluid would not keep a hungry 
man from starving, nor would it save any 
animal whatever from a like fate. An 
animal cannot make protoplasm, but must 
take it ready-made from some other ani- 
mal, or some plant — the animal's highest 
feat of constructive chemistry being to ccJli- 
vert dead protoplasm into that living mat- 
ter of life which is appropriate to itself. 

Therefore, in seeking for the origin of 
protoplasm, we must eventually turn to the 
vegetable world. A fluid containing car- 
bonic acid, Water, and nitrogenous salts, 
which oifers such a Barmecide feast to the 
animal, is a table richly spread to multitudes 
of plants; and, with a due supply of only 
such materials, many a plant will not only 
maintain itself in vigor, but grow and mul- 
tiply until it has increased a million-fold, 
or a million million-fold, the quantity of 
protoplasm which it orginally possessed; in 
this way building up the matter of life, to 
an indefinite extent, from the common mat- 
ter of the universe. 

Thus, the animal can only raise the com- 
plex substance of dead protoplasm to the 
higher power, as one may say, of living 
protoplasm; while the plant can raise the 
less complex substances — carbonic acid, 
water, and nitrogenous salts — to the same 
stage of living protojolasm, if not to the 
same level. But the plant also has its limi- 
tations. Some of the fungi, for example, 
appe^ar to need higher compounds to start 
with; and no known plant can live upon 
the uncompounded elements of protoplasm. 
A plant supplied with pure carbon, hy- 
drogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, phosphorus, 
sulphur, and the like, would as infallibly 
die as the animal in his bath of smelling- 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



513 



salts, though it would be surrounded by all 
the constituents of protoplasm. Nor, in- 
deed, need the process of simplification of 
vegetable food be carried so far as this, in 
order to arrive at the limit of the plant's 
thaumaturgy. Let water, carbonic acid, and 
all the other needful constituents be sup- 
plied except nitrogenous salts, and an or- 
dinary plant will still be unable to manu- 
facture proto2Dlasm. 

Thus the matter of life, so far as we know 
it (and we have no right to speculate on 
any other), breaks up, in consequence of 
that continual death which is the condition 
of its manifesting vitality, into carbonic 
afiid, water, and nitrogenous compounds, 
which certainly possess no properties but. 
those of ordinary matter. And out of these 
same forms of ordinary matter, and from 
none which are simpler, the vegetable world 
builds up all the protoplasm which keeps 
the animal world a-going. Plants are the 
accumulators of the power which animals 
distribute and dis^Derse. 

But it will be observed, that the existence 
of the matter of life depends on the pre- 
existence of certain compounds ; namely, 
carbonic acid, water, and certain nitrog- 
enous bodies. Withdraw any one of these 
three from the world, and all vital phenom- 
ena come to an end. They are as necessary 
to the protoplasm of the plant, as the proto- 
plasm of the plant is to that of the ani- 
mal. Carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitro- 
gen are all lifeless bodies. Of these, car- 
bon and oxygen unite in certain proportions 
and under certain conditions, to give rise 
to carbonic acid; hydrogen and oxygen pro- 
duce water; nitrogen and other elements 
give rise to nitrogenous salts. These new 
compounds, like the elementary bodies of 
which they are composed, are lifeless. But 
when they are brought together, under 
certain conditions, they give rise to the still 
more complex body, protoplasm, and this 
protoplasm exhibits the phenomena of life. 

I see no break in this series of steps in 
molecular complication, and I am unable to 
understand why the language which is ap- 
plicable to any one term of the series may 
not be used to any of the othei'S. We think 
fit to call different kinds of matter carbon, 
oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, and to 
speak of the various powers and activities 
of these substances as the properties of the 
matter of which they are composed. 

When hydrogen and oxygen are mixed in 
a certain proportion, and an electric spark 



is passed through them, they disappear, and 
a quantity of water, equal in weight to the 
sum of their weights, appears in their place. 
There is not the slightest parity between 
the passive and active jjowers of the water 
and those of the oxygen and hydrogen which 
have given rise to it. At 32° Fahrenheit, 
and far below that temperature, oxygen and 
hydrogen are elastic gaseous bodies, whose 
particles tend to rush away from one an- 
other with great force. Water, at the same 
temperature, is a strong though brittle 
solid, Avhose particles tend to cohere into 
definite geometrical shapes, and sometimes 
build up frosty imitations of the most com- 
plex forms of vegetable foliage. 

Nevertheless we call these, and many 
other strange phenomena; the properties of 
the water, and we do not hesitate to be- 
lieve that, in some way or another, they re- 
sult from the properties of the component 
elements of the water. We do not assume 
that a something called ''aquosity" entered 
into and took possession of the oxidated hy- 
drogen as soon as it was formed, and then 
gaiided the aqueous particles to their places 
in the facets of the crystal, or amongst the 
leaflets of the hoar-frost. On the contrary, 
we live in the hoi^e and in the faith that, 
by the advance of molecular physics, we 
shall by and by be able to see our way as 
clearly from the constituents of water to the 
properties of water, as we are now able to 
deduce the operations of a watch from the 
form of its parts and the manner in which 
they are put together. 

Is the case in any way changed when car- 
bonic acid, water, and nitrogenous salts 
disappear, and in their jDlace, under the in- 
fluence of pre-existing living protoplasm, 
an equivalent weight of the matter of life 
makes its appearance? 

It is true that there is no sort of parity 
between the projDerties of the components 
and the properties of the resultant, but 
neither was there in the case of the water. 
It is also true that what I have spoken of 
as the' influence of pre-existing living matter 
is something quite unintelligible; but does 
anybody quite comprehend the modus oper- 
andi of an electric spark, which traverses a 
mixture of oxygen and hydrogen? 

What justification is there, then, for the 
assumption of the existence in the living 
matter of a something which has no rep- 
resentative, or correlative, in the not-living 
matter which gave rise to it? What better 
philosophical status has "vitality" than 



514 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



"aquosity"? And why should "vitality" 
hope for a better fate than the other "itys" 
which have disappeared since Martinus 
Scriblerus accounted for the operation of 
the meat- jack by its inherent "meat-roast- 
ing quality," and scorned the "materialism" 
of those who explained the turning of the 
spit by a certain mechanism worked by the 
draught of the chimney? 

If scientific language is to possess a def- 
inite and constant signification whenever it 
is employed, it seems to me that we are 
logically bound to apply to the protoplasm, 
or physical basis of life, the same concep- 
tions as those which are held to be legitimate 
elsewhere. If the phenomena exhibited by 
water are its properties, so are those pre- 
sented by protoplasm, living or dead, its 
properties. 

If the properties of water may be prop- 
erly said to result from the nature and 
disposition of its component molecules, I 
can find no intelligible ground for refusing 
to say that the properties of protoplasm re- 
sult from the nature and disposition of its 
molecules. 

But I bid you beware that, in accepting 
these conclusions, you are placing your feet 
on the first rung of a ladder which, in most 
people's estimation, is the reverse of Jacob's 
and leads to the antipodes of heaven. It 
may seem a small thing to admit that the 
dull vital actions of a fungus, or a for- 
aminifer, are the properties of their proto- 
plasm, and are the direct results of the 
nature of the matter of which they are com- 
posed. But if, as I have endeavored to 
prove to you, their protoplasm is essentially 
identical with, and most readily converted 
into, that of any animal, I can discover no 
logical halting-place between the admission 
that such is the case, and the further con- 
cession that all vital action may, with equal 
propriety, be said to be the result of the 
molecular forces of the protoplasm which 
displays it. And if so, it must be true, 
in the same sense and to the same extent, 
that the thoughts to which I am now giving 
utterance, and your thoughts regarding 
them, are the expression of molecular 
changes in that matter of life which is the 
source of our other vital phenomena. 

Past experience leads me to be tolerably 
certain that, when the propositions I have 
just placed' before you are accessible to pub- 
lic comment and criticism, they will be 
condemned by many zealous persons, and 
perhaps by some few of the wise and 



thoughtful. I should not wonder if "gross 
and brutal materialism" were the mildest 
phrase applied to them in certain quarters. 
And, most undoubtedly, the terms of the 
propositions are distinctly materialistic. 
Nevertheless two things are certain : the one, 
that I hold the statements to be substantially 
true; the other, that I, individually, am no 
materialist, but, on the contrary, believe 
materialism to involve grave philosophical 
error. 

This union of materialistic terminology 
with the repudiation of materialistic phil- 
osophy I share with some of the most 
thoughtful men with whom I am ac- 
quainted. And, when I first undertook 
to deliver the present discourse, it appeared 
to me to be a fitting opportunity to explain 
how such a union is not only consistent 
with, but necessitated by, sound logic. I 
purposed to lead you through the territory 
of vital phenomena to the materialistic 
slough in which you find yourselves now 
plunged, and then to point out to you the 
sole path by which, in my judgment, ex- 
trication is possible. 

Let us suppose that knowledge is abso- 
lute, and not relative, and therefore, that 
our conception of matter represents that 
which it really is. Let us suppose, further, 
that we do know more of cause and effect • 
than a certain definite order of succession 
^among facts, and that we have a knowledge 
of the necessity of that succession — and 
hence, of necessary laws — and I, for my 
part, do not see what escape there is from 
utter materialism and necessarianism. For 
it is obvious that our knowledge of what 
we call the material world is, to begin with, 
at least as certain and definite as that of the 
spiritual world, and that our acquaintance 
with law is of as old a date as our knowl- 
edge of spontaneity. Further, I take it to 
be demonstrable that it is utterly impossible 
to prove that anything whatever may not 
be the effect of a material and necessary 
cause, and the human logic is equally incom- 
petent to prove that any act is really spon- 
taneous. A really spontaneous act is one 
which, by the assumption, has no cause ; and 
the attempt to prove such a negative as this 
is, on the face of the matter, absurd. And 
while it is thus a philosophical impossibility 
to demonstrate that any given phenomenon 
is not the effect of a material cause, any 
one who is acquainted with the history 
of science will admit, that its progress has, 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



515 



in all ages, meant, and now, more than ever, 
means, the extension of the province of what 
we call matter and causation, and the con- 
comitant gradual banishment from all re- 
gions of human thought of what we call 
spirit and spontaneity. 

I have endeavored, in the first part of this 
discoixrse, to give you a conception of the 
direction towards which modern physiology 
is tending; and I ask you, what is the dif- 
ference between the conception of life as 
the product of a certain disiDosition of ma- 
terial molecules, and the old notion of an 
Archaeus governing and directing blind mat- 
ter within each living body, except this — 
that here, as elsewhere, matter and law have 
devoured spirit and spontaneity? And as 
surely as every future grows out of past 
and present, so will the physiology of the 
future gradually extend the realm of mat- 
ter and law until it is co-extensive Vith 
knowledge, with feeling, and with action. 

The consciousness of this great truth 
weighs like a nightmare, I believe, upon 
many of the best minds of these days. They 
watch what they conceive to be the progress 
of materialism, in such fear and powerless 
anger as a savage feels when, during an 
eclipse, the great shadow creeps over the 
face of the sun. The advancing tide of 
matter threatens to drown their souls; the 
tightening grasp of law impedes their free- 
dom; they are alarmed lest man's moral 
nature be debased by the increase of his 
wisdom. 

If the "New Philosophy" be worthy of the 
reprobation with which it is visited, I con- 
fess their fears seem to me to be well 
founded. While, on the contrary, could 
David Hume be consulted, I think he would 
smile at their perplexities, and chide them 
for doing even as the heathen, and falling 
down in terror before the hideous idols their 
own hands have raised. 

For, after all, what do we know of this 
terrible "matter," except as a name for the 
unknown and hypothetical cause of states 
of our own consciousness? And what do 
we know of that "spirit" over whose threat- 
ened extinction by matter a great lamen- 
tation is arising, like that which was heard 
at the death of Pan, except that it is also 
a name for an unknown and hypothetical 
cause, or condition, of states of conscious- 
ness? In other words, matter and spirit 
are but names for the imaginary substrata 
of groups of natural phenomena. 

And what is the dire necessity and "iron" 



law under which men groan? Truly, most 
gratuitously invented bugbears. I suppose 
if there be an "iron" law, it is that of 
gravitation; and if there be a physical ne- 
cessity, it is that a stone, unsupported, must 
fall to the ground. But what is all we 
really know, and can know, about the latter 
phenomenon? Simply, that, in all human 
experience, stones have fallen to the ground 
under these conditions ; that we have not 
the smallest reason for believing that any 
stone so circumstanced will not fall to the 
ground; and that we have, on the con- 
trary, every reason to believe that it will 
so fall. It is very convenient to indicate 
that all the conditions of belief have been 
fulfilled in this case, by calling the statement 
that unsupported stones will fall to the 
ground, "a law of Nature." But when, as 
commonly happens, we change will into 
must, we introduce an idea of necessity 
which most assuredly does not lie in the ob- 
served facts, and has no warranty that I 
can discover elsewhere. For my part, I 
utterly repudiate and anathematize the in- 
truder. Fact I know; and Law I know; 
but what is this Necessity save an empty 
shadow of my own mind's throwing? 

But, if it is certain that we can have 
no knowledge of the nature of either mat- 
ter or spirit, and that the notion of neces- 
sity is something illegitimately thrust into 
the perfectly legitimate conception of law, 
the materialistic position that there is noth- 
ing in the world but matter, force, and 
necessity, is as utterly devoid of justifica- 
tion as the most baseless of theological dog- 
mas. 

The fundamental doctrines of ma- 
terialism, like those of spiritualism, and 
most other "isms," lie outside "the limits of 
philosophical inquiry," and David Hume's 
gi'eat service to humanity is his irrefragable 
demonstration of what these limits are. 
Hume called himself a skeptic, and there- 
fore others cannot be blamed if they apply 
the same title to him; but that does not 
alter the fact that the name, with its existing 
implications, does him gi-oss injustice. 

If a man asks me what the politics of the 
inhabitants of the moon are, and I reply 
that I do not know ; that neither I, nor any 
one else, has any means of knowing; and 
that, under these circumstances, I decline to 
trouble myself about the subject at all; I 
do not think he has any right to call me a 
skeptic. On the contrary, in replying thus, 
I conceive that I am simply honest and 



516 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



truthful, and show a proper regard for the 
economy of time. So Hume's strong and 
subtle intellect takes up a great many prob- 
lems about which we are naturally curious, 
and shows us that they are essentially ques- 
tions of lunar politics, in their essence in- 
capable of being answered, and therefore 
not worth the attention of men who have 
work to do in the world. And he thus 
ends one of his essays : — 

"If we take in hand any volume of Di- 
vinity, or school metaphysics, for instance, 
let us ask. Does it contain any abstract 
reasoning concerning quantity or number f 
No. Does it contain any experimental rea- 
soning concerning matter of fact and ex- 
istence? No. Commit it then to the flames; 
for it can contain nothing but sophistry 
and illusion." 

Permit me to enforce this most wise ad- 
vice. Why trouble ourselves about mat- 
ters of which, however important they may 
be, we do know nothing, and can know 
nothing? We live in a world which is full 
of misery and ignorance, and the plain 
duty of each and all of us is to try to make 
the little corner he can influence somewhat 
less miserable and somewhat less ignorant 
than it was before he entered it. To do 
this etfectually it is necessary to be fully 
possessed of only two beliefs : the first, that 
the order of Nature is ascertainable by our 
faculties to an extent which is practically 
unlimited; the second, that our volition 
counts for something as a condition of the 
course of events. 

Each of these beliefs can be verified ex- 
perimentally, as often as we like to try. 
Each, therefore, stands upon the strongest 
foundation upon which any belief can rest, 
and forms one of our highest truths. If 
we find that the ascertainment of the order 
of nature is facilitated by using one termin- 
ology, or one set of symbols, rather than 



another, it is our clear duty to use the 
former; and no harm can accrue, so long 
as we bear in mind that we are dealing 
merely with terms and symbolb. 

In itself it is of little moment whether 
we express the phenomena of matter in 
terms of spirit, or the phenomena of spirit 
in terms of matter : matter may be regarded 
as a form of thought, thought may be re- 
garded as a property of matter — each state- 
ment has a certain relative truth. But with 
a view to the progress of science, the ma- 
terialistic terminology is in every way to 
be preferred. For it connects thought with 
the other phenomena of the universe, and 
suggests inquiry into the nature of those 
physical conditions, or concomitants of 
thought, which are more or less accessible 
to us, and a knowledge of which -may, in 
future, help us to exercise the same kind of 
control over the world of thought as we 
already possess in respect of the material 
world; whereas, the alternative, or spirit- 
ualistic, terminology is utterly barren, and 
leads to nothing but obscurity and con- 
fusion of ideas. 

Thus there can be little doubt, that the 
further science advances, the more exten- 
sively and consistently will all the phenom- 
ena, of Nature be represented by materialis- 
tic formulas and symbols. 

But the man of science, who, forgetting 
the limits of philosophical inquiry, slides 
from these formulaB and symbols into what 
is commonly understood by materialism, 
seems to me to place himself on a level with 
the mathematician who should mistake the 
x's and y's with which he works his prob- 
lems, for real entities— and with this fur- 
ther disadvantage, as compared with the 
mathematician, that the blunders of the 
latter are of no practical consequence, Avhile 
the errors of systematic materialism may 
paralyze the energies and destroy the beauty 
of a life. 



2. THE SUPERNATURAL IN LIFE 



Natural Supernaturalism 

thomas carltle 

[From Sartor Besartus, 1833-34] 

It is in his stupendous Section, headed 
Natural Supernaturalism , that the Professor 
first becomes a Seer; and, after long effort, 



such as we have witnessed, finally subdues 
under his feet this refractory Clothes- 
Philosophy, and takes victorious possession 
thereof. Phantasms enough he has had to 
struggle with; "Cloth-webs and Cob-webs," 
of Imperial Mantles, Superannuated Sjtb- 
bols, and what not : yet still did he cour- 
ageously pierce through. Nay, worst of all. 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



517 



two quite mysterious, world-embracing 
Phantasms, Time and Space, have ever hov- 
ered round him, perplexing and bewilder- 
ing: but with these also he now resolutely 
grapples, these also he victoriously rends 
asunder. In a word, he has looked fixedly 
on Existence, till, one after the other, its 
earthly hulls and garnitures have all melted 
'away; and now, to his rapt vision, the in- 
terior celestial Holy of Holies lies disclosed. 

Here, therefore, j)roj)erly it is that the 
Philosophy of Clothes attains to Transcen- 
dentalism ; this last leap, can we but clear it, 
takes us safe into the i3romised land, where 
Palingenesia, in all senses, may be considered 
as beginning. "Courage, then !" may our 
Diogenes exclaim, with better right than 
Diogenes the First once did. This stupendous 
Section we, after long, joainful meditation, 
have found not to be unintelligible ; but, on 
the contrary, to grow clear, nay radiant, and 
all-illuminating. Let the reader, turning on 
it what utmost force of speculative intellect 
is in him, do his jDart; as we, by judicious 
selection and adjustment, shall study to do 
ours : 

"Deep has been, and is, the significance of 
Miracles," thus quietly begins the Profes- 
sor ; "far deeper perhaps than we imagine. 
Meanwhile, the question of questions were : 
What specially is a Miraele'f To that Dutch 
King of Siam, an icicle had been a miracle ; 
whoso had carried with him an air-pump, 
and vial of vitriolic ether, might have 
worked a miracle. To my Horse, again, 
who unhappily is still more unscientific, do 
not I work a miracle, and magical 'Open 
sesame!' every time I please to pay two- 
pence, and open for him an impassable 
Sclilaghaum, or shut Turnpike? 

" 'But is not a real Miracle simply a vio- 
lation of the Laws of Nature?' ask several. 
Whom I answer by this new question : What 
are the Laws of Nature? To me perhaps 
the rising of one from the dead were no 
violation of these Laws, but a confirmation ; 
were some far deeper Law, now first pene- 
trated into, and by Spiritual Force, even as 
the rest have all been, brought to bear on 
us with its Material Force. 

"Here, too, may some inquire, not with- 
out astonishment: On what gTound shall 
one, that can make Iron swim, come and 
declare that therefore he can teach Re- 
ligion? To us, truly, of the Nineteenth 
Century, such declaration were inept 
enough; which nevertheless to our fathers. 



of the First Century, was full of meaning. 

" 'But is it not the deepest Law of Na- 
ture that she be constant?' cries an illumi- 
nated class: 'Is not the Machine" of the 
Universe fixed to move by unalterable 
rules?' Probable enough, good friends: 
nay, I, too, must believe that the God, whom 
ancient inspired men assert to be 'without 
variableness or shadow of turning,' does in- 
deed never change; that Nature, that the 
Universe, which no one whom it so pleases 
can be prevented from calling a Machine, 
does move by the most unalterable rules. And 
now of you, too," I make the old inquiry : 
What those same unalterable rules, forming 
the complete Statute-Book of Nature, may 
possibly be? 

"They stand written in our Works of 
Science, say you; in the accumulated rec- 
ords of Man's Experience ? — Was Man with 
his Experience present at the Creation, 
then, to see how it all went on? Have any 
deepest scientific individuals yet dived-down 
to the foundations of the Universe, and 
gauged everything there? Did the Maker 
take them into His counsel ; that they read 
His groundplan of the incomprehensible 
All; and can say. This stands marked 
therein, and no more than this? Alas, not 
in anywise ! These scientific individuals 
have been nowhere but where we also are; 
have seen some handbreadths deeper than 
we see into the Deep that is infinite, without 
bottom as without shore. 

"Laplace's Book on the Stars, wherein he 
exhibits that certain Planets, with their Sa- 
tellites, gyrate round our worthy Sun, at 
a rate and in a course, which, by greatest 
good fortune, he and the like of him have 
succeeded in detecting, — is to me as precious 
as to another. But is this what thou nam- 
est 'Mechanism of the Heavens,' and 'Sys- 
tem of the World' ; this, wherein Sirius and 
the Pleiades, and all Herschel's Fifteen- 
thousand Suns per minute, being left out, 
some paltry handful of Moons, and inert 
Balls, had been — looked at, nicknamed, and 
marked in the Zodiacal Way-bill; so that 
we can now prate of their Whereabout; 
their How, their Why, their What, being hid 
from us, as in the signless Inane? 

"System of Nature! To the wisest man, 
wide as is his vision. Nature remains of quite 
infinite depth, of quite infinite expansion; 
and all Experience thereof limits itself to 
some few computed centuries and measured 
square-miles. The course of Nature's 



518 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



phases, on this our little fraction of a 
Planet, is partially known to us: but who 
knows what deeper courses these depend 
on; what infinitely larger Cycle (of causes) 
our little Epicycle revolves on? To the 
Minnow every cranny and pebble,' and qual- 
ity and accident, of its little native Creek 
may have become familiar: but does the 
Minnow understand the Ocean Tides and 
periodic Currents, the Trade-winds, and 
Monsoons, and Moon's Eclipses; by all 
which the condition of its little Creek is reg- 
ulated, and may, from time to time {unvai- 
raculously enough ) , be quite overset and re- 
versed ? Such a Minnow is Man ; his Creek 
this Planet Earth ; his Ocean the immeasur- 
able All; his Monsoons and periodic Cur- 
rents the mysterious Course of Providence 
through JEions of iEons. 

"We speak of the Volume of Nature: 
and truly a Volume it is, — whose Author 
and Writer is God. To read it ! Dost thou, 
does man, so much as well know the Alpha- 
bet thereof? With its Words, Sentences, 
and grand descriptive Pages, poetical and 
philosophical, spread out through Solar 
Systems, and Thousands of Years, we shall 
not try thee. It is a Volume written in ce- 
lestial hieroglyphs, in the true Sacred-writ- 
ing ; of which even Prophets are happy that 
they can read here a line and there a line. 
As for your Institutes, and Academies of 
Science, they strive bravely; and, from 
amid the thick-crowded, inextricably inter- 
twisted hieroglyphic writing, pick-out, by 
dextrous combination, some Letters in the 
vulgar Character, and therefrom put to- 
gether this and the other economic Recipe, 
of high avail in Practice. That Nature is 
more than some boundless Volume of such 
Recipes, or huge, well-nigh inexhaustible 
Domestic-Cookery Book, of which the whole 
secret will in this manner one day evolve 
itself, the fewest dream. 

"Custom," continues the Professor, "doth 
make dotards of us all. Consider well, thou 
wilt find that Custom is the greatest of 
Weavers; and weaves air-raiment for all 
the Spirits of the Universe; whereby in- 
deed these dwell with us visibly, as minis- 
tering servants, in our houses and work- 
shops; but their spiritual nature becomes, 
to the most, forever hidden. Philosophy 
complains that Custom has hoodwinked us, 
from the first; that we do everything by 
Custom, even Believe by it; that our very 
Axioms, let us boast of Free-thinking as 
we may, are oftenest simply such Beliefs 



as we have never heard questioned. Nay, 
what is Philosophy throughout but a con- 
tinual battle against Custom; an ever- 
renewed effort to transcend the sphere of 
blind Custom, and so become Transcen- 
dental? 

"Innumerable are the illusions and leger- 
demain-trieks of Custom : but of all these, 
jjerhaps the cleverest is her knack of per- 
suading us that the Miraculous, by simple 
repetition, ceases to be Miraculous. True, 
it is by this means we live; for man must 
work as well as wonder : and herein is Cus- 
tom so far a kind nurse, guiding him to his 
true benefit. But she is a fond foolish nurse, 
or rather we are false foolish nurslings, 
when, in our resting and reflecting hours, 
we prolong the same deception. Am I to 
view the Stupendous with stupid indiffer- 
ence, because I have seen it twice, or two- 
hundred, or two-million times? There is 
no reason in Nature or in Art why I should : 
unless, indeed, I am a mere Work-Machine, 
for whom the divine gift of Thought were 
no other than the terrestrial gift of Steana '' 
is to the Steam-engine; a power whereby 
Cotton might be spun, and money and 
money's worth realized. 

"Notable enough, too, here as elsewhere, 
wilt thou find the potency of Names ; which 
indeed are but one kind of such custom- 
woven, wonder-hiding Garments. Witch- 
craft, and all manner of Specter-work, and 
Demonology, we have now named Madness 
and Diseases of the Nerves. Seldom reflect- 
ing that still the new question comes upon 
us: What is Madness, what are Nerves? 
Ever, as before, does Madness remain a 
mysterious-terrific, altogether infernal boil- 
ing-up of the Nether Chaotic Deep, through 
this far-painted Vision of Creation, which 
swims thereon, which we name the Real. 
Was Luther's Picture of the Devil less a 
Reality, whether it were formed within the 
bodily eye, or without it? In every the 
wisest Soul lies a whole world of internal 
Madness, an authentic Demon Empire; out 
of which, indeed, his world of Wisdom has 
been creatively built together, and now rests 
there, as on its dark foundations does a habi- 
table flowery Earth-rind. 

"But deepest of all illusory Appearances, 
for hiding Wonder, as for many other ends, 
are your two grand fundamental world- 
enveloping Appearances, Space and Time. 
These, as spun and woven for us from be- 
fore Birth itself, to clothe our celestial Me 
for dwelling here, and yet to blind it, — lie 



NINETEENTH CENTtJEY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



5i9 



all embracing, as the universal canvas, or 
warp and woof, whereby all minor Illusions, 
in this Phantasm Existence, weave and 
paint themselves. In vain, while here on 
Earth, shall you endeavor to strip them off 5 
you can, at best, but rend them asunder 
for moments, and look through. 

"Fortunatus had a wishing Hat, which, 
when he put on, and wished himself Any- 
where, behold he was There. By this means 
had Fortunatus triumphed over Space, he 
had annihilated Space; for him there was 
no Where, but all was Here. Were a Hat- 
ter to establish himself, in the Wahngasse 
of Weissniehtwo, and make felts of this 
sort for all mankind, what a world we 
should have of it ! Still stranger, should 
on the opposite side of the street, another 
Hatter establish himself; and as his fellow- 
craftsman made SiDace-annihilating Hats, 
make Time-annihilating! Of both would I 
purchase, were it with my last groschen; 
but chiefly of this latter. To clap-on your 
felt, and, simply by wishing that you were 
Ajxjwhere, straightway to be There! Next 
to clap-on your other felt, and, simply by 
wishing that you were Knjwhen, straight- 
way to be Then! This were indeed the 
grander: shooting at will from the Fire- 
Creation of the World to its Fire-Consum- 
mation; here historically present in the 
First Century, conversing face to face with 
Paul and Seneca ; there prophetically in the 
Thirty-first, conversing also face to face 
with other Pauls and Senecas, who as yet 
stand hidden in the depth of that late Time ! 

"Or thinkest thou it were impossible, un- 
imaginable f Is the Past annihilated, then, 
or only past; is the Future non-extant, or 
only future ? Those mystic faculties of thine, 
Memory and Hope, already answer : already 
through those mystic avenues, thou the 
Earth-blinded summonest both Past and 
Future, and communest with them, though 
as yet darkly, and with mute beckonings. 
The curtains of Yesterday drop down, the 
curtains of Tomorrow roll up ; but Yester- 
day and Tomorrow both are. Pierce through 
the Time-element, glance into the Eternal. 
Believe what thou findest written in the 
sanctuaries of Man's Soul, even as all 
Thinkers, in all ages, have devoutly read it 
there: that Time and Space are not God, 
but creations of God; that with God as 
it is a universal Here, so is it an everlasting 
Now. 

"And seest thou therein any glimpse of 
Immortality? — O Heaven! Is the white 



Tomb of our Loved One, who died from our 
arms, and had to be left behind us there, 
which rises in the distance, like a pale, 
mournfully receding Milestone, to tell how 
many toilsome uncheered miles we have 
journeyed on alone, — but a pale spectral 
Illusion ! Is the lost Friend still myste- 
riously Here, even as we are Here mys- 
teriously, with God ! — Know of a truth that 
only the Time-shadows have perished, or are 
perishable; that the real Being of whatever 
was, and whatever is, and whatever will be, 
is even now and forever. This, should it 
unhappily seem new, thou mayest ponder 
at thy leisure; for the next twenty years, 
or the next twenty centuries : believe it 
thou must; understand it thou canst not. 

"That the Thought-forms, Space and 
Time, wherein, once for all, we are sent 
into this Earth to live, should condition 
and determine our whole Practical reason- 
ings, conceptions, _and imagings or imagin- 
ings, — seems altogether fit, just, and un- 
avoidable. But that they should, further- 
more, usurp such sway over pure spiritual 
Meditation, and blind us to the wonder 
everywhere lying close on us, seems nowise 
so. Admit Space and Time to their due 
.rank as Forms of Thought; nay even, if 
thou 'wilt, to their quite undue rank of 
Realities; and consider, then with thyself 
how their thin disguises hide from us the 
brightest God-effulgences! Thus, were it 
not miraculous, could I stretch forth my 
hand and clutch the Sun? Yet thou seest 
me daily stretch forth my hand and there-^ 
with clutch many a thing, and swing it 
hither and thither. Art thou a grown baby, 
then, to fancy that the Miracle lies in miles 
of distance, or in pounds avoirdupois of 
weight; and not to see that the true inex- 
plicable God-revealing Miracle lies in this, 
that I can stretch forth my hand at all; 
that I have free Force to clutch aught 
therewith? Innumerable other of this sort 
are the deceptions, and wonder-hiding stu- 
pefactions, which Space practices on us. 

"Still worse is it with regard to Time. 
Your grand anti-magician, and universal 
wonder-hider, is the same lying Time. Had 
Ave but the Time-annihilating Hat, to put 
on for once only, we should see ourselves 
in a World of Miracles, wherein all fabled 
or authentic Thaumaturgy, and feats of 
Magic, were outdone. But unhappily we 
have not such a Hat; and man, poor fool 
that he is, can seldom and scantily help 
himself without one. 



520 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



"Were it not wonderful, for instance, 
had Orpheus, or Amphion, built the walls 
of Thebes by the mere sound of his Lyre? 
Yet tell me. Who built these walls of Weiss- 
nichtwo; summoning-out all the sandstone 
rocks, to dance along from the Steinbruch 
(now a huge Troglodyte Chasm, with fright- 
ful green-mantled pools) ; and shape them- 
selves into Doric and Ionic pillars, squared 
ashlar houses and noble streets'? Was it 
not the still higher Orpheus, or Orpheuses, 
who, in past centuries, by the divine Music 
of Wisdom, succeeded in civilizing Man? 
Our highest Orpheus walked in Judea, 
eighteen hundred years ago: his sphere- 
melody, flowing in wild native tones, took 
captive the ravished souls of men; and, 
being of a truth sphere-melody, still flows 
and sounds, though now with thousandfold 
accompaniments, and rich symphonies, 
through all our hearts; and modulates, and 
divinely leads them. Is that a wonder, 
which happens in two hours; and does it 
cease to be wonderful if happening in two 
million? Not only was Thebes built by the 
music of an Orpheus ; but without the music 
of some inspired Orpheus was no city ever 
built, no work that man giories-in ever done. 

"Sweep away the Illusion of Time; 
glance, if thou hast eyes, from the near 
moving cause to its far-distant Mover : The 
stroke that came transmitted through a 
whole galaxy of elastic balls, was it less a 
stroke than if the last ball only had been 
struck, and sent flying? 0, could I (with 
the Time-annihilating Hat) transport thee 
direct from the Beginnings to the Endings, 
how were thy eyesight unsealed, and thy 
heart set flaming in the Light-sea of ce- 
lestial wonder ! Then sawest thou that this 
fair Universe, were it in the meanest prov- 
ince thereof, is in very deed the star-domed 
City of God; that through every star, 
through every grass-blade, and most through 
every Living Soul, the glory of a present 
God still beams. But Nature, which is the 
Time-vesture of God, and reveals Him to 
the wise, hides Him from the foolish. 

"Again, could anything be more miracu- 
lous than an actual authentic Ghost? The 
English Johnson longed, all his life, to see 
one ; but could not, though he went to Cock 
Lane, and thence to the church-vaults, and 
tapped on coffins. Foolish Doctor ! Did he 
never, with the mind's eye as well as with 
the body's look round him into that full 
tide of human Life he so loved; did he 
never so much as look into Himself? The 



good Doctor was a Ghost, as actual and au- 
thentic as heart could wish; well-nigh a mil- 
lion of Ghosts were traveling the streets by 
his side. Once more I say, sweep away the 
illusions of Time; compress the threescore 
years into three minutes : what else was 
he, what else are we? Are we not Spirits, 
that are shaped into a body, into an Ap- 
pearance; and that fade away again into 
air and Invisibility? This is no metaphor, 
it is a simple scientific fact: we start out of 
Nothingness, take figure, and are Appari- 
tions; round us, as round the veriest spec- 
ter, is Eternity; and to Eternity minutes 
are as years and aeons. Come there not 
tones of Love and Faith, as from celestial 
harp-strings, like the Song of beautified 
Souls? And again, do not we squeak and ■ 
jibber (in our discordant, screech-owlish 
debatings and recriminatings) ; and glide 
bodeful, and feeble, and fearful ; or uproar 
(poltern), and revel in our mad Dance of 
the Dead, — till the scent of the morning 
air summons us to our still Home; and 
dreamy Night becomes awake and Day? 
Where now is Alexander of Maeedon : does 
the steel Host, that yelled in fierce battle- 
shouts at Issus and Arbela, remain behind 
him ; or have they all vanished utterly, even 
as perturbed Goblins must? Napoleon, too, 
and his Moscow Retreats and Austerlitz 
Campaigns ! Was it all other than the ver- 
iest Specter-hunt; which has now, with its 
howling tumult that made Night hideous, 
flitted away? — Ghosts! There are nigh a 
thousand-million walking the Earth openly 
at noontide; some half -hundred have van- 
ished from it, some half -hundred hav£ arisen 
in it, ere thy watch ticks once. 

"0 Heaven, it is mysterious, it is awful 
to consider that we not only carry each a 
future Ghost within him; but are, in very 
deed, Ghosts! These Limbs, whence had 
we them; this stormy Force; this life- 
blood with its burning Passion? They are 
dust and shadow; a Shadow-system gath- 
ered round our Me; wherein, through some 
moments or years, the Divine Essence is 
to be revealed in the Flesh. That warrior 
on his strong war-horse, fire flashes through 
his eyes ; force dwells in his arm and heart : 
but warrior and war-horse are a vision; a 
revealed Force, nothing more. Stately they 
tread the Earth, as if it were a firm sub- 
stance : fool ! the earth is but a film ; it 
cracks in twain, and warrior and war-horse 
sink beyond plummet's sounding. Plum- 
met's? Fantasy herself will not follow 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PKOBLEMS 



521 



them. A little while ago, they were not; a 
little while, and they are not, their very 
ashes are not. 

"So has it been from the beginning, so 
will it be to the end. Generation after 
generation takes to itself the Form of a 
Body; and forth-issuing from Cimmerian 
Night, on Heaven's mission appears. What 
Force and Fire is in each he expends : one 
grinding in the mill of Industry; one hun- 
ter-like climbing the giddy Alpine heights 
of Science; one madly dashed in pieces on 
the rocks of Strife, in war with his fellow : 
— and then the Heaven-sent is recalled ; his 
earthly Vesture falls away, and soon even 
to Sense becomes a vanished Shadow. Thus, 
like some wild-flaming, wild-thundering 
train of Heaven's Artillery, does this mys- 
terious Mankind thunder and flame, in 
long-drawn, quick-succeeding grandeur, 
through the unknown Deep. Thus, like a 
God-created, fire-breathing Spirit-host, we 
emerge from the Inane; haste stormfully 
across the astonished Earth; then plunge 
■ again into the Inane. Earth's mountains 
are leveled, and her seas filled up, in our 
passage: can the Earth, which is but dead 
and a vision, resist Spirits which have real- 
ity and are alive? On the hardest adamant 
some footprint of us is stamped-in ; the 
last Rear of the host will read traces of the 
earliest Van. But whence? — Heaven, 
whither? Sense knows not; Faith knows 
not; only that it is through Mystery to 
Mystery, from God and to God. 

"We are such stuff 
As Dreams are made of, and our little Life 
Is rounded with a sleep." 



Certainty and Peace in the Catholic 
Church 

john henry newman 

[From Apologia pro Vita Sua, 1864] 

From the time that I became a Catholic, 
of course I have no further history of my 
religious opinions to narrate. In saying 
this I do not mean to say that my mind has 
been idle, or that I have given up thinking 
on theological subjects; but that I have 
had no variations to record, and have had no 
anxiety of heart whatever. I have been in 
perfect peace and contentment; I never 
have had one doubt. I was not conscious to 
myself, on my conversion, of any change, 



intellectual or moral, wrought in my mind. 
I was not conscious of firmer faith in the 
fundamental truths of Revelation, or of 
more self-command ; I had not more fervor ; 
but it was like coming into port after a 
rough sea ; and my happiness on that score 
remains to this day without interruption. 

Nor had I any trouble about receiving 
those additional articles which are not 
found in the Anglican creed. Some of them 
I believed already, but not any one of them 
was a trial to me. I made a profession of 
them, upon my reception, with the greatest 
ease, and I have the same ease in believing 
them now, I am far of course from denying 
that every article of the Christian creed, 
whether as held by Catholics or by Protes- 
tants, is beset with intellectual difficulties; 
and it is simple fact that, for myself, I 
cannot answer those difficulties. Many per- 
sons are very sensitive of the difficulties of 
religion; I am as sensitive of them as any 
one; but I have never been able to see a 
connection between apiDrehending those diffi- 
culties, however keenly, and multiplying 
them to any extent, and on the other hand 
doubting the doctrines to which they are 
attached. Ten thousand difficulties do not 
make one doubt, as I understand the sub- 
ject; difficulty and doubt are incommen- 
surate. There of course may be difficulties 
in the evidence; but I am speaking of diffi- 
culties intrinsic to the doctrines themselves 
or to their relations with each other. A 
man may be annoyed that he cannot work 
out a mathematical problem, of which the 
answer is or is not given to him, without 
doubting that it admits of an answer or that 
a certain particular answer is the true one. 
Of all points of faith the being of a God 
is, to my own apprehension, encompassed 
with most difficulty, and yet borne in upon 
our minds with most power. 

People say that the doctrine of Tran- 
substantiation is difficult to believe; I did 
not believe the doctrine till I was a Catholic. 
I had no difficulty in believing it as soon as 
I believed that the Catholic Roman Church 
was the oracle of God, and that she had de- 
clared this doctrine to be part of the orig- 
inal revelation. It is difficult, impossible, 
to imagine, I grant; but how is it difficult 
to believe? Yet Maeaulay thought it so 
difficult to believe that he had need of a 
believer in it of talents as eminent as Sir 
Thomas More before he could bring him- 
self to 'conceive that the Catholics of an 
enlightened age could resist "the overwhelm- 



522 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



ing force of the argument against it." "Sir 
Thomas More," he says, "is one of the choice 
specimens of wisdom and virtue; and the 
doctrine of transubstantiation is a kind of 
proof charge. A faith which stands that 
test will stand any test." But for myself, 
I cannot indeed prove it, I cannot tell how 
it is; but I say, "Why should it not be? 
What's to hinder it? What do I know of 
substance or matter? just as much as the 
greatest philosophers, and that is nothing 
at all" — so much is this the case that there 
is a rising school of philosophy now which 
considers phenomena to constitute the whole 
of our knowledge in physics. The Catholic 
doctrine leaves phenomena alone. It does 
not say that the phenomena go ; on the con- 
trary, it says that they remain; nor does it 
say that the same phenomena are in several 
places at once. It deals with what no one 
on earth knows anything about, the mate- 
rial substances themselves. And, in like 
manner, of that majestic article of the 
Anglican as well as of the Catholic creed, the 
doctrine of the Trinity in Unity. What do 
I know of the Essence of the Divine Being ? 
I know that my abstract idea of three is 
simply incompatible with my idea of one; 
but when I come to the question of concrete 
fact, I have no means of proving that there 
is not a sense in which one and three can 
equally be predicated of the Incommuni- 
cable God. 

But I am going to take upon myself the 
responsibility of more than the mere creed 
of the Church — as the parties accusing me 
are determined I shall do. They say that 
now, in that I am a Catholic, though I 
may not have offenses of my own against 
honesty to answer for, yet at least I am 
answerable for the offenses of others, of 
my co-religionists, of my brother priests, 
of the Church herself. I am quite willing to 
accept the responsibility; and as I have 
been able, as I trust, by means of a few 
words, to dissipate, in the minds of all those 
who do not begin with disbelieving me, the 
suspicion with which so many Protestants 
start, in forming their judgment of Catho- 
lics, viz., that our creed is actually set up 
in inevitable superstition and hypocrisy, 
as the original sin of Catholicism, so now I 
will proceed as before, identifying myself 
with the Chui:ch and vindicating it, — not of 
course denying the enormous mass of sin 
and error which exists of necessity in that 
world-wide, multiform CommunioiT, but go- 
ing to the proof of this one point, that its 



system is in no sense dishonest, and that 
therefore the upholders and teachers of 
that system, as such, have a claim to be ac- 
quitted in their own persons of that odious 
imputation. 

Starting, then, with the being of a God 
(which, as I have said, is as certain to me 
as the certainty of my own existence, though 
when I try to put the grounds of that cer- 
tainty into logical shape I find a difficulty 
in doing so in mood and figure to my satis- 
faction), I look out of myself into the world 
of men, and there I see a sight which fills 
me with unspeakable distress. The world 
seems simply to give the lie to that great 
truth, of which my whole being is so full; 
and the effect upon me is, in consequence, 
as a matter of necessity, as confusing as if 
it denied that I am in existence myself. 
If I looked into a mirror and did not see 
my face, I should have the sort of feeling 
which actually comes upon me when I look 
into this living, busy world and see no re- 
flection of its Creator. This is, to me, one 
of those great difficulties of this absolute 
primary truth, to which I referred just now. 
Were it not for this voice, speaking so 
clearly in my conscience and my heart, I 
should be an atheist or a pantheist or a poly- 
theist when I looked into the world. I am 
speaking for myself only, and I am far from 
denying the real force of the arguments in 
proof of a God, drawn from the general 
facts of human society and the course of 
history; but these do not warm me or en- 
lighten me; they do not take away the 
winter of my desolation, or make the bud? 
unfold and the leaves grow within me, and 
my moral being rejoice. The sight of the 
world is nothing else than the prophet's 
scroll, full of '^lamentations and mourning 
and woe." 

To consider the world in its length and 
breadth, its various history, the many races 
of man, their starts, their fortunes, their 
mutual alienation, their conflicts; and then 
their ways, habits, governments, forms of 
worship ; their enterprises, their aimless 
courses, their random achievements and ac- 
quirements; the impotent conclusion of 
long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and 
broken of a superintending design, the 
blind evolution of what turn out to be 
great powers or truths, the progress of 
things as if from unreasoning elements, not 
towards final causes ; the greatness and little- 
ness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short 
duration, the curtain hung over his futurity; 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



523 



the disappointments of life, the defeat of 
good, the success of evil, physical pain, 
mental anguish; the prevalence and inten- 
sity of sin, the pervading idolatries, the cor- 
ruptions, the dreary, hopeless irreligion, 
that condition of the whole race so fear- 
fully yet exactly described in the apostle's 
words, "having no hope and without God 
in the world," — all this is a vision to dizzy 
and ai3pal, and inflicts upon the mind the 
sense of a profound mystery which is abso- 
lutely beyond human solution. 

What shall be said to this heart-piercing, 
reason-bewildering fact ? I can only answer 
that either there is no Creator, or this living 
society of men is in a true sense discarded 
from His presence. Did I see a boy of good 
make and mind, with the tokens on him of 
a refined nature, cast upon the world with- 
out provision, unable to say whence he 
came, his birthplace or his family connec- 
tions, I should conclude that there was some 
mystery connected with his history and that 
he was one of whom, from one cause or 
other, his parents were ashamed. Thus 
only should I be able to account for the 
contrast between the promise and the con- 
dition of his being. And so I argue about 
the world. If there be a God, since there 
is a God, the human race is implicated in 
some terrible aboriginal calamity. It is 
out of joint with the purposes of its Creator. 
This is a fact, a fact as true as the fact 
of its existence; and thus the doctrine of 
what is theologically called original sin 
becomes to me almost as certain as that 
the world exists and as the existence of 
God. 

And now, supposing it were the blessed 
and loving will of the Creator to interfere 
in this anarchical condition of things, what 
are we to suppose would be the methods 
which might be necessarily or naturally in- 
volved in His purpose of mercy ? Since the 
world is in so abnormal a state, surely it 
would be no surprise to me if the interposi- 
tion were of necessity equally extraordinary 
— or what is called miraculous. But that 
subject does not directly come into the scope 
of my present remarks. Miracles as evi- 
dence involve a process of reason, or an 
argument ; and of course I am thinking of 
some mode of interference which does not 
immediately run into argument. I am 
rather asking what must be the face-to-face 
antagonist by which to withstand and baffle 
the fierce energy of passion and the all- 
corroding, all-dissolving skepticism of the 



intellect in religious inquiries? I have no 
intention at all of denying that truth is 
the real object of our reason, and that if it 
does not attain to truth either the premise 
or the process is in fault; but I am not 
speaking here of right reason, but of reason 
as it acts in fact and concretely in fallen 
man. I know that even the unaided reason, 
when correctly exercised, leads to a belief 
in God, in the immortality of the soul, and 
in a future retribution; but I am consider- 
ing the faculty of reason actually and his- 
torically, and in this point of view I do not 
think I am wrong in saying that its ten- 
dency is towards a simple unbelief in mat- 
ters of religion. No truth, however sacred, 
can stand against it in the long run; and 
hence it is that in the pagan world, when 
our Lord came, the last traces of the re- 
ligious knowledge of former times were all 
but disappearing from those portions of 
the world in which the intellect had been 
active and had had a career. 

And in these latter days, in like manner, 
outside the Catholic Church things are tend- 
ing — with far greater rapidity than in that 
old time, from the circumstance of the age 
■ — to atheism in one shape or other. What a 
scene, what a prospect, does the whole of 
Europe present at this day ! and not only 
Europe, but every government and every 
civilization through the world, which is 
under the influence of the European mind! 
Especially (for it most concerns us) how 
sorrowful, in view of religion even taken 
in its most elementary, most attenuated 
form, is the spectacle presented to us by 
the educated intellect of England, Prance, 
and Germany ! Lovers of their country and 
of their race, religious men, external to 
the Catholic Church, have attempted va- 
rious expedients, to arrest flerce, wilful hu- 
man nature in its onward course and to 
bring it into subjection. The necessity of 
some form of religion for the interests of 
humanity has been generally acknowledged ; 
but where was the concrete representative 
of things invisible, which would have the 
force and the toughness necessary to be a 
breakwater against the deluge? Three cen- 
turies ago the establishment of religion, 
material, legal, and social, was generally 
adopted as the best exiDcdient for the pur- 
pose, in those countries which separated 
from the Catholic Church, and for a long 
time it was successful ; but now the crevices 
of those establishments are admitting the 
enemy. Thirty years ago education was 



524 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



relied upon ; ten years ago there was a hope 
that wars would cease forever, under the 
influence of commercial enterprise and the 
reign of the tiseful and fine arts; but will 
anyone venture to say that there is anything 
anywhere on this earth which will afford 
a fulcrum for us whereby to keep the earth 
from moving onwards? 

The judgment which experience passes, 
whether on establishments or on education, 
as a means of maintaining religious truth 
in this anarchical world, must be extended 
even to Scripture, though Scripture be 
divine. Experience proves, surely, that the 
Bible does not answer a purpose for which 
it was never intended. It may be acci- 
dentally the means of the conversion of in- 
dividuals; but a book, after all, cannot 
make a stand against the wild, living intel- 
lect of man, and in this day it begins to 
testify, as regards its own structure and 
contents, to the power of that universal 



solvent which is so successfully acting upon 
religious establishments. 

Supposing, then, it to be the will of the 
Creator to interfere in human atfairs, and 
to make provisions for retaining in the 
world a knowledge of Himself so definite 
and distinct as to be proof against the en- 
ergy of human skepticism, in such a case, — 
I am far from saying that there was no other 
way, — but there is nothing to surprise the 
mind if He should think fit to introduce a 
power into the world, invested with the 
prerogative of infallibility in religious mat- 
ters. Such a provision would be a direct, 
immediate, active, and prompt means of 
withstanding the difftculty; it would be an 
instrument suited to the need; and when 
I find that this is the very claim of the 
Catholic Church, not only do I feel no diffi- 
culty in admitting the idea, but there is a 
fitness in it which recommends it to my 
mind. 



3. POEMS OF DOUBT AND FAITH 



The Challenge of Science 

alfred tennyson 
[From In Memoriam, 1850] 

LIV 

0, yet we trust that somehow good 
Will be the final goal of ill, 
To pangs of nature, sins of will, 

Defects of doubt, and taints of blood; 

That nothing walks with aimless feet; 
That n-ot one life shall be destroy'd, 
Or cast as rubbish to the void, 

When God hath made the'pile complete ; 

That not a worm is cloven in vain; 
That not a moth with vain desire 
Is shrivel'd in a fruitless fire, 

Or but subserves another's gain. 

Behold, we know not anything; 
I can but trust that good shall fall 
At last — far off — at last, to all, 

And every winter change to spring. 

So runs my dream; but what am I? 

An infant crying in the night ; 

An infant crying for the light, 
And with no language but a cry. 



LV 

The wish, that of the living whole 
No life may fail beyond the grave, 
Derives it not from what we have 

The likest God within the soul? 

Are God and Nature then at strife. 
That Nature lends such evil dreams? 
So careful of the type she seems. 

So careless of the single life, 

That I, considering everywhere 
Her secret meaning in her deeds, 
And finding that of fifty seeds 

She often brings but one to bear, 

I falter where I firmly trod. 

And" falling with my weight of cares 
Upon the great world's altar-stairs 

That slope thro' darkness up to God, 

I stretch lame hands of faith, and grope, 
And gather dust and chaff, and call 
To what I feel is Lord of all, 

And faintly trust the larger hope. 

LVl' 

"So careful of the type?" butno. 
From scarjjed cliff and quarried stone 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



525 



She cries, "A thousand types are gone ; 
I care for nothing, all shall go. 

"Thou makest thine appeal to me : 
I bring to life, I bring to death; 
The spirit does but mean the breath : 

I know no more." And he, shall he, 

Man, her last work, who seem'd so fair, 
Such splendid purpose in his eyes, 
Who roll'd the psalm to wintry skies. 

Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer, 

Who trusted God was love indeed 
And love Creation's final law — 
Tho' Nature, red in tooth and claw 

With ravine, shriek'd against his creed — 

Who loved, who suffer'd countless ills, 
Who battled for the True, the Just, 
Be blown about the desert dust, 

Or seal'd within the iron hills'? 

No more ? A monster then, a dream, 
A discord. Dragons of the prime, 
That tare each other in their slime. 

Were mellow music match'd with him. 

life, as futile, then, as frail ! 

for thy voice to soothe and bless ! 

What hope of answer or redress? 
Behind the veil, behind the veil. 

CXVIII 

Contemplate all this work of Time, 
The giant laboring in his youth; 
Nor dream of human love and truth. 

As dying Nature's earth and lime; 

But trust that those we call the dead 
Are breathers of an ampler day 
For ever nobler ends. They say, 

The solid earth whereon we tread 

In tracts of fluent heat began. 

And grew to seeming-random forms, 
The seeming prey of cyclic storms. 

Till at the last arose the man; 

Who throve and branch'd from clime to 
clime. 
The herald of a higher race. 
And of himself in higher place, 

If so he type this work of time 

Within himself, from more to more; 
Or crown'd with attributes of woe 



Like glories, move his course, and show 
That life is not as idle ore. 

But iron dug from central gloom, 
And heated hot with burning fears, 
And dipped in baths of hissing tears, 

And batter'd with the shocks of doom 

To shape and use. Arise and fly 

The reeling Faun, the sensual feast; * 
Move upward, working out the beast, 

And let the ape and tiger die. 



The Higher Pantheism 
alfred tennyson 

The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the 

hills, and the plains — 
Are not these, Soul, the Vision of Him 

who reigns? 

Is not the Vision He? tho' He be not that 

which He seems ? 
Dreams are true while they last, and do 

we not live in dreams? 

Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body 

and limb, 
Are they not sign and symbol of thy division 

from Him? 

Dark is the world to thee: thyself art the 

reason why; 
For is He not all but thou, that hast poAver 

to feel "I am I"? 

Glory about thee, without thee; and thou 

fulfillest thy doom 
Making Him broken gleams, anJd a stifled 

splendor and gloom. 

Speak to Him thou for He hears, and Spirit 

with SjDirit can meet — 
Closer is He than breathing, and nearer 

than hands and feet. 

God is law, say the wise; Soul, and let 

us rejoice. 
For if He thunder by law the thunder is 

yet His voice. 

Law is God, say some: no God at all, says 

the fool; 
For all we have power to see is a straight 

staff bent in a pool; 



526 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



And the ear of man cannot hear, and the 

eye of man cannot see; 
But if we could see and hear, this Vision — 

were it not He? 



Wages 

alfred tennyson 

Glory of warrior, glory of orator, glory 

of song, 
Paid with a voice flying by to be lost on 

an endless sea — 
Glory of Virtue, to fight, to struggle, to 

right the wrong — 
Nay, but she aim'd not at glory, no 

lover of glory she; 
Give her the glory of going on, and still 

to be. 
The wages of sin is death: if the wages 

of Virtue be dust, 
Would she have heart to endure for the 

life of the worm and the fly? 
She desires no isles of the blest, no quiet 

seats of the just, 
To rest in a golden grove, or to bask in 

a summer sky; 
Give her the wages of going on, and not 

to die. (1868) 



Crossing the Bar 
alfred tennyson 

Sunset and evening star. 

And one clear call for me! 
And may there be no moaning of the bar. 

When I put out to sea. 

But such a tide as moving seems asleep, 
Too full for sound and foam, 

When that which drew from out the bound- 
less deep 
Turns again home. 

Twilight and evening bell. 

And after that the dark! 
And may there be no sadness of farewell. 

When I embark; 

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and 
Place 

The flood may bear me far, 
I hope to see my Pilot face to face 

When I have crossed the bar. (1889) 



An Epistle 

Containing the Strange Medical Experience 
of Karshish, the Arab Physician 

ROBERT BROVV^NING 

Karshish, the picker-up of learning's 

crumbs, 
The not-incurious in God's handiwork 
(This man's-flesh he hath admirably made, 
Blown like a bubble, kneaded like a paste, 
To coop up and keep down on earth a space 
That puff of vapor from his mouth, man's 

soul) 
— To Abib, all-sagacious in our art. 
Breeder in me of what poor skill I boast. 
Like me inquisitive how pricks and cracks 
Befall the flesh thro' too much stress and 

strain, 
Whereby the wily vapor fain would slip 
Back and rejoin its source before the term, — 
And aptest in contrivance (under God) 
To baffle it by deftly stopping such : — 
The vagrant Scholar to his Sage at home 
Sends greeting (health and knowledge, fame 

and peace) 
Three samples of true snake-stone — rarer 

still, 
One of the other sort, the melon-shaped, 
(But fitter, pounded fine, for charms than 

drugs) 
And writeth now the twenty-second time. 

My journeyings were brought to Jericho: 
Thus I resume. Who studious in our art 
Shall count a little labor unrepaid? 
I have shed sweat enough, left flesh and bone 
On many a flinty furlong of this land. 
Also, the country-side is all on Are 
With rumors of a marching hitherward: 
Some say Vespasian cometh, some, his son. 
A black lynx snarled and pricked a tufted 

ear: 
Lust of my blood inflamed his yellow balls : 
I cried and threw my staff and he was gone. 
Twice have the robbers stripped and beaten 

me, 
And once a town declared me for a spy ; 
But at the end I reach Jerusalem, 
Since this poor covert where I Dass the 

night, 
This Bethany, lies scarce the distance thence 
A man with plague-sores at the third degree 
Runs till he drops down dead. Thou laugh- 

est here ! 
'Sooth, it elates me, thus reposed and safe. 
To void the stuffing of my travel-scrip 
And share with thee whatever Jewry yields. 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



527 



A viscid eholer is observable 
In tertians, I was nearly bold to say: 
And falling-sickness hath a happier cure 
Than our school wots of: there's a spider 

here 
Weaves no web, watches on the ledge of 

tombs. 
Sprinkled with mottles on an ash-gray back ; 
Take five and drop them .... but who 

knows his mind, 
The Syrian run-a-gate I trust this to ? 
His service payeth me a sublimate 
Blown up his nose to help the ailing eye. 
Best wait : I reach Jerusalem at morn. 
There set in order my experiences, 
Gather what most deserves, and give thee 

all— 
Or I might add, Judaea's gum-tragaeanth 
Scales off in purer flakes, shines clearer- 
grained, 
Cracks 'twixt the pestle and the porphjnry, 
In fine exceeds our produce. Scalp-disease 
Confounds me, crossing so with leprosy: 
Thou hadst admired one sort I gained at 

Zoar — 
But zeal outruns discretion. Here I end. 

Yet stay! my Syrian blinketh gratefully, 
Protesteth his devotion is my price — 
Suppose I write what harms not, tho' he 

steal? 
I half resolve to tell thee, yet I blush. 
What set me off a-writing first of all. 
An itch I had, a sting to write, a tang ! 
For, be it this town's barrenness — or else 
The Man had something in the look of him — 
His case has struck me far more than 't is 

worth. 
So, pardon if — (lest presently I lose, 
In the great press of novelty at hand, 
The care and pains this somehow stole 

from me) 
I bid thee take the thing while fresh in mind. 
Almost in sight — for, wilt thou have the 

truth? 
The very man is gone from me but now. 
Whose ailment is the subject of discourse. 
Thus then, and let thy better wit help all ! 

'Tis but a ease of mania: subinduced 
By epilepsy, at the turning-point 
Of trance prolonged unduly some three 

days 
When by the exhibition of some drug 
Or spell, exorcisation, stroke of art 
Unknown to me and which 't were well to 

know, 
The evil thing, out-breaking all at once, 



Left the man whole and sound of body in- 
deed, — 
But, flinging (so to speak) life's gates too 

wide. 
Making a clear house of it too suddenly. 
The flrst conceit that entered might inscribe 
Whatever it was minded on the wall 
So plainly at that vantage, as it were, 
(First come, first served) that nothing sub- 
sequent 
Attaineth to erase those fancy-serawls 
The just-returned and new-established soul 
Hath gotten now so thoroughly by heart 
That henceforth she will read or these or 

none. 
And first — the man's own firm conviction 

rests 
That he was dead (in fact they buried him) 
— That he was dead and then restored to life 
By a Nazarene physician of his tribe: 
— 'Sayeth, the same bade "Rise," and he 

did rise. 
"Such cases are diurnal," thou wilt cry. 
Not so this figment ! — not, that such a fume. 
Instead of giving way to time and health. 
Should eat itself into the life of life. 
As saffron tingeth flesh, blood, bones, and 

all! 
For see, how he takes up the after-life. 
The man — it is one Lazarus a Jew, 
Sanguine, proportioned, fifty years of age. 
The body's habit wholly laiidable. 
As much, indeed, beyond the common health 
As he were made and put aside to show. 
Think, could we penetrate by any drug 
And bathe the wearied soul and worried 

flesh, 
And bring it clear and fair, by three days' 

sleep ! 
Whence has the man the balm that bright- 
ens all? 
This grown man eyes the world now like a 

child. 
Some elders of his tribe, I should premise. 
Led in their friend, obedient as a sheep. 
To bear my inquisition. While they spoke, 
Now sharply, now with sorrow, — told the 

case, — 
He listened not except I spoke to him. 
But folded his two hands and let them talk, 
Watching the flies that buzzed : and yet no 

fo^ol. 
And that's a sample how his years must go. 
Look if a beggar, in fixed middle-life. 
Should find a treasure, — can he use the same 
With straitened habits and with tastes 

starved small. 
And take at once to his impoverished brain 



528 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



The sudden element that changes things, 
That sets the undreamed-of rapture at his 

hand, 
And puts the cheap old joy in the scorned 

dust? 
Is he not such an one as moves to mirth — 
Warily parsimonious, when no need, 
Wasteful as drunkenness at undue times ? 
All prudent counsel as to what befits 
The golden mean, is lost on such an one : 
The man's fantastic will is the man's law. 
So here — we call the treasure knowledge, 

say, 
Increased beyond all fleshly faculty — 
Heaven opened to a soul while yet on earth, 
Earth forced on a soul's use while seeing 

heaven : 
The man is witless of the size, the sum, 
The value in proportion of all things. 
Or whether it be little or be much. 
Discourse to him of prodigious armaments 
Assembled to besiege his city now. 
And of the passing of a mule with gourds — 
'T is one ! Then take it on the other side, 
Speak of some trifling fact, — he will gaze 

rapt 
With stupor at its very littleness, 
(Far as I see) as if in that indeed 
He caught prodigious import, whole re- 
sults ; 
And so will turn to us the bystanders 
In ever the same stupor (note this point) 
That we too see not with his opened eyes. 
Wonder and doubt come wrongly into play, 
Preposterously, at cross purposes. 
Should his child sicken unto death, — ^why, 

look 
For scarce abatement of his cheerfulness, 
Or pretermission of the daily craft! 
While a word, a gesture, glance from that 

same child 
At play or in the school or laid asleep, 
Will startle him to an agony of fear, 
Exasperation, just as like. Demand 
The reason why — " 't is but a word," ob- 
ject— 
"A gesture" — ^he regards thee as our Lord 
Who lived there in the pyramid alone. 
Looked at us (dost thou mind?) when, be- 
ing young. 
We both would unadvisedly recite 
Some charm's beginning, from that book 

of his, 
Able to bid the sun throb wide and burst 
All into stars, as suns grown old are wont. 
Thou and the child have each a veil alike 
Thrown o'er your heads, from under which 
ye both 



Stretch your blind hands and trifle with a 

match 
Over a mine of Greek fire, did ye know! 
He holds on firmly to some thread of life — 
(It is the life to lead perforcedly) 
Which runs across some vast distracting orb 
Of glory on either side that meager thread, 
Which, conscious of, he must not enter yet — 
The spiritual life around the earthly life : 
The law of that is known to him as this. 
His heart and brain move there, his feet 

stay here. 
So is the man perplext with impulses 
Sudden to start off crosswise, not straight 

on. 
Proclaiming what is right and wrong across, 
And not along, this black thread thro' the 

blaze — 
"It should be" balked by "here it cannot be." 
And oft the man's soul springs into his face 
As if he saw again and heard again 
His sage that bade him "Rise" and he did 

rise. 
Something, a word, a tick o' the blood within 
Admonishes: then back he sinks at once 
To ashes, who was very fire before, 
In sedulous recurrence to his trade 
Whereby he earneth him the daily bread; 
And studiously the humbler for that pride. 
Professedly the faultier that he knows 
God's secret, while he holds the thread of 

life. 
Indeed the especial marking of the man 
Is prone submission to the heavenly will — 
Seeing it, what it is, and why it is. 
'Sayeth, he will wait patient to the last 
For that same death which must restore his 

being 
To equilibrium, body loosening soul 
Divorced even now by premature full 

growth : 
He will live, nay, it pleaseth him to live 
So long as God please, and just how God 

please. 
He even seeketh not to please God more 
(Which meaneth, otherwise) than as God 

please. 
Hence, I perceive not he affects to preach 
The doctrine of his sect whate'er it be, 
Make proselytes as madmen thirst to do: 
How can he give his neighbor the real 

ground. 
His own eonvietioii? Ardent as he is — 
Call his great truth a lie, why, still the old 
"Be it as God please" reassureth him. 
I probed the sore as thy disciple should: 
"How, beast," said I, "this stolid careless- 
ness 



NINETEENTH CENTURY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



529 



Suffieeth thee, when Rome is on her march 
To stamp out like a little spark thy town, 
Thy tribe, thy crazy tale, and thee at once"?" 
He merely looked with his large eyes on me. 
The man is apathetic, you deduce? 
Contrariwise, he loves both old and young, 
Able and weak, affects the very brutes 
And birds — how say I? flowers of the 

field- 
As a wise workman recognizes tools 
In a master's workshop, loving what they 

make. 
Thus is the man as harmless as a lamb : 
Only impatient, let him do his best. 
At ignorance and carelessness and sin — 
An indignation which is promjDtly curbed: 
As when in certain travel I have feigned 
To be an ignoramus in our art 
According to some preconceived design. 
And happed to hear the land's practitioners 
Steeped in conceit sublimed by ignorance. 
Prattle fantastically on disease. 
Its cause and cure — and I must hold my 

peace ! 

Thou wilt object — Why have I not- ere 
this 
Sought out the sage himself, the Nazarene 
Who wrought this cure, inquiring at the 

source, 
Conferring with the frankness that befits"? 
Alas! it grieveth me, the learned leech 
Perished in a tumult many years ago, 
Accused, — our learning's fate,- — of wizardry, 
Rebellion, to the setting up a rule 
And creed prodigious as described to me. 
His death, which happened when the earth- 
quake fell 
(Prefiguring, as soon appeared, the loss 
To occult learning in our lord the sage 
Who lived there in the pyramid alone) 
Was wrought by the mad people — that's 

their wont ! 
On vain recourse, as I conjecture it. 
To his tried virtue, for miraculous help — 
How could he stop the earthquake ? That's 

their way ! 
The other imputations must be lies : 
But take one, tho' I loathe to give it thee, 
In mere respect for any good man's fame. 
(And after all, our patient Lazarus 
Is stark mad ; should we count on what he 

says? 
Perhaps not: tho' in writing to a leech 
'T is well to keep back nothing of a case.) 
This man so cured regards the curer, then. 
As — God forgive me ! who but God himself, 
Creator and sustainer of the world, 



That came and dwelt in flesh on it awhile. 
— 'Sayeth that such an one was born and 

lived, , 
Taught, healed the sick, broke bread at his 

own house, 
Then died, with Lazarus by, for aught I 

know. 
And yet was .... what I said nor choose 

repeat, 
And must have so avouched himself, in fact, 
In hearing of this very Lazarus 
Who saith — but why all this of what he 

saith? 
Why write of trivial matters, things of price 
Calling at every moment for remark? 
I noticed on the margin of a pool 
Blue-flowering borage, the Aleppo sort, 
Aboundeth, very nitrous. It is strange! 

Thy pardon for this long and tedious case, 
Which, now that I reviev/ it, needs must 

Beem 
Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth I 
Nor I myself discern in what is writ 
Good cause for the peculiar interest 
And awe indeed this man has touched me 

with. 
Perhaps the journey's end, the weariness 
Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus : 
I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills 
Like an old lion's cheek teeth. Out there 

came 
A moon made like a face with certain spots 
Multiform, manifold, and menacing: 
Then a wind rose behind me. So we met 
In this old sleepy town at unaware. 
The man and I. I send thee what is writ. 
Regard it as a chance, a matter risked 
To this ambiguous Syrian : he may lose. 
Or steal, or give it thee with equal good. 
Jerusalem's repose shall make amends 
For time this letter wastes, thy time and 

mine ; 
Till when, once more thy pardon and fare- 
well! 
The very God ! think, Abib ; dost thou think? 
So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too — 
So, thro' the thunder comes a human voice 
Saying, "0 heart I made, a heart beats 

here ! 
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself ! 
Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of 

mine: 
But love I gave thee, with myself to love, 
And thou must love me who have died for 

thee !" 
The madman saith He said so : it is strange. 

• (1855) 



530 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Abt Vogler 
robert browning 

Would that the structure brave, the mani- 
fold music I build, 
Bidding my organ obey, calling its keys 
to their work, 
Claiming each slave of the sound, at a touch, 
as when Solomon willed 
Armies of angels that soar, legions of 
demons that lurk, 
Man, brute, reiDtile, fly, — alien of end and 
of aim. 
Adverse, each from the other heaven- 
high, hell-deep removed, — 
Should rush into sight at once as he named 
the ineffable Name, 
And pile him a palace straight, to pleas- 
ure the princess he loved! 

Would it might tarry like his, the beautiful 
building of mine. 
This which my keys in a crowd pressed 
and importuned to raise! 
Ah, one and all, how they helped, would 
dispart now and now combine, 
Zealous to hasten the work, heighten their 
master his praise ! 
And one would bury his brow with a blind 
plunge down to hell, 
Burrow awhile and build, broad on the 
roots of things, 
Then up again swim into sight, having 
based me my palace well, 
Founded it, fearless of flame, flat on the 
nether springs. 

And another would mount and march, like 
the excellent minion he was. 
Ay, another and yet another, one crowd 
but with many a crest, 
Raising my rampired walls of gold as trans- 
parent as glass. 
Eager to do and die, yield each his place 
to the rest : 
For higher still and higher (as a runner 
tips with fire. 
When a great illumination surprises a 
festal night — 
Outlined round and round Rome's dome 
from space to spire) 
Up, the pinnacled glory reached, and the 
pride of my soul was in sight. 

In sight? Not half! for it seemed, it was 
certain to match man's birth, 
Nature in turn conceived, obeying an im- 
pulse as I; 



And the emulous heaven yearned down, 
made effort to reach the earth, 
As the earth had done her best, in my 
passion, to scale the sky: 
Novel splendors burst forth, grew familiar 
and dwelt with mine, 
Not a point nor a peak but found and 
fixed its wandering star: 
Meteor-moons, balls of blaze: and they did 
• not pale or pine, 
For earth had attained to heaven, there 
was no more near nor far. 

Nay more ; for there wanted not who walked 
in the glare and glow. 
Presence plain in the place; or, fresh 
from the Protoplast, 
Furnished for ages to come, when a kindlier 
wind should blow, 
Lured now to begin and live, in a house 
to their liking at last ; 
Or else the wonderful Dead who have 
passed through the body and gone, 
But were back once more to breathe in an 
old world worth their new: 
What never had been, was now; what was, 
as it shall be anon; 
And what is, — shall I say, matched both? 
for I was made perfect, too. 

All through my keys that gave their sounds 
to a wish of my soul. 
All through my soul that praised as its 
wish flowed visibly forth. 
All through music and me! For think, had 
I painted the whole. 
Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the 
process so wonder-worth: 
Had I written the same, made verse — still, 
effect proceeds from cause, 
Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear 
how the tale is told ; 
It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience 
to laws, 
Painter and poet are proud in the artist- 
list enrolled: — 

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the 

will that can. 
Existed behind all laws, that made them 

and lo, they are! 
And I know not if, save in this, such a gift 

be allowed to man. 
That out of three sounds he frame, not a 

fourth sound, but a star. 
Consider it well: each tone of our scale in 

itself is naught : 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



531 



It is everywhere in the world — loud, soft, 
and all is said: 
Give it to me to use ! I mix it with two in 
my thought : 

And there ! Ye have heard and seen : con- 
sider and bow the head! 

Well, it is gone at last, the palace of music I 
reared ; 
Gone ! and the good tears start, the praises 
that come too slow ; 
For one is assured at first, one scarce can 
say that he feared, 
That he even gave it a thought, the gone 
thing was. to go. 
Never to be again ! But many more of the 
kind 
As good, nay, better perchance: is this 
your comfort to me? 
To me, who must be saved because I cling 
with my mind 
To the same, same self, same love, same 
God : ay, what was, shall be. 

Therefore to whom turn I but to thee, the 
ineffable Name? 
Builder and maker, thou, of houses not 
made with hands ! 
What, have fear of change from thee who 
art ever the same? 
Doubt that thy power can fill the heart 
that thy power expands? 
There shall never be one lost good! What 
was, shall live as before; 
The evil is null, is naught, is silence im- 
plying sound ; 
What was good shall be good, with, for evil, 
so much good more; 
On the earth the broken arcs ; in the heaven 
a perfect round. 

All we have willed or hoped or dreamed of 
good shall exist; 
Not its semblance, but itself; no beauty, 
nor good, nor power 
Whose voice has gone forth, but each sur- 
vives for the melodist 
When eternity affirms the conception of 
an hour. 
The high that proved too high, the heroic for 
earth too hard, 
The passion that left the ground to lose 
itself in the sky, 
Are music sent up to God by the lover and 
the bard; 
Enough that he heard it once: we shall 
hear it by and by. 



And what is our failure here but a triumph's 
evidence 
For the fullness of the days? Have we 
withered or agonized? 
Why else was the pause prolonged but that 
singing might issue thence ? 
Why rushed the discords in, but that har- 
mony should be prized ? 
Sorrow is hard to bear, and doubt is slow to 
clear, 
Each sufferer says his say, his scheme of 
the weal and woe: 
But God has a few of us whom he whispers 
in the ear; 
The rest may reason and welcome : 'tis we 
musicians know. 

Well, it is earth with me ; silence resumes her 
reign : 
I will be patient and proud, and soberly 
acquiesce. 
Give me the keys. I feel for the common 
chord again, 
Sliding by semitones till I sink to the 
minor, — yes. 
And I blunt it into a ninth, and I stand on 
alien ground, 
Surveying awhile the heights I rolled from 
into the deep ; 
Which, hark, I have dared and done, for my 
resting-place is found. 
The C Major of this life: so, now I will 
try to sleep. (1864) 

Rabbi Ben Ezra 

robert brov^ning 

Grow old along with me ! 
The best is yet to be, 

The last of life, for which the first was made : 
Our times are in his hand 
Who saith, "A whole I planned. 
Youth shows but half; trust God: see all, 
nor be afraid !" 

Not that, amassing flowers. 
Youth sighed, "Which rose make ours. 
Which lily leave and then as best recall ?" 
Not that, admiring stars, 
It yearned, "Nor Jove, nor Mars ; 
Mine be some figured flame which blends, 
transcends them all !" 

Not for such hopes and fears 
Annulling youth's brief years, 
Do I remonstrate : folly wide the mark ! 
Rather I prize the doubt 



532 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Low kinds exist without, 
Finished and finite clods, untroubled by a 
spark. 

Poor vaunt of life indeed, 
Were man but formed to feed 
On joy, to solely seek and find and feast : 
Such feasting ended, then 
As sure an end to men ; 
Irks care the crop-full bird? Frets doubt 
the maw-crammed beast ? 

Rejoice we are allied 
To that which doth provide 
And not partake, effect and not receive ! 
A spark disturbs our clod ; 
Nearer we hold of God 
Who gives, than of his tribes that take, I 
must believe. 

Then, welcome each rebuff 
That turns earth's smoothness rough, 
Each sting that bids nor sit nor stand but go ! 
Be our joys three-parts pain! 
Strive, and hold cheap the strain; 
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never 
grudge the throe! 

For thence, — a paradox 
Which comforts while it mocks, — 
Shall life succeed in that it seems to fail : 
What I aspired to be, 
And was not, comforts me : 
A brute I might have been, but would not 
sink i' the scale. 

What is he but a brute 

Whose flesh, has soul to suit. 

Whose spirit works lest arms and legs want 

play? 
To man, propose this test — 
Thy body at its best. 
How far can that project thy soul on its 

lone way 1 

Yet gifts should prove their use : 
I own the Past profuse 
Of power each side, perfection every turn : 
Eyes, ears took in their dole. 
Brain treasured up the whole ; 
Should not the heart beat once "How good 
to live and learn"? 

Not once beat "Praise be thine ! 

I see the whole design, 

I, who saw power, see now love perfect too : 

Perfect I call thy plan : 



Thanks that I was a man ! 
Maker, remake, complete, — I trust what 
thou Shalt do?" 

For pleasant is this flesh ; 
Our soul, in its rose-mesh 
Pulled ever to the earth, still yearns for rest : 
Would we some prize might hold 
To match those manifold 
Possessions of the brute, — gain most, as we 
did best ! 

Let us not always say, 

"Spite of this flesh today 

I strove, made head, gained ground upon the 

whole !" 
As the bird wings and sings. 
Let us cry, "All good things 
Are ours, nor soul helps flesh more, now, 

than flesh helps soul I" 

Therefore I summon age 

To grant youth's heritage, 

Life's struggle having so far reached its 

term: 
Thence shall I pass, approved 
A man, for aye removed 
From the developed brute ; a god, though in 

the germ. 

And I shall thereupon 
Take rest, ere I be gone 
Once more on my adventure brave and new : 
Fearless and unperplexed. 
When I wage battle next, 
What weapons to select, what armor to 
indue. 

Youth ended, I shall try 
My gain or loss thereby ; 
Leave the fire ashes, what survives is gold : 
And I shall weigh the same, 
Give life its praise or blame : 
Young, all lay in dispute ; I shall know, being 
old. 

For note, when evening shuts, 
A certain moment cuts 
The deed off, calls the glory from the gray : 
A whisper from the west 
Shoots — -"Add this to the rest, 
Take it and try its worth : here dies another 
day." 

So, still within this life, 

Though lifted o'er its strife. 

Let me discern, compare, pronounce at last, 

"This rage was right i' the main, 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



533 



That acquiescence vain : 
The Future I may face now I have proved 
the Past." 

For more is not reserved 
To man, with soul just nerved 
To act tomorrow what he learns today : 
Here, work enough to watch 
The Master work, and catch 
Hints of the proper craft, tricks of the tool's 
true play. 

As it was better, youth 

Should strive, through acts uncouth, 

Toward making, than repose on aught found 

made : 
So, better, age, exempt 
From strife, should know, than tempt 
Further. Thou waitedst age: wait death 

nor be afraid ! 

Enough now, if the Right 

And Good and Infinite 

Be named here, as thou callest thy hand 

thine own, 
With knowledge absolute, 
Subject to no dispute 
From fools that crowded youth, nor let thee 

feel alone. 

Be there, for once and all, 
Severed great minds from small, 
Announced to each his station in the Past ! 
Was I, the world arraigned, 
Were they, my soul disdained. 
Right? Let age speak the truth and give us 
peace at last! 

Now, who shall arbitrate? 
Ten men love what I hate. 
Shun what I follow, slight what I receive ; 
Ten, who in ears and eyes 
Match me : we all surmise, 
They this thing, and I that : whom shall my 
soul believe? 

Not on the vulgar mass 

Called "work," must sentence pass. 

Things done, that took the eye and had the 

price ; 
O'er which, from level stand. 
The low world laid its hand, 
Found straightway to its mind, could value 

in a trice : 

But all, the world's coarse thumb 

And finger failed to plumb, 

So passed in making up. the main account; 

All instincts immature, 



All purposes unsure, 

That weighed not as his work, yet swelled 
the man's amount : 

Thoughts hardly to be packed 

Into a narrow act. 

Fancies that broke through language and 

escaped ; 
All I could never be. 
All, men ignored in me, 
This, I was worth to God, whose wheel the 

pitcher shaped. 

Ay, note that Potter's wheel. 

That metaphor ! and feel 

Why time spins fast, why passive lies our 

clay,— 
Thou, to whom fools propound, 
When the wine makes its round, 
"Since life fleets, all is change; the Past 

gone, seize today !" 

Fool ! All that is, at all. 

Lasts ever, past recall; 

Earth changes, but thy soul and God stand 

sure : 
What entered into thee. 
That was, is, and shall be: 
Time's wheel runs back or stops : Potter and 

clay endure. 

He fixed thee 'mid this dance 

Of plastic circumstance. 

This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain 
arrest : 

Machinery just meant 

To give thy soul its bent, 

Try thee and turn thee forth, sufficiently im- 
pressed. 

What though the earlier grooves, 
Which ran the laughing loves 
Around thy base, no longer pause and press ? 
What though, about thy rim. 
Skull-things in order grim 
Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner 
stress ? 

Look not thou down but up ! 

To uses of a cup. 

The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's 

peal, 
The new wine's foaming flow, 
The Master's lips aglow ! 
Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what 

needst thou with earth's wheel ? 



534 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



But I need, now as then, 

Thee, God, who moldest men; 

And since, not even while the whirl was 

worse. 
Did I — to the wheel of life 
With shapes and colors rife, 
Bound dizzily — mistake my end, to slake 

thy thirst: 

So, take and use thy work : 

Amend what flaws may lurk, 

What strain o' the stuff, what warpings past 
the aim ! 

My times be in thy hand ! 

Perfect the cup as planned! 

Let age approve of youth, and death com- 
plete the same! (1864) 

Prospicb 
robert browning 

Fear death ? to feel the fog in my throat, 

The mist in my face, 
When the snows begin, and the blasts denote 

I am nearing the place, 
The power of the night, the press of the 
storm, 
The post of the foe; 
Where he stands, the Arch Fear in a visible 
form. 
Yet the strong man must go : 
For the journey is done and the summit at- 
tained, 
And the barriers fall, 
Though a battle's to fight ere the guerdon be 
gained. 
The reward of it all. 
I was ever a fighter, so — one fight more. 

The best and the last ! 
I would hate that death bandaged my eyes, 
and forbore. 
And bade me creep past. 
No! let me taste the whole of it, fare like 
my peers 
The heroes of old, 
Bear the brunt, in a minute pay glad life's 
arrears 
Of pain, darkness, and cold. 
For sudden the worst turns the best to the 
brave. 
The black minute's at end. 
And the elements' rage, the fiend-voices that 
rave. 
Shall dwindle, shall blend, 
Shall change, shall become first a peace out 
of pain, 
Then a lights then thy breast, 



thou soul of my soul! I shall clasp thee 

(1864) 



again, 
And with God be the rest ! 



Epilogue to AsOLANDO 

ROBERT BROWNING 

At the midnight in the silence of the sleep- 
time, 
When you set your fancies free, 
Will they pass to where — by death, fools 

think, imprisoned — 
Low he lies who once so loved you, whom 
you loved so. — 
—Pity me? 

Oh, to love so, be so loved, yet so mistaken ! 

What had I on earth to do 
With the slothful, with the mawkish, the 

unmanly 1 
Like the aimless, helpless, hopeless, did I 
drivel 

— Being — who ? 

One who never turned his back but marched 
breast forward. 
Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, 

wrong would triumph. 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight 
better, 

Sleep to wake. 

No, at noonday in the bustle of man's work- 
time 
Greet the unseen with a cheer ! 
Bid him forward, breast and back as either 

should be, 
'^Strive and thrive !" cry "Speed, — fight on, 
fare ever 

There as here!" (1890) 

Quiet Work 

matthew arnold 

One lesson. Nature, let me learn of thee. 
One lesson which in every wind is blown. 
One lesson of two duties kept at one 
Though the loud world proclaim their en- 
mity— 
Of toil unsever'd from tranquillity! 
Of labor, that in lasting fruit outgrows 
Far noisier schemes, accomplish'd in repose. 
Too great for haste, too high for rivalry ! 
Yes, while on earth a thousand discords ring, 
Man's fitful uproar mingling with his toil. 
Still do thy sleepless ministers move on, 



NINETEENTH CENTURY IDEALS AND PROBLEMS 



535 



Their glorious tasks in silence perfecting ; 
Still working, blaming still our vain turmoil, 
Laborers that shall not fail, when man is 
gone. (1849) 

To A Friend 

MATTHEW ARNOLD 

Who prop, thou ask'st, in these bad days, my 

mind?— 
He much, the old man, who, clearest-souPd 

of men. 
Saw The Wide Prospect, and the Asian Fen, 
And Tmolus hill, and Smyrna bay, though 

blind.i 
Much he, whose friendship I not long since 

won,2 
That halting slave, who in Nicopolis 
Taught Arrian, when Vespasian's brutal 

son^ 
Clear'd Rome of what most shamed him. 

But be his 
My special thanks, whose even-balanced soul, 
From first youth tested up to extreme old 

.age. 
Business could not make dull, nor passion 

wild; 
Who saw life steadily, and saw it whole; 
The mellow glory of the Attic stage, 
Singer of sweet Colonus, and its child.* 

(1849) 

Morality 
matthew arnold 

We cannot kindle when we will 

The fire which in the heart resides ; 

The spirit bloweth and is still, 

In mystery our soul abides. 

But tasks in hours of insight will'd 

Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd. 

With aching hands and bleeding feet 
We dig and heap, lay stone on stone; 
We bear the burden and the heat 
Of the long day, and wish 't were done. 
Not till the hours of light return, 
All we have built do we discern. 

Then, when the clouds are off the soul, 
When thou dost bask in Nature's eye. 
Ask, how she view'd thy self-control, 
Thy struggling, task'd morality — 

*Homer. 
^Epictetus. 

^Domitian, who drove the philosophers out of 
Italy in 90 A. D. 
'Sophocles. 



Nature, whose free, light, cheerful air. 
Oft made thee, in thy gloom, despair. 

And she, whose censure thou dost dread. 
Whose eye thou wast afraid to seek, 
See, on her face a glow is spread, 
A strong emotion on her cheek ! 

"Ah, child !" she cries, "that strife divine, 
Whence was it, for it is not mine ? 

"There is no effort on my brow — 

I do not strive, I do not weep ; 

I rush with the swift spheres and glow 

In joy, and when I will, I sleep. 
Yet that severe, that earnest air, 
I saw, I felt it once — but where ? 

"I knew not yet the gauge of time, 

Nor wore the manacles of space ; 

I felt it in some other clime, 

I saw it in some other place. 

'Twas when the heavenly house I trod, 
And lay upon the breast of God." 

(1852) 

Self-Dependence 

matthew arnold 

Weary of myself, and sick of asking 
What I am, and what I ought to be, 
At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me 
Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea. 

And a look of passionate desire 

O'er the sea and to the stars I send : 

"Ye who from my childhood up have 

calm'd me. 
Calm me, ah, compose me to the end ! 

"Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye 

waters. 
On my heart your mighty charm renew; 
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you. 
Feel my soul becoming vast like you !" 

From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of 

heaven, 
Over the lit sea's unquiet way. 
In the rustling night-air came the answer : 
"Wouldst thou be as these are? Live as they. 

"Unaffrighted by the silence round them, 

Undistracted by the sights they see. 

These demand not that the things without 

them 
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy. 

"And with joy the stars perform their shin- 



536 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



And the sea its long moon-silver' d roll ; 
For self-poised they live, nor pine with 

noting 
All the fever of some differing soul. 

"Bounded by themselves, and unregardful 
In what state God's other works may be. 
In their own tasks all their powers pouring, 
These attain the mighty life you see." 

air-born voice ! long since, severely clear, 
A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear : 
"Resolve to be thyself ; and know that he. 
Who finds himself, loses his misery !" 

(1852) 

Dover Beach 

matthew aenold 

The sea is calm tonight, 

The tide is full, the moon lies fair 

Upon the straits; — on the French coast the 

light 
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England 

stand, 
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil^bay. 
Come to the windoAv, sweet is the night-air ! 
Only, from the long line of spray 
Where the sea meets the moon-blanch'd land, 
Listen ! you hear the grating roar 
Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and 

fling. 
At their return, up the high strand, 
Begin, and cease, and then again begin, 
With tremulous cadence slow, and bring 
The eternal note of sadness in. 

Sophocles long ago 

Heard it on the ^gasan, and it brought 

Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow 

Of human misery ; we 

Find also in the sound a thought. 

Hearing it by this distant northern sea. 

The Sea of Faith 

Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's 

shore 
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furl'd. 
But now I only hear 
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar. 
Retreating, to the breath 
Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear 
And naked shingles of the world. 
Ah, love, let us be true 
To one another ! for the world, which seems 
To lie before us like a land of dreams, 
So various, so beautiful, so new. 
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 



Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain ; 
And we are here as on a darkling plain 
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and 

flight, 
Where ignorant armies clash by night. 

(1867) 

Where Lies the Land to Which the 
Ship Would Go? 

arthur hugh clough 

Where lies the land to which the ship 

would go? 
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. 
And where the land she travels from 1 Away, 
Far, far behind, is all that they can say. 

On sunny noons upon the deck's smooth face, 
Linked arm in arm, how pleasant here to 

pace; 
Or, o'er the stern reclining, watch below 
The foaming wake far widening as we go. 

On stormy nights when wild north-westers 

rave, 
How proud a thing to fight with wind and 

wave ! 
The dripping sailor on the reeling mast 
Exults to bear; and scorns to wish it past. 

Where lies the land to which the ship 

would go? 
Far, far ahead, is all her seamen know. 
And where the land she travels from ? Away, 
Far, far behind, is all that they can say. 

"Caepe Diem" 

[From The Ruhaiyat of Omar Khayyam, 
translated by Edward Fitzgerald, 1859] 

Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise ! 

One thing at least is certain — This Life flies; 

One thing is certain and the rest is Lies ; 

The Flower that once has blown forever dies. 

Strange, is it not? that of the myriads who 
Before us passed the door of Darkness 
through. 
No one returns to tell us of the Road, 
Which to discover we must travel too. 

I sent my Soul through the Invisible 
Some letter of that After-life to spell : 

And by and by my Soul return'd to me. 
And answer'd, "I Myself am Heav'n and 
Hell" : 

Heav'n but the Vision of fulfill'd Desire, 
And Hell the Shadow from a Soul on fire 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY IDEALS AND PEOBLEMS 



537 



Cast on the Darkness into whieli Ourselves 
So late emerg'd from, shall so soon expire. 

"We are no other than a moving row 
Of Magic Shadow-shapes that come and go 
Round with the Sun-illumin'd Lantern 
held 
In Midnight by the Master of the Show; 

But helpless Pieces of the Game He plays 
Upon this Chequer-board of Nights and 

Days; 
Hither and thither moves, and checks, and 

slays, 
And one by one back in the Closet lays. 

The Ball no question makes of Ayes and 

Noes, 
But here or there as strikes the Player goes ; 
And He that toss'd you down into the 

Field, ■ 
He knows about it all — He knows — He 

knows ! 

The Moving Finger writes ; and, having writ, 
Moves on : nor all your Piety nor Wit 

Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line 
Nor all your Tears wash out a Word of it. 

And that inverted bowl we call the Sky, 
Whereunder crawling, coop'd we live and 
die. 
Lift not your hands to It fox help — for It 
As Impotently moves as you or I. 

Yesterday This Day's Madness did prepare ; 

Tomorrow's Silence, Triumph, or Despair: 

Drink! for you know not whence you 

came, nor why ; 

Drink! for you know not why you go, nor 

where. 

As under cover of departing Day 
Slunk hunger-stricken Ramazan away. 

Once more within the Potter's house alone 
I stood, surrounded by the Shapes of Clay. 

Shapes of all Sorts and Sizes, great and 

small. 
That stood along the floor and by the wall ; 
And some loquacious Vessels were; and 

some 
Listen'd perhaps but never talk'd at all. 

Said one among them, "Surely not in vain 
My substance of the common Earth was 
ta'en 



And to this Figure molded, to be broke, 
Or trampled back to shapeless Earth again." 

Then said a Second, "Ne'er a peevish Boy 
Would break the Bowl from which he drank 

in joy; 
And He that with his hand the Vessel 

made 
Will surely not in after Wrath destroy." 

After a momentary silence spake 
Some Vessel of a more ungainly Make ; 

"They sneer at me for leaning all awry: 
What! did the Hand then of the Potter 
shake?" 

Whereat some one of the loquacious Lot — 
I think a Sufi pipkin — waxing hot — 

"All this of Pot and Potter— Tell me then. 
Who is the Potter, pray, and who the Pot ?" 

"Why," said another, "some there are who 

tell 
Of one who threatens he will toss to Hell 
The luckless Pots he Marr'd in making — 

Pish ! 
He's a Good Fellow, and 'twill all be well.'' 

"Well," murmur'd one, "let whoso make or 

buy, 
My Clay with long Oblivion is gone dry : 
But fill me with the old familiar Juice, 
Methinks I might recover by and by." 

So while the Vessels one by one were speak- 
ing. 

The little Moon look'd in that all were seek- 
ing : 
And then they jogg'd each other, 
"Brother ! Brother ! 

NoV for the Porter's shoulder-knot a-ereak- 
ing!" 



The Garden of Proserpine 

algernon charles swinburne 

Here, where the world is quiet. 

Here, where all trouble seems 
Dead winds' and spent waves' riot 

In doubtful dreams of dreams ; 
I watch the green field growing 
For reaping folk and sowing. 
For harvest time and mowing, 
A sleepy world of streams. 

I am tired of tears and laughter. 
And men that laugh and weep 

Of what may come hereafter 
For men that sow to reap : 



538 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



I am weary of days and hours, 
Blown buds of barren flowers, 
Desires and dreams and powers 
And everything but sleep. 

Here life has death for neighbor, 

And far from eye or ear 
Wan waves and wet winds labor, 

Weak shijjs and spirits steer; 
They drive adrift, and whither 
They wot not who make thither ; 
But no such winds blow hither. 

And no such things grow here. 

No growth of moor or coppice. 

No heather-flower or vine, 
But bloomless buds of poppies, 

Green grapes of Proserpine, 
Pale beds of blowing rushes 
Where no leaf blooms or blushes, 
Save this whereout she crushes 

For dead men deadly wine. 

Pale, without name or number. 

In fruitless fields of corn. 
They bow themselves and slumber 

All night till light is born; 
And like a soul belated, 
In hell and heaven unmated, 
By cloud and mist abated 

Comes out of darkness morn. 

Though one were strong as seven, 
He too with death shall dwell, 

Nor wake with wings in heaven. 
Nor weep for pains in hell ; 

Though one were fair as roses, 

His beauty clouds and closes ; 

And well though love reposes. 
In the end it is not well. 

Pale, beyond porch and portal, 

Crowned with calm leaves, she stands 

Who gathers all things mortal 
With cold immortal hands ; 

Her languid lips are sweeter 

Than love's who fears to greet her 

To men that mix and meet her 
From many times and lands. 

She waits for each and other. 

She waits for all men born ; 
Forgets the earth her mother, 

The life of fruits and corn ; 
And spring and seed and swallow 
Take wing for her and follow 
Where summer song rings hollow 

And flowers are put to scorn. 



There go the loves that wither, 

The old loves with wearier wings ; 
And all dead years draw thither, 

And all disastrous things; 
Dead dreams of days forsaken 
Blind buds that snows have shaken, 
Wild leaves that winds have taken, 
Red strays of ruined springs. 

We are not sure of sorrow, 

And joy was never sure ; 
Today will die tomorrow. 

Time stoojDS to no man's lure; 
And love, grown faint and fretful 
With lips but half regretful 
Sighs, and with eyes forgetful 

Weeps that no loves endure. 

From too much love of living. 

From hope and fear set free, 
We thank with brief thanksgiving 

Whatever gods may be 
That no life lives forever ; 
That dead men rise up never; 
That even the weariest river 

Winds somewhere safe to sea. 

Then star nor sun shall waken. 

Nor any change of light : 
Nor sound of waters shaken, 

Nor any sound or sight : 
Nor wintry leaves nor vernal. 
Nor days nor things diurnal; 
Only the sleep eternal 

In an eternal night. (1866) 

Invictus 
v^illiam ernest henley 

Out of the night that covers me, 
Black as the pit from pole to pole, 

I thank whatever gods may be 
For my unconquerable soul. 

In the fell clutch of circumstance 
I have not winced nor cried aloud. 

Beneath the bludgeonings of chance 
My head is bloody but unbow'd. 

Beyond this place of wrath and tears 
Looms but the Horror of the shade. 

And yet the menace of the years 
Finds and shall find me unafraid. 

It matters not how strait the gate, 

How charged with punishments the scroll, 

I am the master of my fate : 
I am the captain of my soul. 



AMERICAN IDEALS-NATIONAL 

PERIOD 



I. THE NEW NATION 



Mother of a Mighty Race 

william cullen bryant 

Mother of a mighty race, 
Yet lovely in thy youthful grace ! 
The elder dames, thy haughty peers, 
Admire and hate thy blooming years. 

With words of shame 
And taunts of scorn they join thy name. 

For on thy cheeks the glow is spread 
That tints thy morning hills with red; 
Thy step — the wild-deer's rustling feet 
Within thy woods are not more fleet; 

Thy hopeful eye 
Is bright as thine own sunny sky. 

Ay, let them rail — those haughty ones. 
While safe thou dwellest with thy sons. 
They do not know how loved thou art, 
How many a fond and fearless heart 

Would rise to throw 
Its life between thee and the foe. 

They know not, in their hate and pride. 
What virtues with thy children bide; 
How true, how good, thy graceful maids 
Make bright, like flowers, the valley-shades ; 

What generous men 
Spring, like thine oaks, by hill and glen ; — 

What cordial welcomes greet the guest 
By thy lone rivers of the West; 
How faith is kept, and truth revered. 
And man is loved, and God is feared, 

In woodland homes. 
And where the ocean border foams. 

There's freedom at thy gates and rest 
For Earth's down-trodden and opprest, 
A shelter for the hunted head, 
For the starved laborer toil and bread.* 

Power, at thy bounds. 
Stops and calls back his baffled hounds. 



539 



fair young mother ! on thy brow 
Shall sit a nobler grace than now. 
Deep in the brightness of the skies 
The thronging years in glory rise, 

And, as they fleet. 
Drop strength and riches at thy feet. 

Thine eye, with every coming hour. 
Shall brighten, and thy form shall tower; 
And when thy sisters, elder born. 
Would brand thy name with words of scorn. 

Before thine eye. 
Upon their lips the taunt shall die. . 

Liberty and Union 

george washington 

[From the Farewell Address, 1796] 

In looking forward to the moment which 
is intended to terminate the career of my 
public life, my feelings do not permit me 
to suspend the deep acknowledgment of 
that debt of gratitude which I owe to my 
beloved country for the many honors it has 
conferred ujDon me ; still more for the stead- 
fast confidence with which it has sup- 
ported me ; and for the opportunities I have 
thence enjoyed of manifesting my inviol- 
able attachment, by services faithful and 
persevering, though in usefulness unequal 
to my zeal. If benefits have resulted to our 
country from these services, let it always 
be remembered to your praise, and as an 
instructive example in our annals, that un- 
der circumstances in which the passions, 
agitated in every direction, were liable to 
mislead, amidst appearances sometimes du- 
bious, vicissitudes of fortune often dis- 
couraging, in situations in which not un- 
f requently want of success has countenanced 
the spirit of criticism, the constancy of your 
support was the essential prop of the ef- 
forts, and a guarantee of the plans by which 



540 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



they were effected. Profoundly penetrated 
with this idea, I shall carry it with me 
to my grave, as a strong incitement to un- 
ceasing vows that Heaven may continue 
to you the choicest tokens of its benefi- 
cence; that your union and brotherly affec- 
tion may be perpetual, that the free con- 
stitution, which is the work of your hands, 
may be sacredly maintained, that its admin- 
istration in every department may be 
stamped with wisdom and virtue; that, in 
fine, the haiDpiness of the people of these 
states, under the auspices of liberty, may 
be made complete, by so careful a preserva- 
tion and so prudent a use of this bless- 
ing, as will acquire to them the glory of 
recommending it to the applause, the affec- 
tion, and adojDtion of every nation, which 
is yet a stranger to it. 

Here perhaps, I ought to stop. But a 
solicitude for your welfare, which cannot 
end but with my life, and the apprehension 
of danger, natural to that solicitude, urge 
me, on an occasion like the present, to 
offer to your solemn contemplation, and to 
recommend to your frequent review, some 
sentiments which are the result of much 
reflection, of no inconsiderable observa- 
tion, and which appear to me all-important 
to the permanency of your felicity as a 
people. These will be offered to you with . 
the more freedom, as you can only see in 
them the disinterested warnings of a part- 
ing friend, who can possibly have no per- 
sonal motive to bias his counsel. Nor can 
I forget, as an encouragement to it, your 
indulgent reception of my sentiments on a 
former and not dissimilar occasion. 

Interwoven as is the love of liberty with 
every ligament of your hearts, no recom- 
mendation of mine is necessary to fortify 
or confirm the attachment. 

The unity of government, which consti- 
tutes you one people, is also now dear to 
you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar 
in the edifice of your real independence, 
the support of your tranquillity at home, 
your peace abroad, of your safety; of your 
prosperity; of that very liberty which you 
so highly prize. But as it is easy to foresee, 
that, from different causes and from dif- 
ferent quarters, much pains will be taken, 
many artifices employed, to weaken in your 
minds the conviction of this truth; as this 
is the point in your political fortress against 
which the batteries of internal and external 
enemies will be most constantly and actively 
(though often covertly and insidiously) 



directed, it is of infinite moment that you 
should properly estimate the immense value 
of your national union to your collective 
and individual happiness; that you should 
cherish a cordial, habitual, and immovable 
attachment to it; accustoming yourself to 
think and speak of it as of the palladium 
of your political safety and prosjoerity; 
watching for its preservation with jealous 
anxiety; discountenancing whatever may 
suggest even a suspicion that it can in any 
event be abandoned ; and indignantly frown- 
ing upon the first dawning of every attempt 
to alienate any portion of our country from 
the rest, or to enfeeble the sacred ties which 
now link together the various parts. 

For this you have every inducement of 
sympathy and interest. Citizens, by birth 
or choice, of a common country, that coun- 
try has a right to concentrate your affec- 
tions. The name of American, which be- 
longs to you, in your national capacity, 
must always exalt the just pride of patri- 
otism, more than any appellation derived 
from local discriminations. With slight 
shades of difference, you have the same re- 
ligion, manners, habits, and political prin- 
ciples. You have in a common cause fought 
and triumphed together; the independence 
and liberty you possess are the work of 
joint counsels, and joint efforts, of common 
dangers, sufferings, and successes. 

But these considerations, however power- 
fully they address themselves to your sensi- 
bility, are greatly outweighed by those which 
apply more immediately to your interest. 
Here every portion of our country finds the 
most commanding motives for carefully 
guarding and preserving the union of the 
whole. 

The North, in an unrestrained intercourse 
with the South, protected by the equal laws 
of a common government, finds in the pro- 
ductions of the latter great additional re- 
sources of maritime and commercial en- 
terprise and precious materials of manu- 
facturing industry. The South, in the same 
intercourse, benefiting by the agency of the 
North, sees its agriculture grow and its 
commerce expand. Turning partly into its 
own channels the seamen of the North, it 
finds its particular navigation invigorated; 
and, while it contributes, in different ways, 
to nourish and increase the general mass of 
the national navigation, it looks forward to 
the protection of a maritime strength, to 
which itself is unequally adapted. The 
East, in a like intercourse with the West, 



AMERICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PERIOD 



541 



already finds, and in the progressive im- 
provement of interior communications by 
land and water, will more and more find, 
a valuable vent for the commodities which 
it brings fi'om abroad, or manufactures at 
home. The West derives from the East 
supplies requisite to its growth and com- 
fort, and, what is perhaps of still greater 
consequence, it must of necessity owe the 
secure enjoyment of indispensable outlets 
for its own productions to the weight, in- 
fluence, and the future maritime strength 
of the Atlantic side of the Union, directed 
by an indissoluble community of interest as 
one nation. Any other tenure by which 
the West can hold this essential advan- 
tage, whether derived from its own separ- 
ate strength, or from an apostate and un- 
natural connection with any foreign power, 
must be intrinsically precarious. 

While, then, every part of our country 
thus feels an immediate and particular in- 
terest in union, all the parts combined can- 
not fail to find in the united mass of means 
and efforts greater strength, gTeater re- 
source, proportionately greater security 
from external danger, a less frequent in- 
terruption of their peace by foreign na- 
tions ; and, what is of inestimable value, they 
must derive from union an exemption from 
those broils and wars between themselves, 
which so frequently afflict neighboring coun- 
tries not tied together by the same govern- 
ments, which their own rivalships alone 
would be sufficient to produce, but which 
opposite foreign alliances, attachments, and 
intrigues would stimulate and embitter. 
Hence, likewise, they will avoid the neces- 
sity of those overgTown military establish- 
ments, which, under any form of govern- 
ment, are inauspicious to liberty, and which 
are to be regarded as particularly hostile 
to republican liberty. In this sense it is, 
that your union ought to be considered as a 
main proj) of your liberty, and that the 
love of the one ought to endear to you 
the preservation of the other. 

These considerations speak a persuasive 
language to every reflecting and virtuous 
mind, and exhibit the continuance of the 
Union as a primary object of patriotic de- 
sire. Is there a doubt whether a common 
government can embrace so large a sphere? 
Let experience solve it. To listen to mere 
speculation in such a ease were criminal. 
We are authorized to hope that a proper 
organization of the whole, with the auxiliary 
agency of governments for the respective 



subdivisions, will afford a happy issue to 
the experiment. It is well worth a fair 
and full experiment. With such powerful 
and obvious motives to union, affecting all 
parts of our country, while experience shall 
not have demonstrated its impracticability, 
there will always be reason to distrust the 
patriotism of those, who in any quarter may 
endeavor to weaken its bands. 

Im contemplating the causes which may 
disturb our Union, it occurs as matter of 
serious concern, that any gTound should 
have been furnished for characterizing 
parties by geographical discriminations, 
Northern and Southern, Atlantic and West- 
ern; whence designing men may endeavor 
to excite a belief that there is a real dif- 
ference of local interests and views. One 
of the expedients of jDarty to acquire in- 
fluence, within particular districts, is to 
misrepresent the opinions and aims of other 
districts. You cannot shield yourselves too 
much against the jealousies and heart-burn- 
ings which spring from these misrepresen- 
tations; they tend to render alien to each 
other those who ought to be bound to- 
gether by fraternal affection. The inhabi- 
tants of our western country have lately 
had a useful lesson on this head; they have 
seen, in the negotiation by the Executive, and 
•in the unanimous ratification by the Senate, 
of the treaty with Spain, and in the univer- 
sal satisfaction at that event, throughout 
the United States, a decisive proof how un- 
founded were the suspicions propagated 
among them of a policy in the General 
Government and in the Atlantic States un- 
friendly to their interests in regard to the 
Mississippi ; they have been witnesses to the 
formation of two treaties, that with Great 
Britain, and that with Spain, which secure 
to them every thing they could desire, in 
respect to our foreign relations, towards 
I confirming their prosperity. Will it not be 
I their wisdom to rely for the preservation 
I of these advantages on the Union by which 
{ they were procured? Will they not hence- 
forth be deaf to those advisers, if such 
there are, who would sever them from their 
brethren and connect them with aliens ? 

To the efficacy and permanency of your 
Union, a Government for the whole is in- 
dispensable. No alliances, however strict, 
between the parts can be an adequate sub- 
stitute ; they must inevitably experience the 
infractions and interruptions which all 
alliances in all times have experienced. Sen- 
sible of this momentous truth, you have 



542 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



improved upon your first essay, by the 
adoption of a Constitution of Government 
better calculated than your former for an 
intimate Union, and for the efficacious man- 
agement of your common concerns. This 
Government, the offsi3ring of our own 
choice, uninflueneed and unawed, adopted 
upon full investigation and mature delib- 
eration, completely free in its principles, 
in the distribution of its powers, uniting 
security with energy, and containing within 
itself a provision for its own amendment, 
has a just claim to your confidence and 
your support. Respect for its authority, 
compliance with its laws, acquiescence in its 
measures, are duties enjoined by the fun- 
damental maxims of true Liberty. The 
basis of our political systems is the right 
of the people to make and to alter their 
constitutions of government. But the con- 
stitution which at any time exists, till 
changed by an explicit and authentic act of 
the whole people, is sacredly obligatory 
upon alL The very idea of the power and 
the right of the people to establish Govern- 
ment presupposes the duty of every indi- 
vidual to obey the established Government. 
All obstructions to the execution of the 
laws, all combinations and associations, un- 
der whatever plausible character, with the 
real design to direct, control, counteract, 
or awe the regular deliberation and action 
of the constituted authorities, are destruc- 
tive of this fundamental principle, and of 
fatal tendency. They serve to organize fac- 
tion, to give it an artificial and extraordi- 
nary force; to put, in the place of the 
delegated will of the nation, the will of a 
party, often a small but artful and enter- 
prising minority of the community; and, 
according to the alternate trium^Dhs of dif- 
ferent parties, to make the public admin- 
istration the mirror of the ill-concerted and 
incongruous projects of faction, rather than 
the organ of consistent and wholesome 
plans digested by common counsels, and 
modified by mutual interests. 

. Party Spirit 

george washington 

[From the Farewell Address, 1796] 

I have already intimated to you the 
danger of parties in the state, with par- 
ticular reference to the founding of them 
on geographical discriminations. Let me 
now take a more comprehensive view, and 



warn you in the most solemn manner against 
the baneful effects of the spirit of party, 
generally. 

This sjDirit, unfortunately, is inseparable 
from our nature, having its root in the 
strongest passions of the human mind. It 
exists under different shapes in all govern- 
ments, more or less stifled, controlled, or re- 
pressed; but, in those of the popular form, 
it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is 
truly their worst enemy. 

The alternate domination of one faction 
over another, sharpened hj the spirit of 
revenge, natural to party dissension, which 
in different ages and countries has per- 
petrated the most horrid enormities, is it- 
self a frightful despotism. But this leads 
at length to a more formal and permanent 
despotism. The disorders' and miseries, 
which result, gTadually incline the minds 
of men to seek security and repose in the 
absolute power of an individual ; and sooner 
or later the chief of some prevailing faction, 
more able or more fortunate than his com- 
petitors, turns this disposition to the pur- 
poses of his own elevation, on the ruins of 
public liberty. 

Without looking forward to an extremity 
of this kind (which nevertheless ought not 
to be entirely out of sight), the common 
and continual mischiefs of the spirit of 
party are sufficient to make it the interest 
and duty of a wise people to discourage 
and restrain it. 

It serves always to distract the public 
councils, and enfeeble the public adminis- 
tration. It agitates the community with 
ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; 
kindles the animosity of one part against 
another, foments occasionally riot and in- 
surrection. It opens the door to foreign 
influence and corruption, which find a facili- 
tated access to the government itself 
through the channels of party passions. 
Thus the policy and the will of one coun- 
try are subjected to the policy and will 
of another. 

There is an opinion that parties in free 
countries are useful checks upon the admin- 
istration of the government, and serve to 
keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within 
certain limits is probably true ; and in gov- 
ernments of a monarchical cast, patriotism 
may look with indulgence, if not with fa- 
vor, upon the spirit of party. But in those 
of the popular character, in governments 
purely elective, it is a spirit not to be en- 
couraged. From their natural tendency, it 



AMEEICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



543 



is certain there will always be enough of 
that spirit for every salutary purpose. And, 
there being constant danger of excess, the 
effort ought to be, by force of public opin- 
ion, to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not 
to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigi- 
lance to prevent its bursting into a flame, 
lest, instead of warming, it should consume. 
It is important, likewise, that the habits 
of thinking in a free country should inspire 
caution, in those intrusted with its admin- 
istration, to confine themselves within their 
respective constitutional spheres, avoiding 
in the exercise of the powers of one de- 
partment to encroach ui^on another. The 
spirit of encroachment tends to consolidate 
the powers of all the departments in one, 
and thus to create, whatever the form of 
government, a real despotism. A just esti- 
mate of that love of power, and proneness 
to abuse it which predominates in the hu- 
man heart, is sufficient to satisfy us of 
the truth of this position. The necessity 
of reciprocal checks in the exercise of politi- 
cal power, by dividing and distributing it 
into different depositories, and constituting 
each the guardian of the public weal against 
invasions by the others, has been evinced 
by experiments ancient and modern; some 
of them in our country and under our own 
eyes. To preserve them must be as necessary 
'as to institute them. If, in the opinion 
of the people, the distribution or modifica- 
tion of the constitutional powers be in any 
particular wrong, let it be corrected by an 
amendment in the way which the constitu- 
tion designates. But let there be no change 
by usurpation; for, though this, in one 
instance, may be the instrument of good, 
it is the customary weapon by which free 
governments are destroyed. The precedent 
must always greatly overbalance in perma- 
nent evil any partial or transient benefit, 
which the use can at any time yield. 

America and the World 

george washington 

[From the Farewell Address, 1796] 

• Observe good faith and justice towards 
all nations; cultivate peace and harmony 
with all. Religion and morality enjoin this 
conduct; and can it be, that good policy 
does not equally enjoin it? It will be 
worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no 
distant period, a great nation, to give to 
mankind the magnanimous and too novel 



example of a people always guided by an 
exalted justice and benevolence. Who can 
doubt, that in the course of time and things, 
the fruits of such a plan would richly repay 
any temporary advantages, which might be 
lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it 
be that Providence has not connected the 
permanent felicity of a nation with its 
virtue? The experiment, at least, is recom- 
mended by every sentiment which ennobles 
human nature. Alas ! is it rendered impos- 
sible by its vices? 

In the execution of such a plan, nothing 
is more essential, than that permanent, in- 
veterate antipathies against particular na- 
tions, and passionate attachments for oth- 
ers, 'should be excluded; and that, in place 
of them, just and amicable feelings towards 
all should be cultivated. The nation, which' 
indulges towards another an habitual ha- 
tred, or an habitual fondness, is in some 
degree a slave. It is a slave to its ani- 
mosity or to its affection, either of which 
is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty 
and its interest. Antipathy in one nation 
against another disposes each more readily 
to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of 
slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty 
and intractable, when accidental or trifling 
occasions of dispute occur. Hence, fre- 
quent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and 
bloody contests. The nation, prompted by 
ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels 
to war the Government, contrary to the 
best calculations of policy. The Govern- 
ment sometimes particijDates in the national 
propensity, and adopts through passion 
what reason would reject; at other times, 
it makes the animosity of the nation sub- 
servient to projects of hostility instigated 
by pride, ambition, and other sinister and 
pernicious motives. The peace often, some- 
times perhaps the liberty, of nations has 
been the victim. 

So likewise, a passionate attachment of 
one nation for another produces a variety 
of evils. Sympathy for the favorite na- 
tion, facilitating the illusion of an imag- 
inary common interest in cases where no 
real common interest exists, and infusing 
into one the enmities of the other, betrays 
the former into a participation in the quar- 
rels and wars of the latter, without ade- 
quate inducement or justification. It leads 
also to concessions to the favorite nation of 
privileges denied to others, which is apt 
doubly to injure the nation making the 
concessions; by unnecessarily parting with 



544 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



what ought to have been retained; and by 
exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposi- 
tion to retaliate, in the parties from whom 
equal privileges are withheld. And it gives 
to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citi- 
zens (who devote themselves to the favorite 
nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the 
interests of their own country, without 
odium, sometimes even with popularity; 
gilding, with the appearances of a virtu- 
ous sense of obligation, a commendable 
deference for public of)inion, or a laudable 
zeal for public good, the base or foolish 
compliances of ambition, con'uption, or in- 
fatuation. 

As avenues to foreign influence in in- 
numerable ways, such attachments are par- 
ticularly alarming to the truly enlightened 
and indeiDendent patriot. How many op- 
portunities do they afford to tamper with 
domestic factions, to practice the arts of 
seduction, to mislead public oi^inion, to in- 
fluence or awe the public councils! Such 
an attachment of a small or weak, towards 
a great and powerful nation, dooms the 
former to be the satellite of the latter. 

Against the insidious wiles of foreign 
influence (I conjure you to believe me, 
fellow-citizens), the jealousy of a free 
people ought to be constantly awake, since 
history and experience prove that foreign 
influence is one of the most baneful foes 
of republican government. But that jeal- 
ousy, to be useful, must be impartial; else 
it becomes the instrument of the very in- 
fluence to be avoided, instead of a de- 
fence against it. Excessive partiality for 
one foreign nation, and excessive dislike 
of another, cause those whom they actuate 
to see danger only on one side, and serve 
to veil and even second the arts of in- 
fluence on the other. Real patriots who 
may resist the intrigues of the favorite, 
are liable to become suspected and odious; 
while its tools and dupes usurp the ap- 
plause and confidence of the people, to 
surrender their interests. 

The great rule of conduct for us, in re- 
gard to foreign nations, is, in extending 
our commercial relations, to have with them 
as little political connection as possible. So 
far as we have already formed engage- 
ments, let them be fulfilled with perfect 
good faith. Here let us stop. 

Europe has a set of primary interests, 
which to us have none, or a very remote 
relation. Hence she must be engaged in 
frequent controversies, the causes of which 



are essentially foreign to our concerns. 
Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us 
to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in 
the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or 
the ordinary combinations and collisions of 
her friendships or enmities. 

Our detached and distant situation in- 
vites and enables us to pursue a different 
course. If we remain one people, under 
an efficient government, the period is not 
far off when we may defy material injury 
from external annoyance; when we may 
take such an attitude as will cause the 
neutrality, we may at any time resolve 
upon, to be scrujDulously respected; when 
belligerent nations, under the impossibility 
of making acquisitions upon us, will not 
lightly hazard the giving us provocation; 
when we may choose peace or war, as our 
interest, guided by justice, shall counsel. 

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar 
, a situation? Why quit our own to stand 
upon foreign ground? Why, by interweav- 
ing our destiny with that of any part of 
Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity 
in the toils of European ambition, rival- 
ship, interest, humor, or caprice? 

It is our true policy to steer clear of 
permanent alliances with any portion of the 
foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are 
now at liberty to do it; for let me not be 
understood as capable of jDatronizing in-" 
fidelity to existing engagements. I hold 
the maxim no less applicable to public than 
to private affairs, that honesty is always 
the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let 
those engagements be observed in their 
genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is 
unnecessary and would be unwise to extend 
them. 

Taking care always to keep ourselves, by 
suitable establishments, on a respectable de- 
fensive posture, we may safely trust to 
temporary alliances for extraordinary 
emergencies. 

Harmony, liberal intercourse with all na- 
tions, are recommended by policy, humanity, 
and interest. But even our commercial 
policy should hold an equal and impartial 
hand; neither seeking nor granting ex- 
clusive favors or preferences; consulting 
the natural course of things; diffusing and 
diversifying by gentle means the streams 
of commerce, but forcing nothing; estab- 
lishing, with powers so disposed, in order 
to give trade a stable course, to define the 
rights of our merchants and to enable the 
government to support them, conventional 



AMERICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



545 



rules of intercourse, the best that present 
circumstances and mutual opinion will per- 
mit, but temporary, and liable to be from 
time to time abandoned or varied, as ex- 
perience and circumstances shall dictate; 
constantly keeping in view, that it is folly 
in one nation to look for disinterested favors 
from another ; that it must pay with a por- 
tion of its indejDendence for whatever it 
may accept under that character; that, by 
such acceptance, it may place itself in the 
condition of having given equivalents for 
nominal favors, and yet of being rej^roached 
with ingratitude for not giving more. There 
can be no greater error than to expect 
or calculate upon real favors from nation 
to nation. It is an illusion, which exjaeri- 
ence must cure, which a just pride ought 
to discard. 



The rouNDATiONS of Our Government 

THOMAS JEFFERSON 

[From the First Inaugural Address, 1801] 

During the contest of opinion through 
which we have passed, the animation of 
discussion and of exertions has sometimes 
worn an aspect which might impose on 
strangers unused to think freely and to 
speak and write what they think; but this 
being now decided by the voice of the na- 
tion, announced according to the rules of 
the Constitution, all will, of course, ar- 
range themselves under the will of the law, 
and unite in common efforts for the com- 
mon good. All, too, will bear in mind this 
sacred principle, that though the will of the 
majority is in all cases to prevail, that 
will, to be rightful, must be reasonable; 
that the majority possess their equal rights, 
which equal law must protect, and to vio- 
late which would be oppression. Let us, 
then, fellow-citizens, unite with one heart 
and one mind. Let us restore to social 
intercourse that harmony and affection with- 
out which liberty and even life itself are 
but dreary things. And let us reflect that, 
having banished from our land that religi- 
ous intolerance under which mankind so 
long bled and suffered, we have yet gained 
little if we countenance a political intoler- 
ance as despotic, as wicked, and capable 
of as bitter and bloody persecutions. Dur- 
ing the throes and convulsions of the an- 
cient world, during the agonizing spasms 
of infuriated man seeking through blood 
and slaughter his long-lost liberty, it was 



not wonderful that the agitation of the 
billows should reach even this distant and 
peaceful shore; that this should be more 
felt and feared by some and less by others, 
and should divide opinions as to measures 
of safety. But every difference of opinion 
is not a difference of principle. We have 
called by different names brethren of the 
same principle. We are all ReiDublicans, 
we are all Federalists. If there be any 
among us who would wish to dissolve this 
Union or to change its republican form, 
let them stand undisturbed as monuments 
of the safety with which eiTor of opin- 
ion may be tolerated where reason is left 
free to combat it. I know, indeed, that 
some honest men fear that a republican 
government cannot be strong, that this 
Government is not strong enough ; but would 
the honest patriot, in full tide of successful 
experiment, abandon a government which 
has so far kept us free and firm, on the 
theoretic and visionary fear that this Gov- 
ernment, the world's best hope, may by 
possibility want energy to i^treserve itself? 
I trust not. I believe this, on the con- 
trary, the strongest Government on earth. 
I believe it the only one where every man, 
at the call of the law, would tly to the stand- 
ard of the law, and would meet invasions 
of the public order as his own personal 
concern. Sometimes it is said that man 
cannot be trusted with the government of 
himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the 
government of others? Or have we found 
angels in the forms of kings to govern 
him? Let history answer this question. 

Let us, then, with courage and confidence 
pursue our own Federal and Republican 
principles, our attachment to union and 
representative government. Kindly sep- 
arated by nature and a wide ocean from 
the exterminating havoc of one quarter of 
the globe; too high-minded to endure the 
degradations of the others; possessing a 
chosen country, with room enough for our 
descendants to the thousandth and thou- 
sandth generation; entertaining a due sense - 
of our equal right to the use of our own 
faculties, to the acquisitions of our own 
industry, to honor and confidence from our 
fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, 
but from our actions and their sense of 
them ; enlightened by a benign religion, pro- 
fessed, indeed, and practiced in various 
forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, 
truth, temperance, gTatitude, and the love 
of man; acknowledging and adoring an 



546 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



overruling Providence, which by all its 
dispensations proves that it delights in the 
happiness of man here and his greater 
happiness hereafter — with all these bless- 
ings, what more is necessary to make us 
a happy and prosperous people? Still one 
thing more, fellow-citizens — a wise and 
frugal Government, which shall restrain 
men from injuring one another, shall leave 
them otherwise free to regulate their own 
pursuits of industry and improvement, and 
shall not take from the mouth of labor the 
bread it has earned. This is the sum of 
good government, and this is necessary to 
close the circle of our felicities. 

About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the 
exercise of duties which comprehend every- 
thing dear and valuable to you, it is proper 
that you should understand what I deem 
the essential principle of our Government, 
and consequently those which ought to shape 
its Administration. I will compress them 
within the narrowest compass they will 
bear, stating the general principle, but not 
all its limitations. Equal and exact jus- 
tice to all men, of whatever state or persua- 
sion, religious or political ; peace, commerce, 
and honest friendship with all nations, 
entangling alliances with none; the sup- 
port of the State governments in all their 
rights, as the most competent administra- 
tions for our domestic concerns and the 
surest bulwarks against anti-republican 
tendencies; the preservation of the Central 
Government in its whole constitutional 
vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at 
home and safety abroad; a jealous care of 
the right of election by the people — a mild 
and safe corrective of abuses which are 
lopped by the sword of revolution where 
peaceable remedies are unprovided; abso- 
lute acquiescence in the decisions of the 
majority, the vital principle of republics, 
from which is no appeal but to force, the 
vital principle and immediate parent of 
despotism; a well-disciplined militia, our 
best reliance in peace and for the first mo- 
ments of war, till regulars may relieve 
them; the supremacy of the civil over the 
military authority; economy in the public 
expense, that labor may be lightly bur- 
dened; the honest payment of our debts 
and sacred preservation of the public faith ; 
encouragement of agriculture, and of com- 
merce as its handmaid; the diffusion of in- 
formation and the arraignment of all abuses 
at the bar of public reason ; freedom of re- 
ligion; freedom of the press, and free- 



dom of person under the protection of the 
habeas corpus; and trial by juries impar- 
tially selected. These principles form the 
bright constellation which has gone before 
us and guided our steps through an age 
of revolution and reformation. The wis- 
dom of our sages and blood of bur heroes 
have been devoted to their attainment. They 
should be the creed of our political faith, 
the text of civic instruction, the touchstone 
by which to try the services of those we 
trust; and should we wander from them in 
moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to 
retrace our steps and to regain the road 
which alone leads to peace, liberty, and 
safety. 

The Comedy of Politics i 

WASHINGTOK IRVING 

[From Knickerbocker's History of New 
York, 1809] 

Of Yankees 

That my readers may the more fully com- 
prehend the extent of the calamity, at this 
very moment impending over the honest, 
unsuspecting province of Nieuw Neder- 
landts, and its dubious governor, it is nec- 
essary that I should give some account of 
a horde of strange barbarians, bordering 
upon the eastern frontier. 

Now so it came to pass, that, many years 
previous to the time of which we are treat- 
ing, the sage cabinet of England had 
adopted a certain national creed, a kind of 
public walk of faith, or rather a religious 
turnpike, in which every loyal subject was 
directed to travel to Zion, — taking care to 
pay the toll-gatherers by the way. 

Albeit a certain shrewd race of men, be- 
ing very much given to indulge their own 
opinions on all manner of subjects (a pro- 
pensity exceedingly offensive to your free 
governments of Europe), did most pre- 
sumptuously dare to think for themselves 
in matters of religion, exercising what they 
considered a natural and unextinguishable 
right — ^the liberty of conscience. 

^ Certain passages in this burlesque history form 
a satire on American politics in the time of Jeffer- 
son. The idea that all political wisdom resides 
in the people, the virulence of party warfare, and 
the theories of the "philosophic president," as Jef- 
ferson was called by the Federalists, come in for 
ridicule. Especially does Irving satirize Jeffer- 
son's "government by proclamation," etc., during 
the period of the Embargo, and the growing diffi- 
culties resulting from American foreign relations. 
For a discussion of the subject see an article in 
the Texas Review, April, 1916, 



AMEEICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



547 



As, however, they possessed that ingenu- 
ous habit of mind which always thinks 
aloud, which rides cock-a-hoop on the 
tongue, and is forever galloping into other 
people's ears, it naturally followed that their 
liberty of conscience likewise implied lib- 
erty of speech, which being freely indulged, 
soon put the country in a hubbub, and 
aroused the pious indignation of the vigi- 
lant fathers of the church. 

The usual methods were adopted to re- 
claim them, which in hose days were con- 
sidered efficacious in bringing back stray 
sheep to the fold ; that is to say, they were 
coaxed, they were admonished, they were 
menaced, they were buffeted, — line upon 
line, precept upon precept, lash upon lash, 
here a little and there a great deal, were 
exhorted without mercy and without suc- 
cess, — until the worthy pastors of the 
church, wearied out by their unparalleled 
stubbornness, were driven, in the excess of 
their tender mercy, to adopt the Scripture 
text, and literally to "heap live embers on 
their heads." 

Nothing, however, could subdue that in- 
dependence of the tongue which has ever 
distinguished this singular race, so that, 
rather than subject that heroic member to 
further tyranny, they one and all embarked 
for the wilderness of America, to enjoy, 
unmolested, the inestimable right of talk- 
ing. And, in fact, no sooner did they land 
upon the shore of this free-spoken country, 
than they all lifted up their voices, and 
made such a clamor of tongues, that 
we are told they frightened every bird 
and beast out of the neighborhood, and 
struck such mute terror into certain fish, 
that they have been called dumb-fish ever 
since. 

This may appear marvellous, but it is 
nevertheless true ; in proof of which I would 
observe, that the dumb-fish has ever since 
become an object of superstitious rever- 
ence, and forms the Saturday's dinner of 
every true Yankee. 

The simple aborigines of the land for a 
while contemplated these strange folk in 
utter astonishment; but discovering that 
they wielded harmless though noisy weap- 
ons, and were a lively, ingenious, good- | 
humored race of men, they became very 
friendly and sociable, and gave them the 
name of Yanohies, which in the Mais- 
Tehusaeg (or Massachusett) language sig- 
nifies silent men, — a waggish appellation, 
since shortened into the familiar epithet of 



Yankees, which they retain unto the pres- 
ent day. 

True it is, and my fidelity as an historian 
will not allow me to pass over the fact, 
that, having served a regular apprentice- 
ship in the school of persecution, these in- 
genious people soon showed that they had 
become masters of the art. The great ma- 
jority were of one particular mode of 
thinking in matters of religion ; but, to their 
great surprise and indignation, they found 
that divers papists, quakers, and ana-bap- 
tists were springing up among them, and 
all claiming to use the liberty of speech. 
This was at once jDronounced a daring abuse 
of the liberty of conscience, which they 
now insisted was nothing more than the 
liberty to think as one pleased in matters of 
religion — provided one thought right; for 
otherwise it would be giving a latitude to 
damnable heresies. Noav as they, the ma- 
jority, were convinced that they alone 
thought right, it consequently followed, 
that whoever thought different from them 
thought wrong, — and whoever thought 
wrong, and obstinately persisted in not 
being convinced and converted, was a fla- 
grant violator of the inestimable liberty of 
conscience, and a corrupt and infectious 
member of the body politic, and deserved to 
be lopped off and cast into the fire. The 
consequence of all which was a fiery perse- 
cution of divers sects, and especially of 
quakers. 

Now I'll warrant there are hosts of my 
readers, ready at once to lift up their hands 
and eyes, with . that virtuous indignation 
with which we contemiDlate the faults and 
errors of our neighbors, and to exclaim at 
the preposterous idea of convincing the 
mind by tormenting the body, and establish- 
ing the doctrine of charity and forbear- 
ance by intolerant persecution. But in 
simple truth, what are we doing at this very 
day, and in this very enlightened nation, 
but acting upon the very same principle 
in our political controversies? Have we 
not within but a few years released our- 
selves from the shackles of a government 
which cruelly denied us the privilege of 
governing ourselves, and using in full lati- 
tude that invaluable member, the tongue"? 
and are we not at this very moment striving 
our best to tyrannize over the opinions, tie 
up the tongues, and ruin the fortunes of one 
another? What are our great political 
societies but mere political inquisitions, — 
our pot-house committees, but little tri- 



548 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



buuals of denunciation, — our newspapers, 
but mere whipping-posts and pillories, 
where unfortunate individuals are pelted 
with rotten eggs,— and our council of ap- 
jDointment, but a grand auto da fe, where 
culprits are annually sacrificed for their 
political heresies'? 

Where, then, is the difference in prin- 
ciple between our measures and those you 
are so ready to condemn among the peo- 
ple I am treating of? There is none; the 
difference is merely circumstantial. Thus 
we denounce, instead of banishing, — ^we 
libel, instead of scourging, — ^we turn out of 
office, instead of hanging, — and where they 
burnt an offender in proper person, we 
either tar and feather, or hum him in effigy, 
— this political persecution being, some- 
how or other, the grand palladium of our 
liberties, and an incontrovertible proof that 
this is a free country! 

William the Testy Governs by 
Proclamation 

No sooner had this bustling little poten- 
tate been blown by a whiff of fortune into 
the seat of government than he called his 
council together to make them a speech on 
the state of affairs. 

Caius Gracchus, it is said, when he har- 
angued the Roman populace, modulated his 
tone by an oratoi'ical flute or pitehpipe; 
Wilhelmus Kieft, not having such an in- 
strument at hand, availed himself of that 
musical organ or trump which nature has 
implanted in the midst of a man's face : 
in other words, he preluded his address by 
a sonorous blast of the nose, — a preliminary 
flourish much in vogue among public ora- 
tors. 

He then commenced by expressing his 
humble sense of his utter unworthiness of 
the high post to which he had been ap- 
pointed; which made some of the simple 
burghers wonder why he undertook it, not 
knowing that it is a point of etiquette with 
a public orator never to enter upon office 
without declaring himself unworthy to cross 
the threshold. He then proceeded in a man- 
ner highly classic and erudite to speak of 
government generally, and of the govern- 
ments of ancient Greece in particular, to- 
gether with the wars of Rome and Carth- 
age, and the rise and fall of sundry out- 
landish empires which the worthy burghers 
had never read nor heard of. Having thus, 
after the manner of your learned orator, 



treated of things in general, he came, by 
a natural, roundabout transition, to the 
matter in hand, namely, the daring aggres- 
sions of the Yankees. 

As my readers are well aware of the ad- 
vantage a potentate has of handling his 
enemies as he pleases in his speeches and 
bulletins, where he has the talk all on his 
own side, they may rest assured that Wil- 
liam the Testy did not let such an oppor- 
tunity escape of giving the Yankees what 
is called "a taste of his quality." In speak- 
ing of their inroads into the territories of 
their High Mightinesses, he compared them 
to the Gauls who desolated Rome, the Goths 
and Vandals who overran the fairest plains 
of Europe; but when he came to speak of 
the unparalleled audacity with which they 
of Weathersfield had advanced their patches 
up to the very walls of Fort Goed Hoop, 
and threatened to smother the garrison in 
onions, tears of rage started into his eyes, 
as though he nosed the very offence in ques- 
tion. 

Having thus wrought up his tale to a 
climax, he assumed a most belligerent look, 
and assured the council that he had devised 
an instrument, potent in its effects, and 
which he ti-usted would soon drive the Yan- 
kees from the land. So saying, he thrust 
his hand into one of the deep pockets of 
his broad-skirted coat and drew forth, not 
an infernal machine, but an instrument in 
writing, which he laid with great emphasis 
upon the table. 

The burghers gazed at it for a time in 
silent awe, as a wary housewife does at a 
gun, fearful it may go off half-cocked. The . 
document m question had a sinister look, 
it is true ; it was crabbed in text, and from 
a broad red ribbon dangled the great seal 
of the province, about the size of a buck- 
wheat pancake. Still, after all, it was but 
an instrument in writing. Herein, however, 
existed the wonder of the invention. The 
document in question was a Proclamation, 
ordering the Yankees to depart instantly 
from the territories of their High Mighti- 
nesses, under pain of suffering all the for- 
feitures and punishments in such case made 
and provided. It was on the moral effect 
of this formidable instrument that Wil- 
helmus Kieft calculated, pledging his valor 
as a governor that, once fulminated against 
the Yankees, it would, in less than two 
months, drive every mother's son of them 
across the borders. 

The council broke up in perfect wonder; 



AMEEICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



549 



and nothing was talked of for some time 
among the old men and women of New 
Amsterdam but the vast genius of the gov- 
ernor, and his new and cheap mode of 
fighting by proclamation. 

As to Wilhelmus Kieft, having dis- 
patched his proclamation to the frontiers, 
he put on his cocked hat and corduroy small- 
clothes, and mounting a tall raw-boned 
charger, trotted out to his rural retreat of 
Dog's Misery. Here, like the good Numa, 
he reposed from the toils of state, taking 
lessons in government, not from the nymph 
Egeria, but from the honored wife of his 
bosom, who was one of that class of fe- 
males sent upon the earth a little after the 
flood, as a punishment for the sins of man- 
kind, and commonly known by the appel- 
lation of knowing women. In fact, my 
duty as an historian obliges me to make 
known a circumstance which was a great 
secret at the time, and consequently was 
not a subject of scandal at more than half 
the tea-tables in New Amsterdam, but 
Avhich, like many other gi'eat secrets, has 
leaked out in the lapse of years, — and this 
was, that Wilhelmus the Testy, though one 
of the most potent little men that ever 
breathed, yet submitted at home to a species 
of government, neither laid down in Aris- 
totle nor Plato, in short, it partook of the 
nature of a pure, unmixed tjrt'anny, and is 
familiarly denominated petticoat govern- 
ment; — an absolute sway, which, although 
exceedingly common in these modern days, 
was very rare among the ancients, if we 
may judge from the rout made about the 
domestic economy of honest Socrates; which 
is the only ancient case on record. 

The great Kieft, however, warded off all 
the sneers and sarcasms of his particular 
friends, who are ever ready to joke with a 
man on sore points of the kind, by alleging 
that it was a government of his own elec- 
tion, to which he submitted through choice, 
adding at the same time a profound maxim 
which he had found in an ancient author, 
that "he who would aspire to govern, should 
first learn to obey." 

Of the Rise of Parties 

Wilhelmus Kieft, as has already been ob- 
served, was a great legislator on a small 
scale, and had a miscroscopic eye in public 
affairs. He had been greatly annoyed by 
the factious meeting of the good people of 
New Amsterdam, but, observing that on 



these occasions the pipe was ever in their 
mouth, he began to think that the pipe was 
at the bottom of the affair, and that there 
was some mysterious affinity between poli- 
tics and tobacco-smoke. Determined to 
strike at the root of the evil, he began forth- 
with to rail at tobacco, as a noxious, nau- 
seous weed, filthy in all its uses; and as to 
smoking, he denounced it as a heavy tax 
upon the public pocket, — a vast consumer 
of time, a great encourager of idleness, and 
a deadly bane to the prosperity and morals 
of the people. Finally he issued an edict, 
prohibiting the smoking of tobacco through- 
out the New Netherlands. Ill-fated Kieft ! 
Had he lived in the present age and at- 
tempted to check the unbounded license of 
the press, he could not have struck more 
sorely upon the sensibilities of the million. 
The pipe, in fact, was the great organ of 
reflection and deliberation of the New Neth- 
erlander. It was his constant companion 
and solace: was he gay, he smoked; was 
he sad, he smoked ; his pipe was never out 
of his mouth ; it was a part of his physiog- 
nomy ; without it his best friends would not 
know him. Take away his pipe? You 
might as well take away his nose ! 

The immediate effect of the edict of Wil- 
liam the Testy was a popular commotion. 
A vast multitude, armed with pipes and 
tobacco-boxes, and an immense supply of 
ammunition, sat themselves down before the 
governor's house, and fell to smoking with 
tremendous violence. The testy William 
issued forth like a wrathful spider, demand- 
ing the reason of this lawless fumigation. 
The sturdy rioters replied by lolling back in 
their seats, and puffing away with redoubled 
fury, raising such a murky cloud that the 
governor was fain to take refuge in the in- 
terior of his castle. 

A long negotiation ensued through the 
medium of Antony the Trumpeter. The 
governor was at first wrathful and unyield- 
ing, but was gradually smoked into terms. 
He concluded by permitting the smoking of 
tobacco, but he abolished the fair long 
pipes used in the days of Wouter Van 
Twiller, denoting ease, tranquillity, and so- 
briety of deportment; these he condemned 
as incompatible with the dispatch of busi- 
ness, in place whereof he substituted little 
captious short pipes, two inches in length, 
which, he observed, could be stuck in one 
corner of the mouth, or twisted in the hat- 
band, and would never be in the way. Thus 
ended this alarming insurrection, which was . 



550 



THE GEBAT TEADITION 



long known by the name of The Pipe-Plot, 
and which, it has been somewhat quaintly 
observed, did end, like most plots and sedi- 
tions, in mere smoke. 

But mark, oh reader ! the deplorable evils 
which did afterwards result. The smoke of 
these villainous little pipes, continually as- 
cending in a cloud about the nose, pene- 
trated into and befogged the cerebellum, 
dried up all the kindly moisture of the brain, 
and rendered the people who use them as 
vaporish and testy as the governor himself. 
Nay, what is worse, from being goodly, 
burly, sleek-conditioned men, they became, 
like our Dutch yeomanry who smoke short 
pipes, a lantern- jawed, smoke-dried, leath- 
ern-hided race. 

Nor was this all. From this fatal schism 
in tobacco-pipes we may date the rise of 
parties in the Nieuw Nederlands. The rich 
and self-important burghers who had made 
their fortunes, and could afford to be lazy, 
adhered to the ancient fashion, and formed 
a kind of aristocracy known as the Long 
Pipes; while the lower order, adopting the 
reform of William Kieft as more convenient 
in their handicraft employments, were 
branded with the plebeian name of Short 
Pipes. 

A third party sprang up, headed by the 
descendants of Robert Shewit, the com- 
panion of the great Hudson. These dis- 
carded pipes altogether and took to chewing 
tobacco; hence they were called Quids, — an 
appellation since given to those political 
mongrels, which sometimes spring up be- 
tween two great parties, as a mule is pro- 
duced between a horse and an ass. 

And here I would note the great benefit 
of party distinctions in saving the people 
at large the trouble of thinking. Hesiod 
divides mankind into three classes, — those 
who think for themselves, those who think 
as others think, and those who do not think 
at all. The second class comprises the great 
mass of society; for most people require a 
set creed and a file-leader. Hence the origin 
of party: which means a large body of 
people, some few of whom think, and all the 
rest talk. The former take the lead and 
discipline the latter; prescribing what they 
must say, what they must approve, what 
they must hoot at, whom they must sup- 
port, but, above all, whom they must hate; 
for no one can be a right good partisan, who 
is not a thorough-going hater. 

The enlightened inhabitants of the Man- 
hattoes, therefore, being divided into par- 



ties, were enabled to hate each other with 
great accuracy. And now the great busi- 
ness of polities went bravely on, the long 
pipes and short pipes assembling in sepa- 
rate beer-houses, and smoking at each other 
with implacable vehemence, to the gTeat 
support of the State and profit of the tav- 
ern-keepers. Some, indeed, went so far as 
to bespatter their adversaries with those 
odoriferous little words which smell so 
strong in the Dutch language, believing, like 
true politicians, that they served their party, 
and glorified themselves in proportion as 
they bewrayed their neighbors. But, how- 
ever they might differ among themselves, 
all parties agreed in abusing the governor, 
seeing that he was not a governor of their 
choice, but appointed by others to rule over 
them. 

Unhappy William Kieft! exclaims the 
sage writer of the Stuyvesant manuscript, 
doomed to contend with enemies too know- 
ing to be entrapped, and to reign over a 
people too wise to be governed. All his 
foreign exiDeditions were baffled and set at 
naught by the all-pervading Yankees; all 
his home measures were canvassed and con- 
demned by "numerous and respectable meet- 
ings" of pot-house politicians. 

In the multitude of counsellors, we are 
told, there is safety; but the multitude of 
counsellors was a continued source of per- 
plexity to William Kieft. With a tem- 
perament as hot as an old radish, and a mind 
subject to iDerpetual whirlwinds and torna- 
does, he never failed to get into a passion 
with every one who undertook to advise 
him. I have observed, however, that your 
passionate little men, like small boats with 
large sails, are easily upset ^ or blown out 
of their course; so was it with William the 
Testy, who was prone to be carried away by 
the last piece of advice blown into his ear. 
The consequence was, that, though a 
projector of the first class, yet by continually 
changing his projects he gave none a fair 
trial ; and by endeavoring to do everything, 
he in sober truth did nothing. 

In the meantime, the sovereign people got 
into the saddle, showed themselves, as usual, 
unmerciful riders; spurring on the little 
governor with harangaies and petitions, and 
thwarting him with memorials and re- 
proaches, in much the same way as holiday 
apprentices manage an unlucky devil of a 
hack-horse, — so that Wilhelmus Kieft was 
kept at a worry or a gallop throughout the 
whole of his administration. 



AMEEICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



551 



Of War and Treaties 

It was the opinion of that poetical philos- 
oi^her, Lucretius, that war was the original 
state of man, whom he described as being 
primitively a savage beast of prey, engaged 
in a constant state of hostility with his own 
species, and that this ferocious spirit was 
tamed and ameliorated by society. The 
same opinion has been advocated by Hobbes, 
nor have there been wanting many other 
philosophers to admit and defend. 

For my part, though prodigiously fond 
of tliese valuable speculations, so compli- 
mentary to human nature, yet, in this in- 
stance, I am inclined to take the proposition 
by halves, believing with Horace, that, 
though war may have been originally the 
favorite amusement and industrious em- 
ployment of our progenitors, yet, like many 
other excellent habits, so far from being 
ameliorated, it has been cultivated and con- 
firmed by refinement and civilization, and 
increases in exact proportion as we ap- 
proach towards that state of perfection 
which is the ne plus ultra of modern philos- 
ophy. 

The first conflict between man and man 
was the mere exertion of physical force, un- 
aided by auxiliary weapons ; his arm was his 
buckler, his fist was his mace, and a br.oken 
head the catastrophe of his encounters. The 
battle of unassisted strength was succeeded 
by ithe more rugged one of stones and clubs, 
and war assumed a sanguinary aspect. As 
man advanced in refinement, as his faculties 
expanded, and as his sensibilities became 
more exquisite, he grew rapidly more in- 
genious and experienced in the art of mur- 
dering his fellow-beings. He invented a 
thousand devices to defend and to assault: 
the helmet, the cuirass, and the buckler, the 
sword, the dart, and the javelin, prepared 
him to elude the wound as well as to launch 
the blow. Still urging on, in the career of 
philanthropic invention, he enlarges and 
heightens his powers of defense and injury : 
— The Aries, tlie Scorpio, the Balista, and 
the Catapulta, give a horror and sublimity 
to war, and magnify its glory, by increasing 
its desolation. Still insatiable, though 
armed with machinery that seemed to reach 
the limits of destructive invention, and to 
yield a power of injury commensurate even 
with the desires of revenge, — still deeper re- 
searches must be made in the diabolical 
arcana. With furious zeal he dives into 
the bowels of the earth; he toils midst 



poisonous minerals and deadly salts, — the 
sublime discovery of gunpowder blazes 
upon the world — and finally the dreadful 
art of fighting by proclamation seems to 
endow the demon of war with ubiquity and 
omnipotence ! 

This, indeed, is grand! — this, indeed, 
marks the powers of mind, and bespeaks 
that divine endowment of reason, which dis- 
tinguishes us from the animals, our in- 
feriors. The unenlightened brutes content 
themselves with the native force which 
Providence has assigned them. The angry 
bull butts with his horns, as did his pro- 
genitors before him; the lion, the leopard, 
and the tiger seek only with their talons and 
their fang's to gratify their sanguinary fury ; 
and even the subtle, serpent darts the same 
venom, and uses the same wiles, as did his 
sire before the flood. Man alone, blessed 
with the inventive mind, goes on from dis- 
covery to discovery, — enlarges and multi- 
plies his powers of destruction, — arrogates 
the tremendous weajDons of Deity itself, and 
tasks creation to assist him in murdering his 
brother-worm ! 

In proi^ortion as the art of war has in- 
creased in improvement has the art of pre- 
serving peace advanced in equal ratio; and 
as we have discovered, in this age of wonders 
and inventions, that proclamation is the 
most formidable engine in war, so have we 
discovered the no less ingenious mode of 
maintaining peace by perpetual negotia- 
tions. 

A treaty, or, to speak more correctly, a 
negotiation, therefore, according to the ac- 
ceptation of experienced statesmen, learned 
in these matters, is no longer an attempt 
to accommodate differences, to ascertain 
rights, and to establish an equitable ex- 
change of kind offices, but a contest of skill 
between two powers, which shall overreach 
and take in the other. It is a cunning en- 
deavor to obtain by peaceful maneuvre, and 
the chicanery of cabinets, those advantages 
which' a nation would otherwise have 
wrested by force of arms, — in the same 
manner as a conscientious highwayman re- 
forms and becomes a quiet and praise- 
worthy citizen, contenting himself with 
cheating his neighbor out of that property 
he would formerly have seized with open 
violence. 

In fact, the only time when two nations 
can be said to be in a state of perfect amity 
is, when a negotiation is open, and a treaty 
pending. Then, when there are no stipula- 



552 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



tions entered into, no bonds to restrain the 
will, no specific limits to awaken the 
captious jealousy of right implanted in our 
nature, when each party has some ad- 
vantage to hope and expect from the other, 
then it is that the two nations are wonder- 
fully gracious and friendly, — their min- 
isters professing the highest mutual re- 
gard, exchanging billets-doux, making fine 
speeches, and indulging in all those little 
diplomatic flirtations, coquetries, and fond- 
lings, that do so marvelously tickle the good- 
humor of the respective nations. Thus it 
may paradoxically be said, that there is 
never so good an understanding between two 
nations as when there is a little misunder- 
standing, — and that so long as they are on 
no terms at all, they are on the best terms 
in the world ! 

I do not by any means pretend to claim 
the merit of having made the above discov- 
ery. It has, in fact, long been secretly acted 
upon by certain enlightened cabinets, and 
is, together with divers other notable 
tiieories, privately eoj^ied out of the com- 
monplace book of an illustrious gentleman, 
who has been member of congress, and en- 
joyed the unlimited confidence of heads of 
departments. To this principle may be 
ascribed the wonderful ingenuity shown of 
late years in protracting and interrupting 
negotiations. Hence the cunning measure 
of appointing as ambassador some political 
pettifogger skilled in delays, sophisms, and 
misapprehensions, and dexterous in the art 
of baffling argument, — or some blundering 
statesman, whose errors and misconstruc- 
tions may be a plea for refusing to ratify 
his engagements. And hence, too, that most 
notable expedient, so popular with our 
government, of sending out a brace of am- 
bassadors, — between whom, having each an 
individual will to consult, character to estab- 
lish, and interest to promote, you may as 
well look for unanimity and concord as be- 
tween two lovers with one mistress, two dogs 
with one bone, or two naked rogues with 
one pair of breeches. This disagreement, 
therefore, is continually breeding delays and 
impediments, in consequence of which the 
negotiation goes on swimmingly — inasmuch 
as there is no prospect of its ever coming to 
a close. Nothing is lost by these delays 
and obstacles but time ; and in a negotiation, 
according to the theory I have exposed, all 
time lost is in reality so much time gained : 
— with what delightful paradoxes does mod- 
ern political economy abound ! 



Now all that I have here advanced is so 
notoriously true, that I almost blush to take 
up the time of my readers with treating of 
matters which must many a time have stared 
them in the face. But the proposition to 
which I would most earnestly call their at- 
tention is this, that, though a negotiation be 
the most harmonizing of all national trans- 
actions, yet a treaty of peace is a great 
political evil, and one of the most fruitful 
sources of war. 

I have rarely seen an instance of any spe- 
cial contract between individuals that did 
not produce jealousies, bickerings, and often 
downright ruptures between them ; nor did I 
ever know of a treaty between two nations 
that did not occasion continual misunder- 
standings. How many worthy country 
nei_ghbors have I known, who, after living in 
peace and good-fellowship for years, have 
been thrown into a state of distrust, 
cavilling, and animosity, by some ill-starred 
agreement about fences, runs of water, and 
stray cattle ! And how many well-meaning 
nations, who would otherwise have remained 
in the most amicable disposition towards 
each other, have been brought to swords' 
points about the infrix^gement or miscon- 
struction of some treaty, which in an evil 
hour they had concluded, by way of making 
their amity more sure ! 

Treaties at best are but complied with so 
long as interest requires their fulfilment; 
consequently they are virtually binding on 
the weaker jDarty only, or, in plain truth, 
they are not binding at all. No nation will 
wantonly go to war with another if it has 
nothing to gain thereby, and therefore needs 
no treaty to restrain it from violence; and 
if it have anything to gain, I much question, 
from what I have witnessed of the righteous 
conduct of nations, whether any treaty could 
be made so strong that it could not thrust 
the sword through, — nay, I would hold ten 
to one, the treaty itself would be the very 
source to which resort would be had to find 
a pretext for hostilities. 

Thus, therefore, I conclude, — that, though 
it is the best of all policies for a nation to 
keep up a constant negotiation with its 
neighbors, yet it is the summit of folly for it 
ever to be beguiled into a treaty; for then 
comes on non-fulfilment and infraction, then 
remonstrance, then altercation, then retalia- 
tion, then recrimination, and finally open 
war. In a word, negotiation is like court- 
ship, a time of sweet words, gallant speeches, 
soft looks, and endearing caresses, — but the 



AMERICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PERIOD 



553 



marriage ceremony is the signal for hos- 
tilities. 

If my painstaking reader be not some- 
what perjDlexed by the ratiocination of the 
foregoing passage, he will perceive, at a 
.glance, that the Great Peter, in concluding 
a treaty with his eastern neighbors, was 
guilty of lamentable error in policy. In 
fact, to this unlucky agreement may be 
traced a world of bickerings and heart- 
burnings, between the parties, about fan- 
cied or pretended infringements of treaty- 
stipulations ; in all which the Yankees were 
prone to indemnify themselves by a "dig 
into the sides" of the New Netherlands. 
But, in sooth, these border feuds, albeit they 
gave great annoyance to the good burghers 
of Manna-hata, were so pitiful in their na- 
ture, that a grave historian like myself, who 
grudges the time spent in anything less 
than the revolutions of states and fall of 
empires, would deem them uuAvorthy of 
being inscribed on his page. The reader is, 
therefore, to take it for granted, though I 
scorn to waste, in the detail, that time which 
my furrowed brow and trembling hand in- 
form me is invaluable, that all the while the 
Great Peter was occupied in those tre- 
mendous and bloody contests which I shall 
shortly rehearse; there was a continued 
series of little, dirty, snivelling seourings, 
broils, and maraudings, kept up on the 
eastern frontiers by the moss-troopers of 
Connecticut. But, like that mirror of chiv- 
alry, the sage and valorous Don Quixote, I 
leave these petty contests for some future 
Sancho Panza of an historian, Avhile I re- 
serve my prowess and my pen for achieve- 
ments of higher dignity ; for at this moment 
I hear a direful and portentous note issuing 
from the bosom of the great council of the 
league, and resounding throughout the re- 
gions of the east, menacing the fame and 
fortunes of Peter Stuyvesant. I call, there-, 
fore, upon the reader to leave behind him all 
the paltry brawls of the Connecticut borders, 
and to press forward with me to the relief 
of our favorite hero, who, I foresee, will be 
woefully beset by the implacable Yankees in 
the next chapter. 

Of Democracy 

The history of the reign of Peter Stuy- 
vesant furnishes an edifying picture of the 
cares and vexations inseparable from sov- 
ereignty, and a solemn warning to all who 
are ambitious of attaining the seat of honor. 



Though returning in triumph and crowned 
with victory, his exultation was checked on 
observing the abuses which had sprung up 
in New Amsterdam during his short absence. 
His walking-staff, which he had sent home 
to act as vicegerent, had, it is true, kept his 
council-chamber in order, — the counsellors 
eying it with awe, as it lay in grim repose 
upon the table, and smoking their pipes in 
silence, — but its control extended not out of 
doors. 

The populace unfortunately had had too 
much their OAvn way under the slack though 
fitful reign of William the Testy; and 
though ujDon the accession of Peter Stuy- 
vesant they had felt, with the instinctive 
perception which mobs as well as cattle pos- 
sess, that the reins of government had 
passed into stronger hands, yet could they 
not help fretting and chafing and champing 
upon the bit, in restive silence. 

Scarcely, therefore, had he departed on 
his exjDedition against the Swedes, than the 
old factions of William Kieft's reign had 
again thrust their heads above water. Pot- 
house meetings were again held to "dis- 
cuss the state of the nation," where cobblers, 
tinkers, and tailors, the self-dubbed "friends 
of the people," once more felt themselves 
inspired with the gift of legislation, and 
undertook to lecture on every movement of 
government. 

Now, as Peter Stuj^vesant had a singular 
inclination to govern the province by his 
individual will, his first move, on his return, 
was to put a stop to this gratuitous legis- 
lation. Accordingly, one evening, when an 
inspired cobbler was holding forth to an 
assemblage of the kind, the intrepid Peter 
suddenly made his appearance, with his omi- 
nous walking-staff in his hand, and a coun- 
tenance sufficient to petrify a mill-stone. 
The whole meeting was thrown into confu- 
sion, — the orator stood aghast, with open 
mouth and trembling knees, while "horror! 
tyranny ! liberty ! rights ! taxes ! death ! de- 
struction!" and a host of other patriotic 
phrases were bolted forth before he had time 
to close his lips. Peter took no notice of the 
skulking throng, but strode up to the 
brawling bully-ruffian, and putting out a 
huge silver watch, which might have served 
in times of yore as a town-clock, and which 
is still retained by his descendants as a f am- - 
ily curiosity, requested the orator to mend 
it, and set it going. The orator humbly con- 
fessed it was utterly out of his power, as he 
was unacquainted with the nature of its 



554 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



eonstruetion. "Nay, but," said Peter, "try 
your ingenuity, man : you see all the springs 
and wheels, and how easily the clumsiest 
hand may stop it, and pull it to pieces ; and 
why should it not be equally easy to regulate 
as to stop if?" The orator declared that his 
trade was wholly different, — that he was a 
poor cobbler, and had never meddled with 
a watch in his life, — that there were men 
skilled in the art, whose business it was to 
attend to those matters ; but for his part, he 
should only mar the workmanship and put 
the whole in confusion. "Why, harkee, 
master of mine," cried Peter, — turning sud- 
denly upon him, with a countenance that 
almost petrified the patcher of shoes into a 
perfect lapstone, — "dost thou pretend to 
meddle with the movements of government, 
— to regulate, and correct, and patch, and 
cobble a complicated machine, the principles 
of which are above thy comprehension, and 
its simplest operations too subtle for thy 
understanding, when thou canst not correct 
a trifling error in a common piece of mech- 
anism, the whole mystery of which is open 
to thy insiDection? — Hence with thee to the 
leather and stone, which are emblems of 
thy head; cobble thy shoes, and confine 
thyself to the vocation for which Heaven 
has fitted thee. "But," elevating his voice 
until it made the welkin ring, "if ever I 
catch thee, or any of thy tribe, meddling 
again with affairs of government, by St. 
Nicholas, but I'll have every mother's 
bastard of ye flay'd alive, and your hides 
stretched for drumheads, that ye may hence- 
forth make a noise to some purpose !" 

This threat, and the tremendous voice in 
which it was uttered, caused the whole mul- 
titude to quake with fear. The hair of the 
orator rose on his head like his own swine's 
bristles, and not a knight of the thimble 
present but his heart died within him, and 
he felt as though he could have verily 
escaped through the eye of a needle. The 
assembly dispersed in silent consternation; 
the pseudo-statesmen, who had hitherto un- 
dertaken to regulate public affairs, were 
now fain to stay at home, hold their tongues, 
and take care of their families; and party 
feuds died away to such a degree, that 
many thriving keepers of taverns and 
dram-shops were utterly ruined for want of 
business. But though this measure pro- 
duced the desired effect in putting an ex- 
tinguisher on the new lights just brighten- 
ing up, yet did it tend to injure the popu- 
larity of the Great Peter with the thinking 



part of the community, that is to say, that 
part which thinks for others instead of for 
themselves, or, in other words, who attend 
to everybody's business but their own. 
These accused the old governor of being 
highly aristocratical ; and in truth there 
seems to have been some ground for such an 
accusation ; for he carried himself with a 
lofty, soldier-like air, and was somewhat 
particular in di'ess, appearing, when not in 
uniform, in rich apparel of the antique 
flaundrish cut, and was especially noted for 
having his sound leg (which was a very 
comely one) always arrayed in a red stock- 
ing and high-heeled shoe. 

Justice he often dispensed in the primitive 
patriarchal way, seated on the "stoep" be- 
fore his door, under the shade of a great 
button-wood tree ; but all visits of form and 
state were received with something of court 
ceremony in the best parlor; where Antony 
the Trumpeter officiated as high chamber- 
lain. On iDublie occasions he appeared 
with gi'eat pomp of equipage, and always 
rode to church in a yellow wagon with 
flaming red wheels. 

These symptoms of state and ceremony, 
as we have hinted, were much cavilled at 
by the thinking (and talking) part of the 
community. They had been accustomed to 
find easy access to their former governors, 
and in particular had lived on terms of ex- 
treme intimacy with William the Testy ; and 
they accused Peter Stuyvesant of assuming 
too much dignity and reserve, and of wrap- 
ping himself in mystery. Others, however, 
have pretended to discover in all this a 
shrewd policy on the part of the old gov- 
ernor. It is certainly of the first im- 
portance, say they, that a country should be 
governed by wise men : but then it is almost 
equally important that the people should 
think them wise; for this belief alone can 
produce willing subordination. To keep 
up, however, this desirable confidence in 
rulers, the people should be allowed to see 
as little of them as possible. It is the mys- 
tery which envelops great men, that gives 
them half their greatness. There is a kind 
of sui^erstitious reverence for office which 
leads us to exaggerate the merits of the 
occu^Dant, and to suppose that he must be 
wiser than common men. He, however, who 
gains access to cabinets, soon finds out by 
what foolishness the world is governed. He 
finds that there is quackery in legislation as 
in everything else; that rulers have their 
whims and errors as well as other men, and 



AMEEICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PERIOD 



555 



are not so wonderfully superior as he had 
imagined, since even he may occasionally 
confute them in argument. Thus awe sub- 
sides into confidence, confidence insjDires 
familiarity, and familiarity produces con- 
tempt. Such was the case, say they, with 
William the Testy. By making himself too 
easy of access he enabled every scrub-poli- 
tician to measure wits with him, and to find 
out the true dimensions not only of his per- 
son but of his mind: and thus it was that, 
by being familiarly scanned, he was discov- 
ered to be a very little man. Peter Stuy- 
vesant on the contrary, say they, by conduct- 
ing himself with dignity and loftiness, was 
looked up to with great reverence. As he 
never gave his reasons for anything he did, 
the public gave him credit for very pro- 
found ones; every movement, however in- 
trinsically unimportant, was a matter of 
speculation; and his very red stockings ex- 
cited some respect, as being different from 
the stockings of other men. 

Another charge against Peter Stuyvesant 
was that he had a great leaning in favor 
of the patricians; and indeed in his time 
rose many of those mighty Dutch families 
which have taken such vigorous root, and 
branched out so luxuriantly in our State. 
Some, to be sure, were of earlier date, such 
as the Van Kortlandts, the Van Zandts, the 
Ten Broeeks, the Harden Broecks, and 
others of Pavonian renown, who gloried in 
the title of "Discoverers," from having been 
engaged in the nautical expedition from 
Communipaw, in which they so heroically 
braved the terrors of Hell-gate and Butter- 
milk Channel, and discovered a site for New 
Amsterdam. 

Others claimed to themselves the appella- 
tion of "Conquerors," from their gallant 
achievements in New Sweden and their vic- 
tory over the Yankees at Oyster Bay. Such 
was that list of warlike worthies heretofore 
enumerated, beginning with the Van 
Wycks, the Van Dycks, and the Ten 
Eycks, and extending to the Rutgers, 
the Bensons, the Brinkerhoffs, and the 
Sehermerhorns, — a roll equal to the Dooms- 
day-Book of William the Conqueror, 
and establishing the heroic origin of many 
an ancient aristoeratical Dutch family. 
These, after all, are the only legitimate no- 
bility and lords of the soil ; these are the real 
"beavers of the Manhattoes" ; and much does 
it grieve me in modern days to see them 
elbowed aside by foreign invaders, and more 
especially by those ingenious people, "the 



Sons of the Pilgrims"; who out-bargain 
them in the market, out-sioeeulate them on 
the exchange, out-top them in fortune, and 
run up mushroom palaces so high, that the 
tallest Dutch family mansion has not wind 
enough left for its weather-cock. 

In the proud days of Peter Stuyvesant, 
howevei', the go.od old Dutch aristocracy 
loomed out in all its grandeur. The burlj 
burgher, in round-crowned flaundrish hat 
with brim of vast circumference, in portly 
gabardine and bulbous multiplicity of 
breeches, sat on his "stoep" and smoked his 
pipe in lordly silence; nor did it ever enter 
his brain that the active, restless Yankee, 
whom he saw through his half -shut eyes wor- 
rying about in dog-day heat, ever intent on 
the main chance, was one day to usurp con- 
trol over these goodly Dutch domains. Al- 
ready, however, the races regarded each 
other with disparaging eyes. The Yankees 
sneeringly spoke of the round-crowned 
burghers of the Manhattoes as the "Copper- 
heads," while the latter, glorying in their 
own nether rotundity, and observing the 
slack galligaskins of their rivals, flapping 
like an empty sail against the mast, retorted- 
upon them with the opprobrious appellation 
of "Platter-breeches." 

Of Democracy at War 

There is no sight more truly interesting 
to a philosopher than a community where 
every individual has a voice in public atf airs, 
where every individual considers himself 
the Atlas of the nation, and where every in- 
dividual thinks it his duty to bestir himself 
for the good of his country : I say, there is 
nothing more interesting to a philosopher 
than such a community in a sudden bustLe 
of war. Such clamor of tongues — such 
patriotic bawling — such running hither and 
thither — everybody in a hurry— everybody 
in trouble — everybody in the way, and 
everybody interrupting his neighbor — who 
is busily employed in doing nothing! It 
is like witnessing a great fire, where the 
whole community are agog — some dragging 
about empty engines — others scampering 
with full buckets, and spilling the contents 
into their neighbor's boots — and others 
ringing the church-bells all night, by way of 
putting out the fire. Little firemen, like 
sturdy little knights storming a breach, 
clambering up and down scaling-ladders, 
and bawling through tin trumpets, by way 
of directing the attack. Here a fellow, in 



556 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



his great zeal to save the property of the 
unfortunate, catches up an anonymous 
chamber-utensil, and gallants it off with 
an air of as much self-importance as if he 
had rescued a pot of money; there another 
throws looking-glasses and china out of the 
window, to save them from the flames; 
whilst those who can do nothing else run 
up and down the streets, keeping up an in- 
cessant cry of Fire! Fire! Fire! 

"When the news arrived at Sinope," says 
Lucian, — though I own the story is rather 
trite, — "that Philip was about to attack 
them, the inhabitants were thrown into a 
violent alarm. Some ran to furbish up their 
arms; others rolled stones to build up the 
walls, — everybody, in short, was employed, 
and everybody in the way of his neighbor. 
Diogenes alone could find nothing to do; 
whereupon, not to be idle when the welfare 
of his country was at stake, he tucked up 
his robe, and fell to rolling his tub with 
might and main up and down the Gym- 
nasium." In like manner did every other 
mother's son in the patriotic community of 
New Amsterdam, on receiving the missive 
of Peter Stuyvesant, busy himself most 
mightily in putting things in confusion, and 
assisting the general uproar. "Every man" 
— saith the Stuyvesant manuscript — "flew 
to arms !" — by which is meant, that not one 
of our honest Dutch citizens would venture 
to church or to market without an old-fash- 
ioned spit of a sword dangling at his side, 
and a long Dutch fowling-jDiece on his 
shoulder; nor would he go out of a night 
without a lantern; nor turn a corner with- 
out first peeping cautiously round, lest he 
should come unawares upon the British 
army; — and we are informed that Stoifel 
Brinkerhoff, who was considered by the old 
women almost as brave a man as the gov- 
ernor himself, actually had two one-pound 
swivels mounted in his entry, one pointing 
out at the front door, and the other at the 
back. 

But the most strenuous measure resorted 
to on this awful occasion, and one which 
has since been found of wonderful efficacy, 
was to assemble popular meetings. These 
brawling convocations, I haA^e already 
shown, were extremely offensive to Peter 
Stuyvesant; but as this was a moment of 
unusual agitation, and as the old governor 
was not present to repress them, they 
broke out with intolerable violence. Hither, 
therefore, the orators and politicians re- 
paired, striving who should bawl loudest, 



and exceed the others in hyperbolical bursts 
of patriotism, and in resolutions to uphold 
and defend the government. In these sage 
meetings it was resolved that they were the 
most enlightened, the most dignified, the 
most formidable, and the most ancient com- 
munity upon the face of the earth. This 
resolution being carried unanimously, an- 
other was immediately proposed, — whether 
it were not possible and politic to extermi- 
nate Great Britain? upon which sixty -nine 
members sj)oke in the affirmative, and only 
one arose to suggest some doubts, — who, as 
a punishment for his treasonable presump- 
tion, was immediately seized by the mob, 
and tarred and feathered, — which punish- 
ment being equivalent to the Tarpeian 
Rock, he was afterwards considered as an 
outcast from society, and his opinion went 
for nothing. The question, therefore, being 
unanimously carried in the affirmative, it 
was recommended to the grand council to 
pass it into a law; which was accordingly 
done. By this measure the hearts of the 
people at large were wonderfully encour- 
aged, and they waxed exceedingly choleric 
and valorous. Indeed, the first paroxysm 
of alarm having in some measure subsided, 
• — the old women having buried all the 
money they could lay their hands on, and 
their husbands daily getting fuddled with 
what was left, — the community began even 
to stand on the offensive. Songs were manu- 
factured in Low Dutch and sung about the 
streets, wherein the English were most 
wofully beaten, and shown no quarter; and 
popular addresses were made, wherein it 
was proved, to a certainty, that the fate of 
Old England depended upon the will of the 
New Amsterdammers. 

Finally, to strike a violent blow at the 
very vitals of Great Britain, a multitude of 
the wiser inhabitants assembled, and hav- 
ing purchased all the British manufactures 
they could find, they made thereof a huge 
bonfire; and, in the patriotic glow of the 
moment, every man present, who had a hat 
or breeches of English workmanship pulled 
it off, and threw it into the flames, — to the 
irreparable detriment, loss, and ruin of the 
English manufacturers. In commemora- 
tion of this great exploit, they erected a pole 
on the spot, with a device on the top in- 
tended to represent the province of Nieuw 
Nederlandts destroying Great Britain, under 
the similitude of an Eagle picking the little 
Island of Old England out of the globe ; but 
either, through the unskilfulness of the 



AMEEICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PERIOD 



557 



sculptor, or his ill-timed waggery, it bore 
a striking resemblance to a goose, vainly 
striving to get hold of a dumpling. 

It will need but little penetration in any 
one conversant with the ways of that wise 
but windy potentate, the sovereign people, 
to discover that notwithstanding all the war- 
like bluster and bustle of the last chapter, 
the city of New Amsterdara was not a whit 
more prepared for war than before. The 
privy councillors of Peter Stuyvesant were 
aware of this ; and, having received his pri- 
vate orders to jDut the city in an immediate 
posture of defense, they called a meeting of 
the oldest and richest burghers to assist 
them with their wisdom. These were that 
order of citizens commonly termed "men of 
the greatest weight in the community"; 
their weight being estimated by tlie heavi- 
ness of their heads and of their purses. 
Their wisdom in fact is apt to be of a, pon- 
derous kind, and to hang like a mill-stone 
round the neck of the community. 

Two things were unanimously determined 
in this assembly of venerables : first, that 
the city required to be put in a state of de- 
fense; and, second, that, as the danger was 
imminent, there should be no time lost: 
which points being settled, they fell to mak- 
ing long speeches and belaboring one 
another in endless and intemperate dis- 
putes. For about this time was this un- 
happy city first visited by that talking 
endemic so prevalent in this country, and 
which so invariably evinces itself wherever 
a number of wise men assemble together, 
breaking out in long, windy speeches, 
caused, as jDhysicians suppose, by the foul 
air which is ever generated in a crowd. Now 
it was, moreover, that they first introduced 
the ingenious method of measuring the 
merits of an harangue by the hour-glass, he 
being considered the ablest orator who spoke 
longest on a question. For which excellent 
invention, it is recorded, we are indebted to 
the same profound Dutch critic who judged 
of books by their size. 

This sudden passion for endless ha- 
rangues, so little consonant with the cus- 
tomary gravity and taciturnity of our sage 
forefathers, was supposed by certain phil- 
osophers to have been imbibed, together 
with divers other barbarous propensities, 
from their saA^age neighbors; who were 
peculiarly noted for long talks and council- 
fires^ and never undertook any affair of the 
least importance without previous debates 



and harangues among their chiefs and old 
men. But the real cause was, that the 
peojDle, in electing their representatives to 
the grand council, were particular in choos- 
ing them for their talents at talking, without 
inquiring whether they possessed the more 
rare, difficult, and ofttimes important talent 
of holding their tongues. The consequence 
was, that this deliberative body was com- 
posed of the most loquacious men in the 
community. As they considered themselves 
placed there to talk, every man concluded 
that his duty to his constituents, and, what 
is more, his poj)ularity with them, required 
tliat he should harangue on every subject, 
whether he understood it or not. There was 
an ancient mode of burying a chieftain, by 
every soldier throwing his shield full of 
earth on the corpse, until a mighty mound 
was formed; so, whenever a question was 
brought forward in this assembly, every 
member pressing forward to throw on his 
quantum of wisdom, the subject was quickly 
buried under a mountain of words. 

We are told that disciples, on entering 
the school of Pythagoras, were for tAvo years 
enjoined silence, and forbidden either to ask 
questions, or make remarks. After they 
had thus acquired the inestimable art of 
holding their tongaies, they were gradually 
permitted to make inquiries, and finally 
to communicate their own opinions. 

With what a beneficial effect could this 
wise regulation of Pythagoras be introduced 
in modern legislative bodies, — and how won- 
derfully would it have tended to expedite 
business in the grand council of the Man- 
hattoes ! 

At this perilous juncture the fatal word 
economy^ the stumbling-block of William 
the Testy, had been once more set afloat, ac- 
cording to Avhieh the cheapest jolan of de- 
fense was insisted upon as the best; it being 
deemed a great stroke of policy in furnish- 
ing powder to economize in ball. 

Thus did dame Wisdom (whom the wags 
of antiquity haA^e humorously personified 
as a woman) seem to take a mischievous 
pleasure in jilting the venerable councillors 
of New Amsterdam. To add to the con- 
fusion, the old factions of Short Pipes and 
Long Pij)es, which had been almost strangled 
by the Herculean grasp of Peter Stuy- 
vesant, now sprang up with tenfold vigor. 
WhateA^er was projDosed by Short Pipe was 
opposed by the whole tribe of Long Pipes, 
who, like true partisans, deemed it their 
first duty to effect the downfall of their 



558 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



rivals, their second, to elevate themselves, 
and their third, to consult the public good; 
though many left the third consideration out 
of question altogether. 

In this great collision of hard heads it is 
astonishing the number of projects that 
were struck out, — projects which threw the 
wind-mill system of William the Testy com- 
pletely in the background. These were al- 
most uniformly oj^posed by the "men of the 
greatest weight in the community!" your 
weighty men, though slow to devise, being 
always great at "negativing." Among these 
were a set of fat, self-important old burgh- 
ers, who smoked their pipes, and said noth- 
ing except to negative every plan of defense 
proposed. These were that class of "con- 
servatives" who, having amassed a fortune, 
button up their pockets, shut their mouths, 
sink, as it were, into themselves, and pass 
the rest of their lives in the indwelling 
beatitude of conscious wealth; as some 
phlegmatic oyster, having swallowed a pearl, 
closes its shell, sinks in the mud, and devotes 
the rest of its life to the conservation of its 
treasure. Every plan of defense seemed to 
these worthy old gentlemen pregnant with 
ruin. An armed force was a legion of 
locusts preying upon the public property; 
to fit out a naval armament was to throw 
their money into the sea; to build fortifica- 
tions was to bury it in the dirt. In short, 
they settled it as a sovereign maxim, so long 
as their pockets were full, no matter how 
much they were drubbed. A kick left no 
scar; a broken head cured itself; but an 
empty purse was of all maladies the slowest 
to heal, and one in which nature did nothing 
for the patient. 

Thus did this venerable assembly of sages 
lavish away that time which the urgency of 
affairs rendered invaluable, in empty brawls 
and long-winded speeches, without ever 
agreeing, except on the point with which 
they started, namely, that there was no time 
to be lost, and delay was ruinous. At length, 
St. Nicholas taking compassion on their 
distracted situation, and anxious to pre- 
serve them from anarchy, so ordered, that in 
the midst of one of their most noisy debates, 
on the subject of fortification and defense, 
when they had nearly fallen to loggerheads 
in consequence of not being able to con- 
vince each other, the question was happily 
settled by the sudden entrance of a mes- 
senger, who informed them that a hostile 
fleet had arrived, and was actually advancing 
up the bay! 



The Author's Eeflections 

Among the numerous events, which are 
each in their turn the most direful and 
melancholy of all possible occurrences, in 
your interesting and authentic history, 
there is none that occasions such deep and 
heart-rending grief as the decline and fall 
of your renowned and mighty empires. 
Where is the reader who can contemplate 
without emotion the disastrous events by 
which the great dynasties of the world have 
been extinguished? While wandering, in 
imagination, among the gigantic ruins of 
states and empires, and marking the tre- 
mendous convulsions that wrought their 
overthrow, the bosom of the melancholy in- 
quirer swells with sympathy commensurate 
to the surrounding desolation. Kingdoms, 
principalities, and powers, have each had 
their rise, their progress, and their down- 
fall, — each in its turn has swayed a potent 
scepter, — each has returned to its primeval 
nothingness. And thus did it fare with the 
empire of their High Mightinesses, at the 
Manhattoes, under the peaceful reign of 
Walter the Doubter, the fretful reign of 
William the Testy, and the chivalric reign 
of Peter the Headstrong. 

Its history is fruitful of instruction, and 
worthy of being pondered over attentively, 
for it is by thus raking among the ashes of 
departed gi'eatness, that the sparks of true 
knowledge are to be found, and the lamp of 
wisdom illuminated. Let then the reign of 
Walter the Doubter warn against yielding 
to that sleek, contented security, and that 
overweening fondness for comfort and re- 
pose, which are produced by a state of pros- 
perity and peace. These tend to unnerve a 
nation; to destroy its pride of character; 
to render it patient of insult; deaf to the 
calls of honor and of justice; and cause it 
to cling to peace, like the sluggard to his 
pillow, at the expense of every valuable duty 
and consideration. Such supineness insures 
the vei'y evil from which it shrinks. One 
right yielded up produces the usurpation 
of a second; one encroachment passively 
suffered makes way for another; and the 
nation which thus, through a doting love of 
peace, has sacrificed honor and interest, will 
at length have to fight for existence. 

Let the disastrous reign of William the 
Testy serve as a salutary warning against 
that fitful, feverish mode of legislation, 
which acts without system; depends on 
shifts and projects, and trusts to lucky con- 



AMEEICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



559 



tingencies. Which hesitates, and wavers, 
and at length decides with the rashness of 
ignorance and imbecihty. Which stoops for 
popularity by courting the prejudices and 
flattering the arrogance, rather than com- 
manding the respect of the rabble. Wliich 
seeks safety in a multitude of counsellors, 
and distracts itself by a variety of contra- 
dictory schemes and opinions. Which mis- 
takes procrastination for weariness — hurry 
for decision — parsimony for economy — 
bustle for business — and vaporing for valor. 
Which is violent in council, sangnine in ex- 
pectation, precipitate in action, and feeble 
in execution. Which undertakes enterprises 
without forethought, enters upon them 
without preparation, conducts them without 
energy, and ends them in confusion and 
defeat. 

Let the reign of the good Stuyvesant 
show the effects of vigor and decision even 
when destitute of cool judgTuent, and sur- 
rounded by perplexities. Let it show how 
frankness, probity, and high-souled courage 
will command respect, and secure honor, 
even where success is unattainable. But at 
the same time, let it caution against a too 
ready reliance on the good faith of others, 
and a too honest confidence in the loving 
professions of powerful neighbors, who are 
most friendly when they most mean to 
betray. Let it teach a judicious attention 
to the opinions and wishes of the many, 
who, in times of peril, must be soothed and 
led, or apprehension will overpower the 
deference to authority. 

Let the empty wordiness of his factious 
subjects ; their intemperate harangues ; their 
violent "resolutions"; their hectorings 
against an absent enemy, and their pusil- 
lanimity on his approach, teach us to dis- 
trust and despise those clamorous patriots 
whose courage dwells but in the tongue. 
Let them serve as a lesson to repress that 
insolence of speech, destitute of real force, 
which too often breaks forth in popular 
bodies, and bespeaks the vanity rather than 
the spirit of a nation. Let them caution 
us against vaunting too much of our own 
power and prowess, and reviling a noble 
enemy. True gallantry of soul would always 
lead us to treat a foe with courtesy and 
proud punctilio; a contrary conduct but 
takes from the merit of victory, and renders 
defeat doubly disgraceful. 

But I cease to dwell on the stores of 
excellent examples to be drawn from the 
ancient chronicles of the Manhattoes. He 



who reads attentively will discover the 
threads of gold which run throughout the 
web of history, and are invisible to the dull 
eye of ignorance. But, before I conclude, 
let me point out a solemn warning, fur- 
nished in the subtle chain of events by 
which the capture of Fort Casimir has pro- 
duced the present convulsions of our globe. 

Attend then, gentle reader, to this plain 
deduction, which, if thou art a king, an 
emperor, or other powerful potentate, I ad- 
vise thee to treasure up in thy heart, — 
though little expectation have I that my 
work shall fall into such hands, for well I 
know the care of crafty ministers to keep 
all grave and edifying books of the kind 
out of the way of unhappy monarchs — lest 
peradventure they should read them and 
learn wisdom. 

By the treacherous surprisal of Fort 
Casimir, then, did the crafty Swedes enjoy 
a transient triumph; but drew upon their 
heads the vengeance of Peter Stuyvesant, 
who wrested all New Sweden from their 
hands. By the conquest of New Sweden, 
Peter Stuyvesant aroused the claims of Lord 
Baltimore, who appealed to the Cabinet of 
Great Britain; who subdued the whole 
province of New Netherlands. By this 
great achievement the whole extent of 
North America, from Nova Scotia to the 
Floridas, was rendered one entire de- 
jDendency upon the British crown. — But 
mark the consequence : the hitherto scattered 
colonies being thus consolidated, and hav- 
ing no rival colonies to check or keep them 
in awe, waxed great and powerful, and 
finally becoming too strong for the mother- 
country, were enabled to shake off its bonds, 
and by a glorious revolution became an in- 
dependent empire. But the chain of effects 
stojDped not here : the successful revolution 
in America produced the sanguinary revo- 
lution in France; which produced the puis- 
sant Bonaparte; who produced the French 
desjDotism ; which has thrown the whole 
world in confusion ! Thus have these great 
powers been successively punished for their 
ill-starred conquests; and thus, as I as- 
serted, have all the present convulsions, 
revolutions, and disasters that overwhelm 
mankind, originated in the eai3ture of the 
little Fort Casimir, as recorded in this 
eventful history. 

And now, worthy reader, ere I take a sad 
farewell, — which, alas ! rfiust be forever, — 
willingly would I part in cordial fellowship, 
and bespeak thy kind-hearted remembrance. 



560 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



That I have not written a better history of 
the days of the patriarchs is not my fault ;. 
had any other person written one as good, I 
should not have attempted it at all. That 
many will hereafter spring up and surpass 
me in excellence, I have very little doubt, and 
still less care; well knowing that, when the 
great Christovallo Colon (who is vulgarly 
called Columbus) had once stood his egg upon 
its end, every one at table could stand his up 
a thousand times more dexterously. Should 
any reader find matter of offense in this his- 
tory, I should heartily grieve, though I 
would on no account question his penetra- 
tion by telling him he was mistaken — his 
good-nature by telling him he was captious 
— or his pure conscience by telling him he 
was startled at a shadow. Surely when so 
ingenious in finding offense where none was 
intended, it were a thousand pities he should 
not be suffered to enjoy the benefit of his 
discovery. 

I have too high an opinion of the under- 
standing of my fellow-citizens, to think of 
yielding them instruction, and I covet too 
much their good-will, to forfeit it by giving 
them good advice. I am none of those 
cynics who despise the world, because it 
despises them : on the contrary, though but 
low in its regard, I look up to it with the 
most perfect good-nature, and my only sor- 
row is, that it does not prove itself more 
worthy of the unbounded love I bear it. 
If, however, in this my historic production 
— the scanty fruit of a long and laborious 
life — I have failed to gratify the dainty 
palate of the age, I can only lament my mis- 
fortune — for it is too late in the season for 
me even to hope to repair it. Already has 
withering age showered his sterile snows 
upon my brow; in a little while, and this 
genial warmth which still lingers around 
my heart, and throbs — worthy reader — 
throbs kindly towards thyself, will be chilled 
forever. Haply this frail compound of dust, 
which while alive may have given birth to 
naught but unprofitable weeds, may form a 
humble sod of the valley, whence may spring 
many a sweet wild flower, to adorn my be- 
loved island of Manna-hata! 

The American Experiment 
daniel webster 

[From the Centennial Oration on Wash- 
ington, 1832] 
Washington had attained his manhood 
when that spark of liberty was struck out 



in his own country which has since kindled 
into flame and shot its beams over the earth. 
In the flow of a century from his birth, 
the world has changed in science, in arts, in 
the extent of commerce, in the improve- 
ment of navigation, and in all that relates 
to the civilization of man. But it is the 
spirit of human freedom, the new elevation 
of individual man, in his moral, social, and 
political character, leading the whole long 
train of other improvements, which has 
most remarkably distinguished the era. So- 
ciety, in this century, has not made its prog- 
ress, like Chinese skill, by a greater acute- 
ness of ingenuity in trifles ; it has not merely 
lashed itself to an increased speed round the 
old circles of thought and action ; but it has 
assumed a new character; it has raised 
itself from beneath governments to a par- 
ticipation in governments; it has mixed 
moral and political objects with the daily 
pursuits of individual men; and, with a 
freedom and strength before altogether un- 
known, it has applied to these objects the 
v/hole power of the human understanding. 
It has been the era, in short, when the social 
principle has triumiohed over the feudal 
principle; when society has maintained its 
rights against military joower, and estab- 
lished, on foundations never hereafter to 
be shaken, its competency to govern itself. 
It was the extraordinary fortune of 
Washington, that, having been intrusted, 
in revolutionary times, with the supreme 
military command, and having fulfilled that 
trust with equal renown for wisdom and for 
valor, he should be j)laced at the head of the 
first government in which an attempt was 
to be made on a large scale to rear the fabric 
of social order on the basis of a written con- 
stitution and of a jDure representative prin- 
ciple. A government was to be established, 
without a throne, without an aristocracy, 
without castes, orders, or privileges and this 
government, instead of being a democracy 
existing and acting within the walls of a 
single city, was to be extended over a vast 
country of different climates, interests, and 
habits, and of various communions of our 
common Christian faith. The experiment 
certainly was entirely new. A popular gov- 
ernment of this extent, it was evident, could 
be framed only by carrying into full effect 
the principle of representation or of dele- 
gated power; and the world was to see 
whether society could, by the strength of 
this princiiDle, maintain its own peace and 
good government, carry forward its own 



AMEEICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



561 



great interests, and conduct itself to political 
renown and glory. By the benignity of 
Providence, this experiment, so full of in- 
terest to us and- to our posterity forever, so 
full of interest, indeed, to the world in its 
present generation and in all its generations 
to come, was suffered to commence under 
the guidance of Washington. Destined for 
this high career, he was fitted for it by wis- 
dom, by virtue, by patriotism, by discre- 
tion, by whatever can insj^ire confidence in 
man toward man. In entering on the untried 
scenes early disappointment and the prema- 
ture extinction of all hope of success would 
have been certain, had it not been that there 
did exist throughout the country, in a most 
extraordinary degree, an unwavering trust 
in him who stood at the helm. 

I remarked, gentlemen, that the whole 
world was and is interested in the result of 
this exjDeriment. And is it not so? Do we 
deceive ourselves, or is it true that at this 
moment the career which this government is 
running is among the most attractive objects 
to the civilized world? Do we deceive our- 
selves, or is it true that at this moment 
that love of liberty and that understanding 
of its true jDrinciiDles which are flying over 
the whole earth, as on the wings of all the 
winds, are really and truly of American 
origin ? 

At the period of the birth of Washington 
there existed in Europe no political liberty 
in large communities, except in the provinces 
of Holland, and except that England her- 
self had set a great example, so far as it 
went, by her glorious Revolution of 1688. 
Everywhere else, desiootic power was pre- 
dominant, and the feudal or military prin- 
cijDle held the mass of mankind in hopeless 
bondage. One-half of Europe was crushed 
beneath the Bourbon scepter, and no concep- 
tion of political liberty, no hope even of 
religious toleration, existed among that na- 
tion which was America's first ally. The 
king was the state, the king was the country, 
the king was all. There was one king, with 
power not derived from his people, and too 
high to be questioned and the rest Avere all 
subjects, with no political right but obedi- 
ence. All above was intangible jDower, all be- 
low was cjuiet subjection. A recent occur- 
rence in the French chamber shows us how 
public opinion on these subjects is changed. 
A minister had spoken of the "king's sub- 
jects." "There are no subjects," exclaimed 
hundreds of voices at once, "in a country 
where the people make the king!" 



Gentlemen, the spirit of human liberty 
and of free government, nurtured and 
grown into strength and beauty in Amer- 
ica, has stretched its course into the midst 
of the nations. Like an emanation from 
Heaven, it has gone forth, and it will not 
return void. It must change, it is fast 
changing, the face of the earth. Our great, 
our high duty is to show, in our own ex- 
ample, that this spirit is a spirit of health 
as well as a spirit of power; that its be- 
nignity is as great as its strength; that its 
efficiency to secure individual rights, so- 
cial relations, and moral order, is equal 
to the irresistible force with which it pros- 
trates princiiDalities and powers. The 
world, at this moment, is regarding us with 
a willing, but something of a fearful ad- 
miration. Its deep and awful anxiety is 
to learn whether free States may be stable, 
as well as free; whether popular power 
may be trusted as well as feared; in short, 
whether wise, regular, and virtuous self- 
government is a vision for the contempla- 
tion of theorists, or a truth established, 
illustrated, and brought into practice in 
the country of Washington. 

Gentlemen, for the earth which we inhabit, 
and the whole circle of the sun, for all the 
unborn races of mankind, we seem to hold in 
our hands, for their weal or woe, the fate of 
this experiment. If we fail, who shall ven- 
ture the repetition? If our example shall 
prove to be one not of encouragement, but 
of terroi-, not fit to be imitated, but fit only 
to be shunned, where else shall the world 
look for free models? If this great West- 
ern Sun be struck out of the firmament, 
at what other fountain shall the lamp of 
liberty hereafter be lighted? What other 
orb shall omit a ray to glimmer, even, on 
the darkness of the world? 



Free Government 

daniel webster 

[From the Bunker Hill Oration, 1825] 

The great wheel of political revolution 
began to move in America. Here its ro- 
tation Avas guarded, regular, and safe. 
Transferred to the other continent, from 
unfortunate but natural causes, it received 
an irregular and violent imi^ulse ; it whirled 
along with fearful celerity; till at length, 
like the chariot wheels in the races of antiq 
uity, it took fire from the rajaidity of its 



562 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



own motion, and blazed onward, spreading 
conflagration and terror around. 

We le from the result of this ex- 
periment, how fortunate was our own con- 
dition, and hoAv admirably the character of 
our people was calculated for setting the 
great example of popular governments. The 
possession of power did not turn the heads 
of the American people, for they had long 
been in the habit of exercising a great de- 
gree of self-control. Although the para- 
mount authority of the parent state ex- 
isted over them, yet a large field of legis- 
lation had always been open to our Colonial 
assemblies. They were accustomed to rep- 
resentative bodies and the forms of free 
government; they understood the doctrine 
of the division of power among different 
branches, and the necessity of cheeks on 
each. The character of our countrjrmen, 
moreover, was sober, moral, and religious; 
and there was little in the change to shock 
their feelings of justice and humanity, or 
even to disturb an honest prejudice. We 
had no domestic throne to overturn, no 
privileged orders to cast down, no violent 
changes of property to encounter. In the 
American Revolution, no man sought or 
wished for more than to defend and en- 
joy his own. None hoped for plunder or 
for spoil. Rapacity was unknoAvn to it; 
the axe was not among the instrvxments of 
its aecom]Dlishment ; and we all know that 
it could not have lived a single day under 
any well-founded imputation of possessing 
a tendency adverse to the Christian re- 
ligion. 

It need not surprise us, that, under cir- 
cumstances less auspicious, political revolu- 
tions elsewhere, even when well intended, 
have terminated differently. It is, indeed, 
a great achievement; it is the master-work 
of the world, to establish governments en- 
tirely popular on lasting foundations ; nor 
is it easy, indeed, to introduce the popular 
principle at all into governments to which 
it has been altogether a stranger. It can- 
not be doubted, however, that Europe has 
come out of the contest, in which she has 
been so long engaged, with greatly su- 
perior knowledge, and, in many respects, 
in a highly improved condition. What- 
ever benefit has been acquired is likely to 
be retained, for it consists mainly in the 
acquisition of more enlightened ideas. And 
although kingdoms and provinces may be 
wrested from the hands that hold them, in 
the same manner they were obtained; al- 



though ordinary and vulgar power may, 
in human affairs, be lost as it has been 
won; yet it is the glorious prerogative of 
the empire of knowledge, that what it gains 
it never loses. On the contrary, it in- 
creases by the multiple of its power ; all its 
ends become means; all its attainments, 
helps to new conquests. Its whole abun- 
dant harvest is but so much seed wheat, 
and nothing has limited, and nothing can 
limit the amount of ultimate product. 

Under the influence of this rapidly in- 
creasing knowledge, the people have be- 
gun, in all forms of government, to think 
and to reason on affairs of state. Regarding 
government as an institution for the public 
good, they demand a knowledge of its op- 
erations, and a participation in its exercise. 
A call for the representative system, wher- 
ever it is not enjoyed, and where there is 
already intelligence enough to estimate its 
value, is perseveringly made. Where men 
may speak out, they demand it! where the 
bayonet is at their throats, they pray for it. 

When Louis the Fourteenth said, "I am 
the State," he expressed the essence of the 
doctrine of unlimited power. By the rules 
of that system, the people are discon- 
nected from the state; they are its sub- 
jects, it is their lord. These ideas, founded 
in the love of power, and long supported 
by the excess and the abuse of it, are yield- 
ing, in our age, to other opinions; and the 
civilized world seems at last to be proceed- 
ing to the conviction of that fundamental 
and manifest truth, that the powers of gov- 
ernment are but a trust, and that they can- 
not be lawfully exercised but for the good of 
the community. As knowledge is more and 
more extended, this conviction becomes more 
and more general. Knowledge, in truth, is 
the great sun in the firmament. Life and 
power are scattered with all its beams. 
The prayer of the Grecian champion, when 
enveloped in unnatural clouds and dark- 
ness, is the appropriate political suppli- 
cation for the people "of every country 
not yet blessed with free institutions : — • 

"Dispel this cloud, the light of heaven 
restore, 
Give me to see^ — and Ajax asks no more." 

We may hope that the growing influence 
of enlightened sentiment will promote the 
permanent peace of the world. Wars to 
maintain family alliances, to uphold or 
to cast down dynasties, and to regulate 



AMERICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PERIOD 



563 



successions to thrones, which have occupied 
so much room in the history of modern 
times, if not less likely to happen at all, 
will be less likely to become general and 
involve many nations, as the great principle 
shall be more and more established, that 
the interest of the world is peace, and its 
first gTeat statute that every nation pos- 
sesses the power of establishing a govern- 
ment for itself. But public opinion has at- 
tained also an influence over governments 
which do not admit the popular principle 
into their organization. A necessary respect 
for the judgment of the world operates, in 
some measure, as a control o\'er the most 
unlimited forms of authority. It is owing, 
perhaps, to this truth, that the interesting 
strup-^le of the Greeks has been suffered 
to go on so long, without a direct inter- 
ference, either to wrest that country from 
its present masters, or to execute the system 
of pacification by force, and, with united 
strength, lay the neck of Christian and 
civilized Greek at the foot of the barbarian 
Turk. Let us thank God that we live in an 
age when something has influence besides 
the bayonet, and when the sternest au- 
thority does not venture to encounter the 
scorching power of public reproach. Any 
attempt of the kind I have mentioned shoiild 
be met by one universal burst of indigna- 
tion; the air of the civilized world ought 
to be made too warm to be comfortably 
breathed by any one who would hazard it. 

It is, indeed, a touching reflection, that, 
while in the fulness of our country's hap- 
piness, we rear this monument to her honor, 
we look for instruction in our undertaking 
to a country which is now in fearful con- 
test, not for works of art or memorials of 
glory, but for her own existence. Let her 
be assured that she is not forgotten in the 
world; that her efforts are applauded, and 
that constant prayers ascend for her suc- 
cess. And let us cherish a confident hope 
for her final triumph. If the true spark 
of religious and civil liberty be kindled, 
it will burn. Human agency cannot ex- 
tinguish it. Like the earth's central fire, 
it may be smothered for a time; the ocean 
may overwhelm it; mountains may press 
it down; but its inherent and unconquer- 
able force will heave both the ocean and the 
land, and at some time or other, in some 
place or other, the volcano will break out 
and flame up to heaven. 

Among the great events of the half-cen- 
tury, we must reckon, certainly, the revolu- 



tion of South America ; and we are not like- 
ly to overrate the importance of that rev- 
olution, either to the people of the country 
itself or to the rest of the world. The late 
Spanish colonies, now independent states, 
under circumstances less favorable, doubt- 
less, than attended our own revolution, 
have yet successfully commenced their na- 
tional existence. They have accomplished 
the great object of establishing their in- 
dependence; they are known and acknowl- 
edged in the world; and although in re- 
gard to their systems of government, their 
sentiments on religious toleration, and their 
provision for public instruction, they may 
have yet much to learn, it must be ad- 
mitted that they have risen to the condition 
of settled and established states more rap- 
idly than could have been reasonably an- 
ticipated. They already furnish an ex- 
hilarating examjjle of the difference be- 
tween free governments and despotic mis- 
rule. Their commerce, at this moment, 
creates a new activity in all the great marts 
of the world. They show themselves able, 
by an exchange of commodities, to bear a 
useful part in the intercourse of nations. 

A new spirit of enterprise and industry 
begins to prevail; all the great interests 
of society receive a salutary impulse; and 
the progress of information not only testi- 
fies to an improved condition, but itself 
constitutes the highest and most essential 
improvement. 

When the battle of Bunker Hill was 
fought, the existence of South America 
was scarcely felt in the civilized world. 
The thirteen little Colonies of North Amer- 
ica habitually called themselves the "Con- 
tinent." Borne down by Colonial subju- 
gation, monopoly, and bigotry, these vast 
regions of the South were hardly visible 
above the horizon. But in our day there 
has been, as it were, a new creation. The 
southern hemisphere emerges from the sea. 
Its lofty mountains begin to lift themselves 
into the light of heaven; its broad and 
fertile plains stretch out, in beauty, to the 
eye of civilized man, and at the mighty 
bidding of the voice of jjolitieal liberty the 
waters of darkness retire. 

Sacred Obligations, 
daniel webster 
[From the Bunjcer Hill Oration, 1825] 
We are not propagandists. Wherever 
other systems are preferred, either as be- 



564 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



ing thought better in themselves, or as bet- 
ter suited to existing conditions, we leave 
the preference to be enjoyed. Our history 
hitherto proves, however, that the popu- 
lar form is practicable, and that with wis- 
dom and knowledge men may govern them- 
selves; and the duty incumbent on us is to 
preserve the consistency of this cheering 
example, and take care that nothing weaken 
its authority with the world. If, in our 
ease, the representative system ultimately 
fail, popular governments must be pro- 
nounced impossible. No combination of 
circumstances more favorable to the experi- 
ment can ever be expected to occur. The 
last hopes of mankind, therefore, rest with 
us ; and if it should be proclaimed that our 
example had become an argument against 
the experiment, the knell of popular lib- 
erty would be sounded throughout the 
earth. 

These are excitements to duty; but they 
are not suggestions of doubt. Our history 
and our condition, all that is gone before 
us, and all that surrounds us, authorize 
the belief that popular governments, though 
subject to occasional variations, in form 
perhaps not always for the better, may 
yet, in their general character, be as dur- 
able and permanent as other systems. We 
know, indeed, that in our country any other 
is impossible. The principle of free gov- 
ernment adheres to the American soil. It 
is imbedded in it, immovable as its moun- 
tains. 

And let the sacred obligations which have 
devolved on this generation, and on us, 
sink deep into our hearts. Those who estab- 
lished our liberty and our government are 
daily dropping from among us. The great 
trust now descends to new hands. Let us 
apply ourselves to that which is presented 
to us, as our appropriate object. We can 
win no laurels in a war for independence. 
Earlier and worthier hands have gathered 
them all. Nor are there places for us 
by the side of Solon, and Alfred, and other 
founders of states. Our fathers have filled 
them. But there remains to us a great 
duty of defense and preservation and there 
is ojDen to us also, a noble spirit, to which 
the spirit of the times strongly invites us. 
Our proper business is improvment. Let 
our age be the age of improvement. In a 
day of peace, let us advance the arts of 
peace and the works of peace. Let us de- 
velop the resources of our land, call forth 
its powers, build up its institutions, pro- 



mote all its great interests, and see whether 
we also, in our day and generation, may 
not perform something worthy to be remem- 
bered. Let us cultivate a true spirit of 
union and harmony. In pursuing the great 
objects which our condition points out to 
us, let us act under a settled conviction, and 
an habitual feeling, that these twenty-four 
States are one country. Let our concep- 
tions be enlarged to the circle of our du- 
ties. Let us extend our ideas over the whole 
of the vast field in which we are called to 
act. Let our object be, OUR country, our 

WHOLE country, AND NOTHING BUT OUR 

COUNTRY. And, by the blessing of God, 
may that country itself become a vast and 
splendid monument, not of oppression and - 
terror, but of Wisdom, of Peace, and of 
Liberty, upon which the world may gaze 
with admiration forever! 

A Nation of Men 

RALPH WALDO EMERSON 

[From An Oration delivered before the Phi 

Beta Kappa Society, of Cambridge, 

August 31, 1837] 

It is one of those fables, which, out of an 
unknown antiquity, convey an unlooked-for 
wisdom, that the gods, in the beginning, di- 
vided Man into men, that he might be more 
helpful to himself; just as the hand was 
divided into fingers, the better to answer 
its end. 

The old fable covers a doctrine ever new 
and sublime ; that there is One Man, — pres- 
ent to all particular men only partially, or 
through one faculty ; and that you must take 
the whole society to find the whole man. 
Man is not a farmer, or a professor, or an 
engineer, but he is all. Man is priest, and 
scholar, and statesman, and producer, and 
soldier. In the divided or social state, these 
functions are parceled out to individuals, 
each of whom aims to do his stint of the joint 
work, whilst each other performs his. The 
fable implies that the individual, to possess 
himself, must sometimes return from his own 
labor to embrace all the other laborers. But 
unfortunately, this original unit, this foun- 
tain of power, has been so distributed to 
multitudes, has been so minutely subdivided 
and peddled out, that it is spilled into drops, 
and cannot be gathered. The state of society 
is one in which the members have suffered 
amputation from the trunk, and strut about 
so many walking monsters, — a good finger, a 



AMEEICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



565 



neck, a stomach, an elbow, but never a 
man. 

Man is thus metamorphosed into a thing, 
into many things. The planter, who is Man 
sent out into the field to gather food, is sel- 
dom cheered by any idea of the true dignity 
of his ministry. He sees his bushel and his 
cart, and nothing beyond, and sinks into the 
farmer, instead of Man on the farm. The 
tradesman scarcely ever gives an ideal worth 
to his work, but is ridden by the routine of 
his craft, and the soul is subject to dollars. 
The priest becomes a form; the attorney a 
statute-book; the mechanic a machine; the 
sailor a rope of a ship. . . . 

In self -trust all the virtues are compre- 
hended. Free should the scholar be, — free 
and brave. Free even to the definition of 
freedom, "without any hindrance that does 
not arise out of his own constitution." 
Brave ; for fear is a thing which a scholar by 
his very function puts behind him. Fear al- 
ways springs from ignorance. It is a shame 
to him if his tranquility, amid dangerous 
times, arise from the presumption that, like 
children and women, his is a protected class ; 
or if he seek a temporary peace by the diver- 
sion of his thoughts from politics or vexed 
questions, hiding his head like an ostrich in 
the flowering bushes, peeping into micro- 
scopes, and turning rhymes, as a boy whis- 
tles to keep his courage up. So is the danger 
a danger still ; so is the fear worse. Manlike 
let him turn and face it. Let him look into 
its eye and search its nature, inspect its ori- 
gin, — see the whelping of this lion, — which 
lies no great way back ; he will the find in 
himself a perfect comprehension of its na- 
ture and extent ; he will have made his hands 
meet on the other side, and can henceforth 
defy it, and pass on superior. The world is 
his, who can see through its pretension. 
What deafness, what stone-blind custom, 
what overgrown error you behold, is there 
only by sufferance, — by your sufferance. See 
it to be a lie, and you have already cealt it 
its mortal blow. 

Yes, we are the cowed, — we the trustless. 
It is a mischievous notion that we are come 
late into nature ; that the world was finished 
a long time ago. As the world was plastic 
and fluid in the hands of God, so it is ever to 
so much of his attributes as we bring to it. 
To ignorance and sin, it is flint. They adapt 
themselves to it as they may ; but in propor- 
tion as a man has anything in him divine, 
the firmament flows before him and takes his 
signet and form. Not he is great who can 



alter matter, but he who can alter my state 
of mind. They are the kings of the world 
who give the color of their present thought 
to all nature and all art, and persuade men 
by the cheerful serenity of their carrying the 
matter, that this thing which they do, is the 
apple which the ages have desired to pluck, 
now at last ripe, and inviting nations to the 
harvest. The great man makes the great 
thing. Wherever Macdonald sits, there is 
the head of the table. Linnaeus makes bot- 
any the most alluring of studies, and wins it 
from the farmer and the herb-woman; 
Davy, chemistry; and Cuvier, fossils. The 
day is always his, who works in it with se- 
renity and great aims. The unstable esti- 
mates of men crowd to him whose mind is 
filled with a truth, as the heaped waves of 
the Atlantic follow the moon. 

For this self-trust, the reason is deeper 
than can be fathomed, — darker than can be 
enlightened. I might not carry with me the 
feeling of my audience in stating my own be- 
lief. But I have already shown the ground 
of my hojDe, in adverting to the doctrine 
that man is one. I believe man has been 
wronged; he has wronged himself. He has 
almost lost the light that can lead him back 
to his prerogatives. Men are become of no 
account. Men in history, men in the world 
of today are bugs, are sjDawn, and are called 
*'the mass" and "the herd." In a century, in 
a millennium, one or two men ; that is to say, 
■ — one or two approximations to the right 
state of every man. All the rest behold in 
the hero or the poet their own green and 
crude being, — ripened; yes, and are content 
to be less, so that may attain to its full 
stature. What a testimony, — full of gran- 
deur, full of pity, is borne to the demands of 
his own nature, by the poor clansman, the 
poor partisan, who rejoices in the glory of 
his chief. The poor and the low find some 
amends to their immense moral capacity, for 
their acquiescence in a political and social 
inferiority. They are content to be brushed 
like flies from the path of a great person, 
so that justice shall be done by him to that 
common nature which it is the dearest desire 
of all to see enlarged and glorified. They sun 
themselves in the great man's light, and feel 
it to be their own element. They cast the dig- 
nity of man from their downtrod selves upon 
the shoulders of a hero, and will perish to 
add one drop of blood to make that great 
heart beat, those giant sinews combat and 
conquer. He lives for us, and we live in 
him. 



566 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Men such as tliey are, very naturally seek 
money or power ; and power because it is as 
good as money, — the "spoils," so called, "of 
office." And why not? for they aspire to 
the highest, and this, in their sleep-walking, 
they dream is highest. Wake them, and they 
shall quit the false good, and leap to the 
true, and leave governments to clerks and 
desks. This revolution is to be wrought by 
the gradual domestication of the idea of Cul- 
ture. The main enterprise of the world, for 
splendor, for extent, is the upbuilding of 
a man. Here are the materials strown 
along the gTound. The private life of one 
man shall be a more illustrious monarchy, — 
more formidable to its enemy, more sweet 
and serene in its influence to its friend, than 
any kingdom in history. For a man, rightly 
viewed, comprehendeth the particular na- 
tures of all men. Each philosopher, each 
bard, each actor, has only done for me, as by 
a delegate, what one day I can do for myself. 
The books which once we valued more than 
the apple of the eye, we have quite exhaust- 
ed. What is that but saying that we have 
come up with the point of view which the 
universal mind took through the eyes of one 
scribe; we have been that man, and have 
passed on. First one; then, another; we 
drain all cisterns, and, waxing greater by all 
these supplies, we crave a better and more 
abundant food. The man has never lived 
that can feed us ever. The human mind can- 
not be enshrined in a person, who shall set 
a barrier on any one side to this unbounded, 
unboundable empire. It is one central fire, 
which, flaming now out of the lips of Etna, 
lightens the capes of Sicily ; and, now out of 
the throat of Vesuvius, illuminates the tow- 
ers and vineyards of Naples. It is one light 
which beams out of a thousand stars. It is 
one soul which animates all men. 

But I have dwelt perhaps tediously upon 
this abstraction of the Scholar. I ought not 
to delay longer to add what I have to say, 
of nearer reference to the time and to this 
country. 

Historically, there is thought to be a dif- 
ference in the ideas which predominate over 
successive epochs, and there are data for 
marking the genius of the Classic, of the 
Romantic, and now of the Reflective or Phil- 
osophical age. With the views I have inti- 
mated of the oneness or the identity of the 
mind through all individuals, I do not much 
dwell on these differences. In fact, I believe 
each individual passes through all three. The 
boy is a Greek; the youth, romantic; the 



adult, reflective. I deny not, however, that 
£, revolution in the leading idea may be dis- 
tinctly enough traced. 

Our age is bewailed as the age of Intro- 
version. Must that needs be evil? We, it 
seems, are critical ; we are embarrassed with 
second thoughts; we cannot enjoy anything 
for hankering to know whereof the pleasure 
consists ; we are lined with eyes ; we see with 
our feet ; the time is infected with Hamlet's 
unhappiness, — 

Sicklied o 'er with the pale cast of thought. 

Is it so bad then ? Sight is the last thing to 
be pitied. Would we be blind ? Do we fear 
lest we should outsee nature and God, and 
drink truth dry ? I look upon the discontent 
of the literary class as a mere announcement 
of the fact that they find themselves not in 
the state of mind of their fathers, and regret 
the coming state as untried ; as a boy dreads 
the water before he has learned that he can 
swim. If there is any period one would de- 
sire to be born in, — is it not the age of Revo- 
lution ; when the old and the new stand side 
by side, and admit of being compared ; when 
the energies of all men are searched by fear 
and by hope ; when the historic glories of the 
old can be eom^Densated by the rich possibili- 
ties of the new era? This time, like all 
times, is a very good one, if we but know 
what to do with it. 

I read with joy some of the auspicious 
signs of the coming days, as they glimmer 
already through poetry and art, through 
philosophy and science, through church and 
state. 

One of these signs is the fact that the same 
movement which effected the elevation of 
Vfhat was called the lowest class in the state 
assumed in literature a very marked and as 
benign an aspect. Instead of the sublime 
and beautiful, the near, the low, the com- 
mon, was explored and poetized. That which 
had been negligently trodden under foot by 
those who were hfirnessing and provisioning 
themselves for long journeys into far coun- 
tries, is suddenly found to be richer than all 
foreign parts. The literature of the poor, the 
feelings of the child, the philosophy of the 
street, the meaning of household life, are the 
topics of the time. It is a great stride. It 
is a sign — is it not ? — of new vigor, when the 
extremities are made active, when currents 
of warm life run into the hands and the feet. 
I ask not for the great, the remote, the ro- 
mantic; what is doing in Italy or Arabia; 
what is Greek art, or Provencal minstrelsy; 



AMEEICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



567 



I embrace the common, I explore and sit at 
the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me 
insight into today, and you may have the 
antique and future worlds. What would we 
really know the meaning of? The meal in 
the firkin ; the milk in the pan ; the ballad in 
the street ; the news of the boat ; the glance 
of the eye; the form and the gait of the 
body; — show me the ultimate reason of these 
matters; show me the sublime presence of 
the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always 
it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities 
of nature; let me see every trifle bristling 
with the polarity that ranges it instantly on 
an eternal law ; and the shop, the plow, and 
the ledger, referred to the like cause by 
which light undulates and poets sing; and 
the world lies no longer a dull miscellany 
and lumber-room, but has form and order; 
there is no trifle ; there is no puzzle ; but one 
design unites and animates the farthest pin- 
nacle and the lowest trench. 

This idea has inspired the genius of Gold- 
smith, Burns, Cowper, and, in a newer time, 
of Goethe, Wordsworth, and Carlyle. This 
idea they have differently followed and with 
various success. In contrast with their writ- 
ing, the style of Pope, of Johnson, of Gib- 
bon, looks cold and pedantic. This writing is 
blood-warm. Man is surprised to find that 
things near are not less beautiful and won- 
drous than things remote. The near explains 
the far. The drop is a small ocean. A man 
is related to all nature. This perception of 
the worth of the vulgar is fruitful in discov- 
eries. Goethe, in this very thing the most 
modern of the moderns, has shown us, as 
none ever did, the genius of the ancients. . . . 

Another sign of our times, also marked 
by an analogous political movement, is the 
new importance given to the single person. 
Everything that tends to insulate the indi- 
vidual — to surround him with barriers of 
natural respect, so that each man shall feel 
the world as his, and man shall treat with 
man as a sovereign state with a sovereign 
state — tends to true union as well as great- 
ness. "I learned," said the melancholy Pes- 
talozzi, "that no man in God's wide earth is 
either willing or able to help any other 
man." Help must come from the bosom 
alone. The scholar is that man who must 
take up into himself all the ability of the 
time, all the contributions of the past, all 
the hopes of the future. He must be an 
university of knowledges. If there be one 
lesson more than another which should 
pierce his ear, it is : The world is nothing. 



the man is all; in yourself is the law of all 
nature, and you. know not yet how a globule 
of sap ascends; in yourself slumbers the 
whole of Reason ; it is for you to know all, 
it is for you to dare all. Mr. President and 
Gentlemen, this confidence in the unsearched 
might of man belongs, by all motives, by all 
prophecy, by all prejjaration, to the Amer- 
ican Scholar. We have listened too long to 
the courtly muses of Europe. The spirit of 
the American freeman is already suspected 
to be timid, imitative, tame. Public and pri- 
vate avarice make the air we breathe thick 
and fat. The scholar is decent, indolent, 
comjDlaisant. See already the tragic conse- 
quence. The mind of this country, taught to 
aim at low objects, eats upon itself. There 
is no work for any but the decorous and the 
complaisant. Young men of the fairest 
promise, who begin life uiDon our shores, 
inflated by the mountain winds, shined upon 
by all the stars of God, find the earth below 
not in unison with these, but are hindered 
from action by the disgust which the prin- 
ciples on which business is managed inspire, 
and turn drudges, or die of disgust, — some 
of them suicides. What is the remedy? They 
did not yet see, and thousands of young men 
as hopeful now crowding to the barriers for 
the career, do not yet see, that if the single 
man plant himself indomitably on his in- 
stincts, and there abide, the huge world will 
come round to him. Patience, — patience ; — 
with the shades of all the good and gi'eat for 
company; and for solace, the perspective of 
your own infinite life; and for work, the 
study and the communication of principles, 
the making those instincts prevalent, the 
conversion of the world. Is it not the chief 
disgrace in the world, not to be an unit; — 
not to be reckoned one character; — not to 
yield that jDeculiar fruit which each man was 
created to bear, but to be reckoned in the 
gross, in the hundred, or the thousand, of 
the party, the section to which we belong; 
and our ojoinion predicted geogTaphically, as 
the north, or the south? Not so, brothers 
and friends, — please God, ours shall not be 
so. We will walk on our own feet; we will 
work with our own hands ; we will speak our 
own minds. The study of letters shall be no 
longer a name for pity, for doubt, and for 
sensual indulgence. The dread of man and 
the love of man shall be a wall of defence 
and a wreath of joy around all. A nation 
of men will for the first time exist, because 
each believes himself insjDired by the Divine 
Soul which also inspires all men. 



568 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



The Present Crisis 
james russell lowell 

When a deed is done for Freedom, through 

the broad earth's aching breast 
Runs a thrill of joy prophetic, trembling on 

from east to west. 
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels the 

soul within him climb 
To the awful verge of manhood, as the 

energy sublime 
Of a century bursts full-blossomed on the 

thorny stem of Time. 

Through the walls of hut and palace shoots 
the instantaneous throe. 

When the travail of the Ages wrings earth's 
systems to and fro ; 

At the birth of each new Era, with a recog- 
nizing start. 

Nation Avildly looks at nation, standing with 
mute lips apart. 

And glad Truth's yet mightier man-child 
leaps beneath the Future's heart. 

So the Evil's triumph sendeth, with a terror 

and a chill, 
Under continent to continent, the sense of 

coming ill. 
And the slave, where'er he cowers, feels his 

sympathies with God 
In hot tear-drops ebbing earthward, to be 

drunk up by the sod. 
Till a corpse crawls round unburied, delving 

in the nobler clod. 

For mankind are one in spirit, and an in- 
stinct bears along, 

Round the earth's electric circle, the swift 
flash of right or wrong; 

Whether conscious or unconscious, yet Hu- 
manity's vast frame 

Through its ocean-sundered fibers feels the 
gush of joy or shame ; — 

In the gain or loss of one race all the rest 
have equal claim. 

Once to every man and nation comes the 
moment to decide. 

In the strife of Truth with Falsehood, for 
the good or evil side ; 

Some gTeat cause, God's new Messiah, offer- 
ing each the bloom or blight. 

Parts the goats upon the left hand, and the 
sheep upon the right, 

And the choice goes by forever 'twixt that 
darkness and that light 



Hast thou chosen, my people, on whose 

party thou shalt stand, 
Ere the Doom from its worn sandals shakes 

the dust against our land? 
Though the cause of Evil prosper, yet 'tis 

Truth alone is strong. 
And, albeit she wander outcast now, I see 

around her throng 
Troops of beautiful, tall angels, to enshield 

her from all wrong. 

Backward look across the ages and the 

beacon-moments see. 
That, like peaks of some sunk continent, jut 

through Oblivion's sea; 
Not an ear in court or market for the low, 

foreboding cry 
Of those Crises, God's stern winnowers, 

from whose feet earth's chaff must fly ; 
Never shows the choice momentous till the 

judgment hath passed by. 

Careless seems the gTeat Avenger ; history's 
pages but record 

One death-grapple in the darkness 'twixt old 
systems and the Word ; 

Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong for- 
ever on the throne, — 

Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, be- 
hind the dim unknown, 

Standeth God within the shadoAV, keeping 
watch above his own. 

We see dimly in the Present what is small 
and what is great, 

Slow of faith how weak an arm may turn 
the iron helm of Fate, 

But the soul is still oracular; amid the mar- 
ket's din, 

List the ominous stern whisper frqm the 
Delphic cave within, — 

"They enslave their children's children who 
make compromise with sin." 

Slavery, the earthborn Cyclops, f ellest of the 

giant brood. 
Sons of brutish Force and Darkness, who 

have drenched the earth with blood, 
Famished in his self-made desert, blinded by 

our purer day. 
Gropes in yet unblasted regions for his 

miserable prey; — 
Shall we guide his gory fingers where our 

helpless children play? 

Then to side with Truth is noble when we 
share her wretched crust. 



AMERICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



569 



Ere her cause bring fame and {)rofit, and 

'tis prosperous to be just ; 
Then it is the brave man chooses, while the 

coward stands aside, 
Doubting in his abject spirit, till his Lord is 

crucified. 
And the multitude make virtue of the faith 

they had denied. 

Count me o'er Earth's chosen heroes, — they 

were souls that stood alone 
While the men they agonized for hurled the 

contumelious stone, 
Stood serene and down the future saw the 

golden beam incline 
To the side of perfect justice, mastered by 

their faith divine. 
By one man's plain truth to manhood and to 

God's supreme design. 

By the light of burning heretics Christ's 

bleeding feet I track. 
Toiling up new Calvaries ever with the 

cross that turns not back. 
And these mounts of anguish number how 

each generation learned 
One new word of that grand Credo which in 

prophet-hearts hath burned 
Since the first man stood God-conquered 

with his face to heaven upturned. 

For Humanity sweeps onward : where today 
the martyr stands. 

On the morrow crouches Judas with the 
silver in his hands; 

Far in front the cross stands ready and the 
crackling fagots burn, 

While the hooting mob of yesterday in silent 
awe return 

To glean up the scattered ashes into His- 
tory's golden urn. 

'Tis as easy to be heroes as to sit the idle 

slaves 
Of a legendary virtue carved upon our 

fathers' gTaves ; 
Worshipers of light ancestral make the 

present light a crime ; — 
Was the Mayflower launched by cowards, 

steered by men behind their time? 
Turn those tracks toward Past or Future, 

that make Plymouth Rock sublime? 

They were men of present valor, stalwart old 
iconoclasts. 

Unconvinced by axe or gibbet that all vir- 
tue was the Past's ; 



But we make their truth our falsehood, 
thinking that hath made us free, 

Hoarding it in moldy parchments, while 
our tender spirits flee 

The rude grasp of that great Impulse which 
drove them across the sea. 

They have rights who dare maintain them; 

we are traitors to our sires. 
Smothering in their holy ashes Freeedom's 

new-lit altar fires ; 
Shall we make their creed our jailer? Shall 

we, in our haste to slay, 
From the tombs of the old prophets steal the 

funeral lamps away 
To light up the martyr-fagots round the 

prophets of today? 

New occasions teach new duties ; Time makes 
ancient good uncouth ; 

They must upward still and onward, who 
would keep abreast of Truth ; 

Lo, before us gleam her camp-fires ! we our- 
selves must Pilgrims be. 

Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly 
through the desperate winter sea, 

Nor attempt the Future's portal with the 
Past's blood-rusted key. 

What Mr. Robinson Thinks 

james russell lowell 

[From The Biglow Papers, 1849] 

Guvener B. is a sensible man; 

He stays to his home an' looks arter his 
folks ; 
He draws his furrer ez straight ez he can, 
An' into nobody's tater-patch pokes ; 
But John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B. 

My! ain't it terrible? Wut shall we du? 
We can't never choose him, o' course, — 
thet's flat ; 
Guess we shall hev to come round, (don't 
you?) 
An' go in fer thunder an' guns, an' all 
that; 

Fer John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez he wunt vote fer Guvener B. 

Gineral C. is a dreffle smart man : 

He's ben on all sides thet give places or 
pelf; 



570 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



But consistency still wuz a part of his 
plan, — 
He's ben true to one party, — an' thet is 
himself ; — ■ 

So John P. 

Robinson he 

Sez he shall vote f er Gineral C. 

Gineral C. he goes in f er the war ; 

He don't vally principle more'n an old 
cud; 
Wut did God make us raytional creeturs f er, 
But glory an' gunpowder, plunder an' 
blood? 

So John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez he shall vote fer Gineral C. 

We were gittin' on nicely up here to our 
village. 
With good old idees o' wut's right an' wut 
aint. 
We kind o' thought Christ went agin war 
an' pillage, 
An' thet epi3yletts worn't the best mark 
of a saint ; 

But John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez this kind o' thing's an exploded 
idee. 

The side of our country must oilers be took, 
An' Presidunt Polk, you know, he is our 
country. 
An' the angel thet writes all our sins in a 
book 
Put the dehit to him, an' to us the per 
contry; 

An' John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez this is his view o' the thing to a T. 

Parson Wilbur he calls all these argiments 
lies; 
Sez they're nothin' on airth but jest fee, 
faw, fum; 
An' thet all this big talk of our destinies 
Is half on it ignorance, an' t'other half 
rum ; 

But John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez it aint no sech thing; an', of course, 
so must we. 

Parson Wilbur sez he never heerd in his life 
Thet th' Apostles rigged out in their 
swaller-tail coats, 



An' marched round in front of a drum an' a 
fife, 
To git some on 'em office, an' some on 'em 
votes ; 

But John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez they didn't know everythin' down 
in Judee. 

Wal, it's a marcy we've gut folks to tell us 
The rights an' the wrongs o' these matters, 
I vow, — 
God sends country lawyers, an' other wise 
fellers. 
To start the world's team wen it gits in a 
slough ; 

Per John P. 
Robinson he 
Sez the world'll go right, ef he hollers 
out Gee ! 

The Pious Editor's Creed 

james russell lowell 

[From The Biglow Papers, 1849] 

I du believe in Freedom's cause, 

Ez fur away ez Payris is ; 
I love to see her stick her claws 

In them inf arnal Phayrisees ; 
It's wal enough agin a king 

To dror resolves an' triggers, — 
But libbaty's a kind o' thing 

Thet don't agree with niggers. 

I du believe the people want 

A tax on teas an' coffees,- 
Thet nothin' aint extravygunt, — 

Purvidin' I'm in office ; 
Fer I hev loved my country sence 

My eye-teeth filled their sockets, 
An' Uncle Sam I reverence, 

Partic'larly his pockets. 

I du believe in any plan 

0' levyin' the taxes, 
Ez long ez, like a lumberman, 

I git jest wut I axes : 
I go free-trade thru thick, an' thin, 

Because it kind o' rouses 
The folks to vote, — an' keeps us in 

Our quiet custom-houses. 

I du believe it's wise an' good 

To sen' out furrin missions, 
Thet is, on sartin understood 

An' orthydox conditions ; — 
I mean nine thousan' dolls, per ann., 



AMEEICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PERIOD 



571 



Nine thousan' more f er outfit, 
An' me to recommend a man 
The place 'ould just about fit. 

I du believe in special ways 

0' prayin' an' convartin'; 
The bread comes back in many days, 

An' buttered, tu, f er sartin ; 
I mean in prayin' till one busts 

On wut the party chooses, 
An' in convartin' public trusts 

To very privit uses. 

I du believe hard coin the stuff 

Fer 'lectioneers to spout on; 
The people's oilers soft enough 

To make hard money cut on ; 
Dear Uncle Sam j^ervides fer his, 

An' gives a good-sized junk to all,— 
I don't care how hard money is 

Ez long ez mine's paid punetooal. 

I du believe with all my soul 

In the gret Press's freedom, 
To pint the people to the goal 

An' in the traces lead 'em ; 
Palsied the arm thet forges yokes 

At my fat contracts squintin' 
An' withered be the nose thet pokes 

Inter the gov'ment printin' ! 

I du believe thet I should give 

Wut's his'n unto C^sar, 
Fer it's by him I move an' live, 

Frum him my bread an' cheese air ; 
I du believe thet all o' me 

Doth bear his superscription, — 
Will, conscience, honor, honesty. 

An' things o' thet description. 

I du believe in prayer an' praise 

To him that hez the grantin' 
0' jobs, — in every thin' thet pays, 

But most of all in Cantin' ; 
This does my cup with marcies fill, 

This lays all thought o' sin to rest,— 
I don't believe in prineerple. 

But 0, I du in interest. 

I du believe in bein' this 

Or thet, ez it may happen 
One way or t'other hendiest is 

To ketch the people nappin' ; 
It aint by princerples nor men 

My preudunt course is steadied, — 
I scent which pays the best, an' then 

Go into it baldheaded. 

I du believe thet holdin' slaves 
Comes nat'ral to a Presidunt, 



Let 'lone the rowdedow it saves 
To hev a wal-broke preeedunt ; 

Per any office, small or gret, 
I couldn't ax with no face. 

Without I'd ben, thru dry an' wet, 
Th' unrizzest kind o' doughface. 

I du believe wutever trash 

'11 keep the people in blindness, — 
Thet we the Mexicuns can thrash 

Right inter brotherly kindness. 
That bombshells, grape, an' jjowder 'n' ball 

Air good-will's strongest magnets, 
Thet peace, to make it stick at all. 

Must be druv in with bagnets. 

In short, I firmly du believe 

In Humbug generally, 
Fer it's a thing thet I perceive 

To hev a solid vally ; 
This heth my faithful shepherd ben. 

In pasturs sweet heth led me. 
An' this'll keep the people green 

To feed ez they hev fed me. 

The Poor Voter on Election Day 

JOHN GREENLEAP WHITTIER 

The proudest now is but my peer, 

The highest not more high ; 
Today, of all the weary year, 

A king of men am I. 
Today, alike are great and small. 

The nameless and the known ; 
My palace is the people's hall. 

The ballot-box my throne ! 

Who serves today upon the list 

Beside the served shall stand ; 
Alike the brown and wrinkled fist. 

The gloved and dainty hand ! 
The rich is level with the poor. 

The weak is strong today ; 
And sleekest broadcloth counts no more 

Than homespun frook of gray. 

Today let pomp and vain pretence 

My stubborn right abide ; 
I set a plain man's common sense 

Against the pedant's pride. 
Today shall simi^le manhood try 

The strength of gold and land ; 
The wide world has not wealth to buy 

The power in my right hand ! 

While there's a grief to seek redress, 

Or balance to adjust. 
Where weighs our living manhood less 

Than Mammon's vilest dust, — 



572 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



While there's a right to need my vote, 

A wrong to sweep away, 
Up ! clouted knee and ragged coat ! 

A man's a man to-day ! 

(1852) 

The Ship of State 
henry wads worth longfellow 
[From The Building of the Ship, 1849] 
Thou, too, sail on, Ship of State ! 
Sail on, Union, strong and great ! 
Humanity with all its fears. 
With all the hopes of future years. 
Is hanging breathless on thy fate ! 
We know what Master laid thy keel, 



What Workmen wrought thy ribs of steel. 
Who made each mast, and sail, and rope, 
What anvils rang, what hammers beat. 
In what a forge and what a heat 
Were shaped the anchors of thy hope ! 
Fear not each sudden sound and shock, 
'Tis of the wave and not the rock; 
'Tis but the flapping of the sail. 
And not a rent made by the gale ! 
In spite of rock and tempest's roar, 
In spite of false lights on the shore. 
Sail on, nor fear to breast the sea ! 
Our hearts, our hopes, are all with thee. 
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, 
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, 
Are all with thee, — are all with thee ! 



11. EXPANSION AND SOVEEEIGNTY 



I Hear America Singing 

WALT whitman 

I hear America singing, the varied carols I 

hear. 
Those of mechanics, each one singing his as 

it should be blithe and strong, 
The carpenter singing his as he measures his 

plank or beam. 
The mason singing his as he makes ready for 

work, or leaves off work. 
The boatman singing what belongs to him 

in his boat, and the deck-hand singing 

on the steamboat deck. 
The shoemaker singing as he sits on his 

bench, the hatter singing as he stands, 
The wood-cutter's song, the ploughboy's on 

his way in the morning, or at noon 

intermission or at sundown. 
The delicious singing of the mother, or of 

the young wife at work, or of the girl 

sewing or washing. 
Each singing what belongs to him or her and 

to none else, 
The day what belongs to the day — at night 

the party of young fellows, robust, 

friendly. 
Singing with open mouths their strong melo- 
dious songs. 

(1860) 

Pioneers! Pioneers! 

WALT whitman 

Come, my tan-faced children, 
Follow well in order, get your weapons 
ready. 



Have you your pistols ? have you your 
sharp-edged axes? 
Pioneers ! Pioneers ! 

For we cannot tarry here. 
We must march, my darlings, we must bear 

the brunt of danger. 
We the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on 
us depend, 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

you youths. Western youths. 
So impatient, full of action, full of manly 

pride and friendship. 
Plain I see you Western youths, see you 
tramping with the foremost. 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

Have the elder races halted"? 
Do they droop and end their lesson, wearied 

over there beyond the seas ? 
We take up the task eternal, and the burden 
and the lesson. 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

All the past we leave behind. 
We debouch upon a newer mightier world, 

varied world. 
Fresh and strong the world we seize, world 
of labor and the march. 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

We detachments steady throwing, 
Down the edges, through the passes, up the 
mountains steep. 



AMEEICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



573 



Conquering, holding, daring, venturing as 
we go the unknown ways, 
Pioneers ! Pioneers ! 

We primeval forests felling. 
We the rivers stemming, vexing we and 

piercing deep the mines within. 
We the surface broad surveying, we the vir- 
gin soil upheaving. 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

Colorado men are we. 
From the peaks gigantic, from the great 

sierras and the high plateaus. 
From the mine and from the gully, from the 
hunting trail we come. 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

From Nebraska, from Arkansas, 
Central inland race are we, from Missouri, 
with the continental blood intervein'd. 
All the hands of comrades clasping, all the 
Southern, all the Northern, 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

resistless, restless race ! 
beloved race in all! O my breast aches 

with tender love for all! 
I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with 
love for all, 
Pioneers!. Pioneers! 

Raise the mighty mother mistress, 
Waving high the delicate mistress, over all 
the starry mistress (bend your heads 
all). 
Raise the f ang'd and warlike mistress, stern, 
impassive, weapon'd mistress, 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

See my children, resolute children, 
By those swarms upon our rear we must 

never yield or falter. 
Ages back in ghostly millions frowning there 
behind us urging. 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

On and on the compact ranks, 
With accessions ever waiting, with the places 

of the dead quickly fiU'd, 
Through the battle, through defeat, moving 
yet and never stopping, 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

to die advancing on ! 
Are there some of us to droop and die ? has 
the hour come ? 



Then upon the march we fittest die, soon and 
sure the gap is fill'd. 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

All the pulses of the world, 
Falling in they beat for us, with the West- 
ern movement beat. 
Holding single or together, steady moving to 
the front, all for us. 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

Life's involv'd and varied pageants, 
All the forms and shows, all the workmen at 

their work. 
All the seamen and the landsmen, all the 
masters with their slaves, 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

All the hapless silent lovers. 
All the prisoners in the prisons, all the 

righteous and the wicked, 
All the joyous, all the sorrowing, all the 
living, all the dying, 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

I too with my soul and body. 
We, a curious trio, picking, wandering on 

our way. 
Through these shores amid the shadows, 
with the apparitions pressing, 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

Lo, the darting bowling orb ! 
Lo, the brother orbs around, all the cluster- 
ing suns and planets. 
All the dazzling days, all the mystic nights 
with dreams. 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

These are of us, they are with us, 
All for primal needed work, while the fol- 
lowers there in embryo wait behind, 
We today's procession heading, we the route 
for travel clearing. 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

you daughters of the West ! 
you young and elder daughters! you 

mothers and you wives ! 
Never must you be divided, in our ranks you 
move united, 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

Minstrels latent on the prairies ! 
(Shrouded bards of other lands, you may 

rest, you have done your work,) 
Soon I hear you coming warbling, soon you 
rise and tramp amid us, 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 



574 



THE GREAT TEADITION 



Not for delectations sweet, 
Not the cushion and the slipper, not the 

peaceful and the studious, 
Not the riches safe and palling, not for us 
the tame enjoyment, 
Pioneers ! Pioneers ! 

Do the f easters gluttonous feast 1 
Do the corpulent sleepers sleep? have they 

loek'd and bolted doors? 
Still be ours the diet hard, and the blanket 
on the ground, 
Pioneers! Pioneers! 

Has the night descended 1 
Was the road of late so toilsome? did we 
stop discouraged nodding on our 
way? 
Yet a passing hour I yield you in your 
tracks to pause oblivious, 
Pioneers ! Pioneers ! 

Till with sound of trumpet. 
Far, far off the daybreak call — hark ! how 

loud and clear I hear it wind, 
Swift! to the head of the army! — swift! 
spring to your places. 
Pioneers ! Pioneers ! 

(1865) 



Rise, Days, From Your Fathomless 
Deeps 

walt whitman 



Rise, O days, from your fathomless deeps, 

till you loftier, fiercer sweep ! 
Long for my soul, hungering gjrmnastic, I 

devour'd what the earth gave me ; 
Long I roam'd the woods of the north — long 

I wateh'd Niagara pouring ; 
I travel'd the prairies over, and slept on 

their breast — I eross'd the Nevadas, I 

eross'd the plateaus; 
I ascended the towering rocks along the Pa- 
cific, I sail'd out to sea ; 
I sail'd through the storm, I was refreshed 

by the storm ; 
I wateh'd with joy the threatening maws of 

the waves ; 
I marked the white combs where they ca- 

reer'd so high, curling over ; 
I heard the wind piping, I saw the black 

clouds ; 
Saw from below what rose and mounted (0 

superb ! wild as my heart, and power- 

ful!), 



Heard the continuous thunder, as it bel- 
low'd after the lightning; 

Noted the slender and jagged threads of 
lightning, as sudden and fast amid the 
din they chased each other across the 
sky; 

— These, and such as these, I, elate, saw — 
saw with wonder, yet pensive and mas- 
terful ; 

All the menacing might of the globe uprisen 
around me ; 

Yet there with my soul I fed — I fed con- 
tent, supercilious. 



'Twas well, soul ! 'twas a good jDrepara- 
tion you gave me ! 

Now we advance our latent and ampler 
hunger to fill ; 

Now we go forth to receive what the earth 
and the sea never gave us ; 

Not through the mighty woods we go, but 
through the mightier cities ; 

Something for us is pouring now, more than 
Niagara pouring ; 

Torrents of men (sources and rills of the 
Northwest, are you indeed inexhaust- 
ible?). 

What, to pavements and homesteads here — 
what were those storms of the moun- 
tains and sea? 

What, to passions I witness around me to- 
day ? Was the sea risen ? 

Was the wind piping the pipe of death 
under the black clouds? 

Lo ! from deeps more unfathomable, some- 
thing more deadly and savage ; 

Manhattan, rising, advancing with menacing 
front — Cincinnati, Chicago, unehain'd ; 

— What was that swell I saw on the ocean? 
behold what comes here ! 

How it climbs with daring feet and hands! 
how it dashes ! 

How the true thunder bellows after the 
lightning! how bright the flashes of 
lightning ! 

How Democracy, with desperate vengeful 
part strides on, shown through the dark 
by those flashes of lightning! 

(Yet a mournful wail and low sob I fancied 
I heard through the dark, 

In a lull of the deafening confusion.) 



Thunder on ! stride on, Democracy ! strike 

with vengeful stroke ! 
And do you rise higher than ever yet, O 

days, cities ! 



AMEEICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



575 



Crash heavier, heavier yet, storms ! you 

have done me good; 
My soul, prepared in the mountains, absorbs 

your immortal strong nutriment; 
— Long had I walk'd my cities, my country 

roads, through farms, only half-satis- 
fied; 
One doubt, nauseous, undulating like a 

snake, crawl'd on the ground before me, 
Continually preceding my steps, turning 

upon me oft, ironically hissing low; 
—The cities I loved so well, I abandon'd and 

left — I sped to the certainties suitable 

to me; 
Hungering, hungering, hungering, for pri- 
mal energies, and Nature's dauntless- 

ness. 
I refresh'd myself with it only, I could relish 

it only; 
I waited the bursting forth of the pent fire — 

on the water and air I waited long ; 
— But now I no longer wait — I am fully 

satisfied — I am glutted; 
I have witness'd the true lightning — I have 

witness'd my cities electric ; 
I have lived to behold man burst forth, and 

warlike America rise ; 
Hence I will seek no more the food of the 

northern solitary wilds. 
No more the mountains roam, or sail the 

stormy sea. 

Address at Gettysburg 
abraham lincoln 

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers 
brought forth on this continent, a new na- 
tion, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to 
the proposition that all men are created 
equal. 

Now we are engaged in a great civil war ; 
testing whether that nation, or any nation 
so conceived and so dedicated, can long en- 
dure. We are met on a great battle-field of 
that war. We have come to dedicate a por- 
tion of that field, as a final resting place for 
those who here gave their lives that that na- 
tion might live. It is altogether fitting and 
proper that we should do this. 

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedi- 
cate — we can not consecrate — we can not 
hallow — this ground. The brave men, living 
and dead, who struggled here have conse- 
crated it far above our poor power to add 
or detract. The world will little note, nor 
long remember what we say here, but it can 
never forget what they did here. It is for 



us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to 
the unfinished work which they who fought 
here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is 
rather for us to be here dedicated to the 
great task remaining before us — that from 
these honored dead we take increased devo- 
tion to that cause for which they gave the 
last full measure of devotion — that we here 
highly resolve that these dead shall not have 
died in vain — that this nation, under God, 
shall have a new birth of freedom — and that 
government of the people, by the people, for 
the people, shall not perish from the earth. 

(1863) 

Second Inaugural Address 
abraham lincoln 

Fellov^-countrymen : — At this second 
appearing to take the oath of the presiden- 
tial office, there is less occasion for an ex- 
tended address than there was at the first. 
Then a statement, somewhat in detail, of a 
course to be pursued, seemed fitting and 
proper. Now, at the expiration of four 
years, during which public declarations have 
been constantly called forth on every point 
and phase of the great contest which still 
absorbs the attention and engrosses the ener- 
gies of the nation, little that is new can be 
presented. The progress of our arms, upon 
which all else chiefly depends, is as well 
known to the public as to myself; and 
it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and 
encouraging to all. With high hope for 
the future, no prediction in regard to it is 
ventured. 

On the occasion corresponding to this four 
years ago, all thoughts were anxiously di- 
rected to an impending civil war. All dread- 
ed it — all sought to avert it. While the in- 
augural address was being delivered from 
this place, devoted altogether to saving the 
Union without war, insurgent agents were in 
the city seeking to destroy it without war — 
seeking to dissolve the Union, and divide 
effects, by negotiation. Both parties depre- 
cated war ; but one of them would make war 
rather than let the nation survive; and the 
other would accept war rather than let it 
perish. And the war came. 

One-eighth of the whole population were 
colored slaves, not distributed generally over 
the Union, but localized in the southern part 
of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar 
and powerful interest. All knew that this 
interest was, somehow, the cause of the war. 



576 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this 
interest was the object for which the insur- 
gents would rend the Union, even by war; 
while the government claimed no right to do 
more than to restrict the territorial enlarge- 
ment of it. 

Neither party expected for the war the 
magnitude or the duration which it has al- 
ready attained. Neither anticipated that the 
cause of the conflict might cease with, or 
even before, the conflict itself should cease. 
Each looked for an easier triumph, and a re- 
sult less fundamental and astounding. Both 
read the same Bible, and pray to the same 
God; and each invokes his aid against the 
other. It may seem strange that any men 
should dare to ask a just God's assistance in 
wringing their bread from the sweat of other 
men's faces; but let us judge not, that we 
be not judged. The prayers of both could 
not be answered — that of neither has been 
answered fully. 

The Almighty has his own purposes. "Woe 
unto the world because of offenses! for it 
must needs be that offenses come; but woe 
to that man by whom the offense eometh." 
If we shall suppose that American slavery is 
one of those offenses which, in the provi- 
dence of God, must needs come, but which, 
having continued through his appointed 
time, he now wills to remove, and that he 
gives- to both North and South this terrible 
war, as the woe due to those by whom the 
offense came, shall we discern therein any 
departure from those divine attributes which 
the believers in a living God always ascribe 
to him? Fondly do we hope — fervently do 
we pray — that this mighty scourge of war 
may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills 
that it shall continue until all the wealth 
piled by the bondman's two hundred and 
fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, 
and until every drop of blood drawn with 
the lash shall be paid by another drawn with 
the sword, as was said three thousand years 
ago, so still it must be said, "The judg- 
ments of the Lord are true and righteous 
altogether." 

With malice toward none; with charity 
for all; with firmness in the right, as God 
gives us to see the right, let us strive on to 
finish the work we are in; to bind up the 
nation's wounds; to care for him who shall 
have borne the battle, and for his widow, 
and his orphan — to do all which may achieve 
and cherish a just and lasting peace among 
ourselves, and with all nations. (1865) 



Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemo- 
ration 

james russell lowell 

July 21, 1865 



Weak-winged is song, 

Nor aims at that clear-ethered height 

Whither the brave deed climbs for light : 
We seem to do them wrong. 

Bringing our robin's-leaf to deck their 
hearse 

Who in warm life-blood wrote their nobler 
verse, 

Our trivial song to honor those who come 

With ears attuned to strenuous trump and 
drum, 

And shaped in squadron-strophes their de- 
sire. 

Live battle-odes whose lines were steel and 
fire: 
Yet sometimes feathered words are strong 

A gracious memory to buoy up and save 

From Lethe's dreamless ooze, the common 
grave 
Of the unventurous throng. 

II 

Today our Reverend Mother welcomes back 
Her wisest Scholars, those who under- 
stood 
The deeper teaching of her mystic tome 
And offered their fresh lives to make it 
good: 
No lore of Greece or Rome, 
No science peddling with the names of 

things. 
Or reading stars to find inglorious fates, 

Can lift our life with wings 
Far from Death's idle gulf that for the 
many waits. 
And lengthen out our dates 
With that clear fame whose memory sings 
In manly hearts to come, and nerves them 

and dilates: 
Nor such thy teaching. Mother of us all ! 
Not such the trumpet-call 
Of thy diviner mood. 
That could thy sons entice 
From happy homes and toils, the fruitful 

nest 
Of those half -virtues which the world calls 
best. 
Into War's tumult rude ; 
But rather far that stern device 



AMERICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PERIOD 



577 



The sponsors chose that round thy cradle 
stood 
• In the dim, unventured wood, 
The Veritas that lurks beneath 
The letter's unprolifie sheath. 
Life of whate'er makes life worth living, 
Seed-grain of high emprise, immortal food, 
One heavenly thing whereof earth hath the 
giving. 

Ill 

Many loved Truth, and lavished life's best 
oil 
Amid the dust of books to find her, 
Content at last, for guerdon of their toil, 
With the cast mantle she hath left behind 
her. 
Many in sad faith sought for her. 
Many with crossed hands sighed for 

her ; 
But these, our brothers, fought for her, 
At life's dear peril wrought for her. 
So loved her that they died for her. 
Tasting the raptured fleetness 
Of her divine completeness : 
Their higher instinct knew 
Those love her best who to themselves are 

true. 
And what they dare to dream of, dare to do ; 
They followed her and found her 
Where all may hope to find. 
Not in the ashes of the burnt-out mind, 
But beautiful, with danger's sweetness round 
her, 
Where faith made whole with deed 
Breathes its awakening breath 
Into the lifeless creed, 
They saw her plumed and mailed. 
With sweet, stern face unveiled, 
And all-repaying eyes, look proud on them 
in death. 

IV 

Our slender life runs rippling by, and glides 
Into the silent hollow of the past ; 

What is there that abides 
To make the next age better for the lastf 

Is earth too poor to give us 
Something to live for here that shall out- 
live us? 
Some more substantial boon 
Than such as flows and ebbs with Fortune's 
fickle moon*? 
The little that we see 
From doubt is never free ; 
The little that we do 



Is but half -nobly true; 
With our laborious hiving 
What men call treasure and the gods call 
dross. 
Life seems a jest of Fate's contriving. 
Only secure in every one's conniving, 
A long account of nothings paid with loss. 
Where we poor puppets, jerked by unseen 
wires. 
After our little hour of strut and rave. 
With all our pasteboard passions and de- 
sires, 
Loves, hates, ambitions, and immortal fires, 
Are tossed pell-mell together in the grave, 
But stay ! no age was e'er degenerate. 
Unless men held it at too cheap a rate. 
For in our likeness still we shape our fate. 

Ah, there is something here 
Unfathomed by the cynic's sneer. 
Something that gives our feeble light 
A high immunity from Night, 
Something that leaps life's narrow bars 
To claim its birthright with the hosts of 
heaven ; 
A seed of sunshine that doth leaven 
Our earthly dulness with the beams of 
stars, 
And glorify our clay 
With light from fountains elder than the 
Day; 
A conscience more divine than we, 
A gladness fed with secret tears, 
A vexing, forward-reaching sense 
Of some more noble permanence; 

A light across the sea, 
Which haunts the soul and will not let 
it be. 
Still glimmering from the heights of unde- 
generate years. 

V 

Whither leads the path 
To ampler fates that leads? 
Not down through flowery meads. 
To reap an aftermath 
Of youth's vainglorious weeds. 
But up the steep, amid the wrath 
And shock of deadly-hostile creeds. 
Where the world's best hope and stay 
By battle's flashes gropes a desperate way, 
And every turf the fierce foot clings to 
■bleeds. 
Peace hath her not ignoble wreath. 
Ere yet the sharp, decisive word 
Light the black lips of cannon, and the 
sword 
Dreams in its easeful sheath ; 



578 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



But some day the live coal behind the 
thought 
Whether from Baal's stone obscene, 
Or from the shrine serene 
Of God's pure altar brought, 
Bursts up in flame; the war of tongue and 

pen 
Learns with what deadly purpose it was 

fraught. 
And, helpless in the fiery passion caught, 
Shakes all the pillared state with shock of 

men: 
Some day the soft Ideal that we wooed 
Confronts us fiercely, foe-beset, pursued. 
And cries reproachful: "Was it, then, my 

praise, 
And not myself was loved ? Prove now thy 

truth ; 
I claim of thee the promise of thy youth ; 
Give me thy life, or cower in empty phrase. 
The victim of thy genius, not its mate !" 
Life may be given in many ways, 
And loyalty to Truth be sealed 
As bravely in the closet as the field, 
So bountiful is Fate ; 
But then to stand beside her, 
When craven churls deride her. 
To front a lie in arms and not to yield. 
This shows, methinks, God's plan 
And measure of a stalwart man, 
Limbed like the old heroic breeds. 

Who stands self-poised on manhood's 
solid earth. 
Not forced to frame excuses for his birth, 
Fed from within with all the strength he 
needs. 

VI 

Such was he, our Martyr-Chief, 
Whom late the Nation he had led. 
With ashes on her head. 
Wept with the passion of an angry grief : 
Forgive me, if from present things I turn 
To speak what in my heart will beat and 

burn, 
And hang my wreath on his world-honored 
urn. 
Nature, they say, doth dote. 
And cannot make a man 
Save on some worn-out plan. 
Repeating us by rote : 
For him her Old-World molds aside she 
threw, 
And, choosing sweet clay from the breast 
Of the unexhausted West, 
With stuff untainted shaped a hero new. 
Wise, steadfast in the strength of God, and 
true. 



How beautiful to see 
Once more a shepherd of mankind indeed. 
Who loved his charge, but never loved to 

lead; 
One whose meek flock the people joyed to be, 
Not lured by any cheat of birth, 
But by his clear-grained human worth, 
And brave old wisdom of sincerity ! 
They knew that outward grace is dust ; 
They could not choose but trust 
In that sure-footed mind's unfaltering skill, 

And supple-tempered will 
That bent like perfect steel to spring again 
and thrust. 
His was no lonely mountain-peak of mind. 
Thrusting to thin air o'er our cloudy bars, 
A sea-mark now, now lost in vapors blind ; 
Broad prairie rather, genial, level-lined. 
Fruitful and friendly for all human kind, 
Yet also nigh to heaven and loved of loftiest 
stars. 
Nothing of Europe here. 
Or, then, of Europe fronting mornward still, 
Ere any names of Serf and Peer 
Could Nature's equal scheme deface 
And thwart her genial will ; 
Here was a type of the true elder race. 
And one of Plutarch's men talked with us 
face to face. 
I praise him not ; it were too late ; 
And some innative weakness there must be 
In him who condescends to victory 
Such as the Present gives, and cannot wait, 
Safe in himself as in a fate. 
So always firmly he : 
He knew to bide his time, 
And «an his fame abide. 
Still patient in his simple faith sublime. 
Till the wise years decide. 
Great captains, with their guns and 
drums. 
Disturb our judgment for the hour, 
But at last silence comes; 
These all are gone, and, standing like a 

tower. 
Our children shall behold his fame. 

The kindly-earnest, brave, foreseeing 
man, 
Sagacious, patient, dreading praise, not 
blame, 
New birth of our new soil, the first Ameri- 
can. 

VII 

Long as man's hope insatiate can discern 
Or only guess some more inspiring goal 
Outside of Self, enduring as the pole. 

Along whose course the flying axles burn 



AMEEICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



579 



Of spirits bravely-pitched, earth's manlier 
brood ; 
Long- as below we cannot find 
The meed that stills the inexorable mind ; 
So long this faith to some ideal Good, 
Under whatever mortal names it masks. 
Freedom, Law, Country, this ethereal 
mood 
That thanks the Fates for their severer 
tasks, 
Feeling its challenged pulses leap. 
While others skulk in subterfuges cheap. 
And, set in Danger's van, has all the boon it 
asks. 
Shall win man's praise and woman's love. 
Shall be a wisdom that we set above 
All other skills and gifts to culture dear, 
A virtue round whose forehead we en- 
wreathe 
Laurels that with a living passion breathe 
When other crowns grow, while we twine 
them, sear. 
What brings us thronging these high rites 
to pay, 
And seal these hours the noblest of our year, | 
Save that our brothers found this better 



way" 



VIII 



We sit here in the Promised Land 
That flows with Freedom's honey and 

milk; 
But 'twas they won it, sword in hand, 
Making the nettle danger soft for us as silk. 
We welcome back our bravest and our 

best ; — 
Ah me ! not all ! some come not with the 
rest. 
Who went forth brave and bright as any 

here ! 
I strive to mix some gladness with my straih, 
But the sad strings complain, 
. And will not please the ear : 
I sweep them for a paean, but they wane 

Again and yet again 
Into a dirge, and die away, in pain. 
In these brave ranks I only see the gaps, 
Thinking of the dear ones whom the dumb 

turf wraps. 
Dark to the triumph which they died to 
gain: 
Fitlier may others greet the living. 
For me the past is unforgiving; 
I with uncovered head 
Salute the sacred dead, 
Who went, and who return not. — Say not so ! 
'Tis not the grapes of Canaan that repay. 



But the high faith that failed not by the 
way; 

Virtue treads paths that end not in the 
grave ; 

No bar of endless night exiles the brave ; 
And to the saner mind 

We rather seem the dead that stayed behind. 

Blow, trumpets, all your exultations blow! 

For never shall their aureoled presence lack : 

I see them muster in a gleaming row. 

With ever-youthful brows that nobler show ; 

We find in our dull road their shining track ; 
In every nobler mood 

We feel the orient of their spirit glow, 

Part of our life's unalterable good. 

Of all our saintlier aspiration ; 
They come transfigured back. 

Secure from change in their high-hearted 
ways. 

Beautiful evermore, and with the rays 

Of morn on their white Shields of Expecta- 
tion! 

IX 

But is there hope to save 
Even this ethereal essence from the grave? 
What ever 'scaped Oblivion's subtle 
wrong 
Save a few clarion names, or golden threads 
of song? 
Before my musing eye 
The mighty ones of old sweep by, 
Disvoiced now and insubstantial things. 
As noisy once as we; poor ghosts of kings, 
Shadows of empire wholly gone to dust. 
And many races, nameless long ago. 
To darkness driven by that iniperious gust 
Of ever-rushing Time that here doth blow: 
visionary world, condition strange, 
Where naught abiding is but only Change, 
Where the deep-bolted stars themselves still 

shift and range I 
Shall we to more continuance make pre- 
tence? 
Renown builds tombs ; a life-estate is Wit ; 

And, bit by bit, 
The cunning years steal all from us but woe ; 
Leaves are we, whose decays no harvest sow. 

But, when we vanish hence, 
Shall they lie forceless in the dark below. 
Save to make green their little length of 

sods. 
Or deepen pansies for a year or two. 
Who now to us are shining sweet as gods? 
Was dying all they had the skill to do ? 
That were not fruitless : but the Soul re- 
sents 
Such short-lived service, as if blind events 



580 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



Ruled without her, or earth could so endure ; 
She claims a more divine investiture 
Of longer tenure than Fame's airy rents ; 
Whate'er she touches doth her nature share ; 
Her inspiration haunts the ennobled air, 

Gives eyes to mountains blind, 
Ears to the deaf earth, voices to the wind, 
And her clear trump sings succor every- 
where 
By lonely bivouacs to the wakeful mind ; 
For soul inherits all that soul could dare : 

Yea, Manhood hath a wider span 
And larger privilege of life than man. 
The single deed, the private sacrifice, 
So radiant now through proudly-hidden 

tears. 
Is covered up ere long from mortal eyes 
With thoughtless drift of the deciduous 

years ; 
But that high privilege that makes all men 

peers, 
That leap of heart whereby a people rise 

Up to a noble anger's height, 
And, flamed on by the Fates, not shrink, but 
grow more bright, 
That swift validity in noble veins, 
Of choosing danger and disdaining shame. 

Of being set on flame 
By the pure fire that flies all contact base 
But wraps its chosen with angelic might, 
These are imperishable gains, 
Sure as the sun, medicinal as light, 
These hold great futures in their lusty 
reins 
And certify to earth a new imperial race. 



Who now shall sneer ? 
Who dare again to say we trace 
Our lines to a plebeian race? 
Roundhead and Cavalier ! 
Dumb are those names erewhile in battle 

loud; 
Dream-footed as the shadow of a cloud, 

They flit across the ear : 
That is best blood that hath most iron in't 
To edge resolve with, pouring without stint 
For what makes manhood dear. 
Tell us not of Plantagenets, 
Hapsburgs, and Guelfs, whose thin bloods 

crawl 
Down from some victor in a border-brawl! 

How poor their outworn coronets, 
Matched with one leaf of that plain civic 

wreath 
Our brave for honor's blazon shall bequeath, 
Through whose desert a rescued Nation 
sets 



Her heel on treason, and the trumpet hears 
Shout victory, tingling Europe's sullen ears 
With vain resentments and more vain re- 
grets ! 

XI 

Not in anger, not in pride, 
Pure from passion's mixture rude 
Ever to base earth allied, 
But with far-heard gratitude. 
Still with heart and voice renewed, 
To heroes living and dear martyrs dead. 
The strain should close that consecrates our 
brave. 
Lift the heart and lift the head ! 
Lofty be its mood and grave, 
Not without a martial ring. 
Not without a prouder tread 
And a peal of exultation : 
Little right has he to sing 
Through whose heart in such an hour 
Beats no march of conscious power. 
Sweeps no tumult of elation ! 
'Tis no Man we celebrate, 
By his country's victories great, 
A hero half, and half the whim of Fate, 
But the pith and marrow of a Nation 
Drawing force from all her men,' 
Highest, humblest, weakest, all, 
For her time of need, and then 
Pulsing it again through them. 
Till the basest can no longer cower, 
Feeling his soul spring up divinely tall, 
Touched but in passing by her mantle-hem. 
Come back, then, noble pride, for 'tis her 
dower ! 
How could poet ever tower. 
If his passions, hopes, and fears, 
If his triumphs and his tears, 
Kept not measure with his people ? 
Boom, cannon, boom to all the winds and 

waves ! 
Clash out, glad bells, from every rocking 

steeple! 
Banners, advance with triumph, bend your 
staves ! 
And from every mountain-peak 
Let beacon-fire to answering beacon speak, 
Katahdin tell Monadnock, Whitefaee he, 
And so leap on in light from sea to sea, 
Till the glad news be sent 
Across a kindling continent. 
Making earth feel more firm and air breathe 

braver : 
"Be proud! for she is saved, and all have 
helped to save her ! 
She that lifts up the manhood of the poor. 
She of the open soul and open door. 



AMEEICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



581 



With room about her heart for all man- 
kind! 

The fire is dreadful in her eyes no more ; 

From her bold front the helm she doth 
unbind, 

Sends all her handmaid armies back to 
spin, 

And bids her navies, that so lately hurled 

Their crashing battle, hold their thunders 
in. 

Swimming like birds of calm along the un- 
harmful shore. 

No challenge sends she to the elder world, 

That looked askance and hated; a light 
scorn 

Plays o'er her mouth, as round her mighty 
knees 

She calls her children back, and waits the 
morn 
Of nobler day, enthroned between her sub- 
ject seas." 

XII 

Bow down, dear Land, for thou hast found 
release ! 
Thy God, in these distempered days, 
Hath taught thee the sure wisdom of His 
ways. 
And through thine enemies hath wrought 
thy peace! 
Bow down in prayer and praise ! 
No poorest in thy borders but may now 
Lift to the juster skies a man's enfranchised 

brow, 
Beautiful ! my Country ! ours once more ! 
Smoothing thy gold of war-dishevelled hair 
O'er such sweet brows as never other wore, 
And letting thy set lips, 
Freed from wrath's pale eclipse, 
The rosy edges of their smile lay bare, 
What words divine of lover oi of poet 
Could tell our love and make thee know it. 
Among the Nations bright beyond compare, 
What were our lives without thee ? 
What all our lives to save thee ? 
We reck not what we gave thee; 
We will not dare to doubt thee. 
But ask whatever else, and we will dare ! 

Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood 

"walt whitman 



Thou Mother with thy equal brood, 
Thou varied chain of different States, yet 
one identity only. 



A special song before I go I'd sing o'er all 

the rest. 
For thee, the future. 

I'd sow a seed for thee of endless Nation- 
ality, 

I'd fashion thy ensemble including body and 
soul, 

I'd show away ahead thy real Union, and 
how it may be aecomplish'd. 

The paths to the house I seek to make, 
But leave to those to come the house itself. 

Belief I sing and preparation ; 
As Life and Nature are not great with ref- 
erence to the present only. 
But greater still from what is yet to come, 
Out of that formula for thee I sing. 



As a strong bird on pinions free. 

Joyous, the amplest spaces heavenward 

cleaving. 
Such be the thought I'd think of thee 

America, 
Such be the recitative I'd bring for thee. 

The conceits of the poets of other lands I'd 

bring thee not. 
Nor the compliments that have served their 

turn so long. 
Nor rime, nor the classics, nor perfumes of 

foreign court or indoor library ; 
But an odor I'd bring as from forests of 

pine in Maine, or breath of an Illinois 

prairie. 
With open airs of Virginia or Georgia or 

Tennessee, or from Texas uplands, or 

Florida's glades. 
Or the Saguenay's black stream, or the wide 

blue spread of Huron, 
With presentment of Yellowstone's scenes, 

or Yosemite, 
And murmuring under, pervading all, I'd 

bring the rustling sea-sound. 
That endlessly sounds from the two Great 

Seas of the world. 

And for thy subtler sense subtler refrains, 

dread Mother, 
Preludes of intellect tallying these and thee, 

mind-formulas fitted for thee, real and 

sane and large as these and thee, 
Thou ! mounting higher, diving deeper than 

we knew, thou transcendental Union ! 
By thee fact to be justified, blended with 

thought. 



582 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



Thought of man justified, blended with God, 
Through thy idea, lo, the immortal reality! 
Through thy reality, lo, the immortal idea! 



Brain of the New World, what a task is 
thine. 

To formulate the Modern — out of the peer- 
less gTandeur of the modern, 

Out of thyself, comprising science, to recast 
poems, churches, art, 

(Recast, may-be discard them, end them — 
may-be their work is done, who knows?) 

By vision, hand, conception, on the back- 
ground of the mighty past, the dead. 

To limn with absolute faith the mighty liv- 
ing present. 

And yet thou living present brain, heir of 
the dead, the Old World brain. 

Thou that lay folded like an unborn babe 
within its folds so long. 

Thou carefully prepared oy it so long — 
haply thou but unfoldest it, only ma- 
turest it. 

It to eventuate in thee — the essence of the 
by-gone time contain'd in thee. 

Its poems, churches, arts, unwitting to them- 
selves, destined with reference to thee; 

Thou but the apples, long, long, long a-grow- 

The fruit of all the Old ripening today in 
thee. 



Sail, sail thy best, ship of Democracy, 

Of value is thy freight, 'tis not the Present 
only. 

The Past is also stored in thee. 

Thou boldest not the venture of thyself 
alone, not of the western continent 
alone. 

Earth's resume entire floats on thy keel 
ship, is steadied by thy spars. 

With thee Time voyages in trust, the ante- 
cedent nations sink or swim with thee. 

With all their ancient struggles, martyrs, 
heroes, epics, wars, thou bear'st the 
other continents. 

Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destina- 
tion-port triumphant ; 

Steer then with good strong hand and wary 
eye helmsman, thou carriest great 
companions. 

Venerable priestly Asia sails this day with 
thee. 

And royal feudal Europe sails with thee. 



Beautiful world of new- superber birth that 

rises to my eyes. 
Like a limitless golden cloud filling the west- 
ern sky, 
Emblem of general maternity lifted above 

all, 
Sacred shape of the bearer of daughters and 

sons. 
Out of thy teeming womb thy giant babes in 

ceaseless procession issuing. 
Acceding from such gestation, taking and 

giving continual strength and life. 
World of the real — world of the twain in 

one. 
World of the soul, born by the world of the 

real alone, led to identity, body, by it 

alone. 
Yet in beginning only, incalculable masses 

of composite precious materials, 
By history's cycles forwarded, by every na- 
tion, language, hither sent, 
Ready, collected here, a freer, vast, electric 

world, to be constructed here, 
(The true New World, the world of orbie 

science, morals, literatures to come,) 
Thou wonder world yet undefined, unf orm'd, 

neither do I define thee. 
How can I pierce the impenetrable blank of 

the future ? 
I feel thy ominous greatness evil as well as 

good, 
I watch thee advancing, absorbing the pres- 
ent, transcending the past, 
I see thy light lighting, and thy shadow 

shadowing, as if the entire globe. 
But I do not undertake to define thee, hardly 

to comprehend thee, 
I but thee name, thee prophesy, as now, 
I merely thee ejaculate ! 

Thee in thy future, 

Thee in thy only permanent life, career, 
thy own unloosen'd mind, thy soaring 
spirit, 

Thee as another equally needed sun, radiant, 
ablaze, swift-moving, fructifying all. 

Thee risen in potent cheerfulness and joy, 
in endless great hilarity, 

Scattering for good the cloud that hung so 
long, that weigh'd so long upon the 
mind of man. 

The doubt, suspicion, dread, of gradual, cer- 
tain decadence of man; 

Thee in thy larger, saner brood of female, 
male — thee in thy athletes, moral, spir- 
itual. South, North, West, East, 



AMEEICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



583 



(To thy immortal breasts, Mother of All, thy 
every daughter, son, endear'd alike, for- 
ever equal,) 

Thee in thy own musicians, singers, artists, 
unborn yet, but certain. 

Thee in thy moral wealth and civilization 
(until which thy proudest material civ- 
ilization must remain in vain,) 

Thee in thy all-supplying, all-enclosing wor- 
ship — thee in no single bible, savior, 
merely. 

Thy saviors countless, latent within thy- 
self, equal to any, divine as any, 

(Thy soaring course thee formulating, not 
in thy two great wars, nor in thy cen- 
tury's visible growth. 

But far more in these leaves and chants, thy 
chants, great Mother!) 

Thee in an education grown of thee, in 
teachers, studies, students, born of thee. 

Thee in thy democratic fetes en-masse, thy 
high original festivals, operas, lectur- 
ers, preachers. 

Thee in thy ultimata, (the preparations only 
now completed, the edifice on sure foun- 
dations tied,) 

Thee in thy pinnacles, intellect, thought, thy 
topmost rational joys, thy love and god- 
like aspiration, 

In thy resplendent coming literati, thy full- 
lung'd orators, thy sacerdotal bards, 
kosmic s.avans. 

These! these in thee, (certain to come,) to- 
day I prophesy. 

6 

Land tolerating all, accepting all, not for 
the good alone, all good for thee, 

Land in the realms of God to be a realm unto 
thyself. 

Under the rule of God to be a rule unto 
thyself. 

(Lo, where arise three peerless stars, 

To be thy natal stars my country. Ensemble, 

Evolution, Freedom, 
Set in the sky of Law.) 

Land of unprecedented faith, God's faith. 
Thy soil, thy very subsoil, all upheav'd. 
The general inner earth so long, so sedu- 
lously draped over, now hence for what 
it is boldly laid bare, 
Open'd by thee to heaven's light for benefit 
or bale. 

Not for success alone. 

Not to fair-sail unintermitted always, 



The storm shall dash thy face, the murk of 
war and worse than war shall cover thee 
all over, 

(Wert capable of war, its tug and trials? 
be capable of peace, its trials, 

For the tug and mortal strain of natio'ns 
came at last in prosperous peace, not 
war ; ) 

In many a smiling mask death shall ap- 
proach beguiling thee, thou in disease 
shalt swelter, 

The livid cancer spread its hideous claws, 
clinging upon thy breasts, seeking to 
strike thee deep within. 

Consumption of the worst, moral consump- 
tion, shall rouge thy face with hectic, 

But thou shalt face thy fortunes, thy dis- 
eases, and surmount them all, 

Whatever they are today and whatever 
through time they may be. 

They each and all shall lift and pass away 
and cease from thee, 

While thou, Time's spirals rounding, out of 
thyself, thyself still extricating, fusing, 

Equable, natural, mystical Union thou, (the 
mortal with immortal blent,) 

Shalt soar toward the fulfilment of the fu- 
ture, the spirit of the body and the 
mind. 

The soul, its destinies. 

The soul, its destinies, the real real, 
(Purport of all these apparitions of the 

real ; ) 
In thee, America, the soul, its destinies. 
Thou globe of globes! thou wonder nebu- 
lous ! 
By many a throe of heat and cold convuls'd, 

(by these thyself solidifying,) 
Thou mental, moral orb — thou New, indeed 

new. Spiritual World! 
The Present holds thee not — for such vast 

growth as thine. 
For such unparallel'd flight as thine, such 

brood as thine. 
The FUTURE only holds thee and can hold 

thee. (1872) 

Star of France 
(1870-1871) 

V^ALT VC'HITMAN 

star of France, 

The brightness of thy hope and strength and 

fame. 
Like some proud ship that led the fleet so 

long. 



584 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



Beseems today a wreck driven by the gale, 

a mastless hulk, 
And 'mid its teeming madden'd half-drown'd 

crowds, 
Nor helm nor helmsman. 

Dim smitten star, ■ 

Orb not of France alone, pale symbol of my 

soul, its dearest hopes. 
The struggle and the daring, rage divine for 

liberty, 
Of aspirations toward the far ideal, enthur 

siast's dreams of brotherhood. 
Of terror to the tyrant and the priest. 

Star crucified — ^by traitors sold. 

Star panting o'er a land of death, heroic 

land. 
Strange, passionate, mocking, frivolous land. 

Miserable ! yet for thy errors, vanities, sins, 

I will not now rebuke thee. 
Thy unexampled woes and pangs have 

quell'd them all, 
And left thee sacred. 

In that amid thy many faults thou ever 

aimedst highly. 
In that thou wouldst not really sell thyself 

however great the price. 
In that thou surely wakedst weeping from 

thy drugg'd sleep. 
In that alone among thy sisters thou, giant- 
ess, didst rend the ones that shamed 

thee, 
In that thou couldst not, wouldst not, wear 

the usual chains, 
This cross, thy livid face, thy pierced hands 

and feet. 
The spear thrust in thy side. 

star! ship of France, beat back and 

baffled long! 
Bear up smitten orb ! ship continue on ! 

Sure as the ship of all, the Earth itself. 
Product of deadly fire and turbulent chaos, 
Forth from its spasms of fury and its poi- 
sons. 
Issuing forth at last in perfect power and 

beauty. 
Onward beneath the sun following its 

course. 
So thee ship of France ! 

Finish'd the days, the clouds dispel'd, 

The travail o'er, the long-sought extrication, 



When lo ! reborn, high o'er th6 European 

world, 
(In gladness answering thence, as face afar 

to face, reflecting ours Columbia,) 
Again thy star France, fair lustrous star. 
In heavenly peace, clearer, more bright than 

ever. 
Shall beam immortal. 



The Purpose of Democracy 

walt "whitman 
[From Democratic Vistas, 1882] 

The purpose of democracy — supplanting 
old belief in the necessary absoluteness of 
established dynastic rulership, temporal, ec- 
clesiastical, and scholastic, as furnishing the 
only security against chaos, crime, and ig- 
norance — is, through many transmigrations, 
and amid endless ridicules, arguments, and 
ostensible failures, to illustrate, at all haz- 
ards, this doctrine or theory that man, prop- 
erly train'd in sanest, highest freedom may 
and must become a law, and series of laws 
unto himself, surrounding and providing 
for, not only his own personal control, but 
all his relations to other individuals, and to 
the State; and that, while other theories, as 
in past histories of nations, have proved 
wise enough, and indispensable perhaps 
for their conditions, this, as matters now 
stand in our civilized world, is the only 
scheme worth working from, as warrant- 
ing results like those of Nature's laws, 
reliable, when once establish'd, to carry on 
themselves. . . . 

As to the political section of Democracy, 
which introduces and breaks ground for fur- 
ther and vaster sections, few probably are 
the minds, even in these republican States, 
that fully comprehended the aptness of that 
phrase, ''the government of the people, 

BY THE PEOPLE, FOR THE PEOPLE," which WO 

inherit from the lips of Abraham Lincoln ; a 
formula whose verbal shape is homely wit, 
but whose scope includes both the totality 
and all minutias of the lesson. . . . 

The purpose is not altogether direct; per- 
haps it is more indirect. For it is not that 
democracy is of exhaustive account, in itself. 
Perhaps indeed it is, like Nature, of no ac- 
count in itself. It is that, as we see it is the 
best, perhaps only, fit and full means, form- 
ulater, general caller-forth, trainer, of the 
million, not for grand material personalities 
only, but for immortal souls. To be a voter 



AMEEICAN IDEAliS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



585 



with the rest is not so much; and this like 
every institute, will have its imperfections. 
But to become an enfranchised man, and 
now, impediments removed, to stand and 
start without humiliation, and equal with the 
rest; to commence or have the road elear'd 
to commence, the grand experiment of devel- 
opment, whose end, <_ perhaps requiring sev- 
eral generations,) may be the forming of a 
full-grown man or woman — that is some- 
thing. To ballast the State is also secured, 
and in our time is to be secured, in no other 
way. 

We do not, (at any rate I do not,) put it 
either on the ground that the People, the 
masses, even the best of them, are, in their 
latent or exhibited qualities, essentially sen- 
sible and good — nor on the ground of their 
rights; but that good or bad, rights or no 
rights, the democratic formula is the only 
safe and presei-A^ative one for coming times. 
We endow the masses with the suffrage ■^or 
their own sake, no doubt ; then perhaps still 
more, from another point of view, for com- 
munity's sake. Leaving the rest to the sen- 
timentalists, we present freedom as suffi- 
cient in its scientific aspect, cold as ice, rea- 
soning, deductive, clear and passionless as 
crystal. 

Democracy too is law, and of the Ltrictest, 
amplest kind. Many suppose (often in its 
own ranks the error) that it means a throw- 
ing aside of law and running riot. But, 
briefly, it is the superior law, not alone that 
of physical force, the body, which, adding 
to, it supersedes with that of a spirit. Law 
is the unshakable order of the universe for- 
ever ; and the law over all, and law of laws, 
is the law of successions ; that of the supe- 
rior law, in time, gradually supplanting and 
overwhelming the inferior one. " (While, for 
myself, I would cheerfully agree — first cov- 
enanting that the formative tendencies shall 
be administer'd in favor, or at least not 
against it, and that this reservation be 
closely construed — that until the individual 
or community show due signs, or be so minor 
and fractional as not to endanger the State, 
the condition of authoritative tutelage may 
continue, and self-government must abide its 
time.) Nor is the esthetic point, always an 
important one, without fascination for high- 
est aiming souls. The common ambition 
strains for elevations to become some priv- 
ileged exclusive. The master sees greatness 
and health in being part of the mass ; noth- 
ing will do as well as the common ground. 
Would you have in yourself the divine. 



vast, general law? Then merge yourself 
in it. 

And, tojDping democracy, this most allur- 
ing record, that it alone can bind, and ever 
seeks to bind, all nations, all men, of how- 
ever various and distant lands, into brother- 
hood, a family. It is the old, yet ever- 
modern dream of earth, out of her eldest 
and her youngest, her fond philosophers and 
poets. Not that half only, individualism, 
which isolates. There is another half, which 
is adhesiveness or love, that fuses, ties, and 
aggregates, making the races comrades, and 
fraternizing all. Both are not to be vital- 
ized by religion, (sole worthiest elevator of 
man or State,) breathing into the proud, 
material tissues, the breath of life. For I 
say at the core of democracy, finally, is the 
religious element. All the religions, old and 
new, are there. Nor may the scheme step 
forth, clothed in resplendent beauty and 
command, till these, bearing the best, the 
latest fruit, the spiritual, shall fully appear. 

A portion of our pages we might indite 
with reference toward Europe, especially 
the British part of it, more than our own 
land, perhaps not absolutely needed for the 
home reader. But the whole question hangs 
together, and fastens and links all peoples. 
The liberalist of today has this advantage 
over antique or medieval times, that his 
doctrine seeks not only to individualize but 
to universalize. The great word Solidarity 
has arisen. Of all dangers to a nation, as 
things exist in our day, there can be no 
greater one than having certain portions of 
the people set off from the rest by a line 
drawn — they not privileged as others, but 
degTaded, humiliated, made of no account. 
Much quackery teems, of course, even on 
democracy's side, yet does not really affect 
the orbic quality of the matter. To work 
in, if we may so term it, and justify God, 
his divine aggregate, the People (or, the 
veritable horn'd and sharp-taiPd Devil, his 
aggregate, if there be who convulsively in- 
sist upon it) — this I say is what democracy 
is for ; and this is what our America means, 
and is doing — ^may I not say has done? If 
not, she means nothing more than any other 
land. And as, by virtue of its kosmical, an- 
tiseptic power. Nature's stomach is fully 
strong enough not only to digest the morbific 
matter always presented, not to be turn'd 
aside, and perhaps, indeed, intuitively grav- 
itating thither — but even to change such 
contributions into nutriment for highest use 
and life — so American democracy's. That is 



586 



THE GEEAT TEABITION 



the lesson we, these days, send over to Euro- 
pean lands by every western breeze. . . . 

Political democracy, as it exists and prac- 
tically works in America, with all its threat- 
ening evils, supplies a training-school for 
making first-class men. It is life's gymna- 
sium, not of good only but of all. We try 
often, though we fall back often. A brave 
delight, fit for freedom's athletes, fills these 
arenas, and fully satisfies, out of the action 
in them, irrespective of success. Whatever 
we do not attain, we at any rate attain the 
experiences of the fight, the hardening of 
the strong campaign, and throb with cur- 
rents of attempt at least. Time is ample. 
Let the victors come after us. Not for noth- 
ing does evil play its part among us. Judg- 
ing from the main portions of the history of 
the world, so far, justice is always in jeop- 
ardy, peace walks amid hourly pitfalls, and 
of slavery, misery, meanness, the craft of 
tyrants, and the credulity of the populace, in 
some of their protean forms, no voice can 
at any time say. They are not. The clouds 
break a little, and the sun shines out — but 
soon and certain the lowering darkness falls 
again, as if to last for ever. Yet is there 
an immortal courage and prophecy in every 
sane soul that cannot, must not, under any 
circumstances, capitulate. Vive, the attack 
— the perennial assault ! Vive, the unpopu- 
lar cause — the spirit that audaciously aims — 
the never-abandon'd efforts, pursued the 
same amid opposing proofs and prece- 
dents. . . . 

Then still the thought returns, (like the 
thread-passage in overtures,) giving the key 
and echo to these pages. When I pass to and 
fro, different latitudes, different seasons, 
beholding the crowds of the great cities. New 
York, Boston, Philadelphia, Cincinnati, Chi- 
cago, St. Louis, San Francisco, New Orleans, 
Baltimore — ^when I mix with these inter- 
minable swarms of alert, turbulent, good- 
natured, independent citizens, mechanics, 
clerks, young persons — at the idea of this 
mass of men, so fresh and free, so loving 
and so proud, a singnilar awe falls upon me. 
I feel with dejection and amazement, that 
among our geniuses and talented writers or 
speakers, few or none have yet really spoken 
to this people, created a single image-mak- 
ing work for them, or absorb'd the central 
spirit and the idiosyncrasies which are theirs 
— and which, thus, in highest ranges so far 
remain entirely uncelebrated, unexpressed. 

Dominion strong is the body's ; dominion 
stronger is the mind's. 



A New Earth and a New Man 

WALT WHITMAN 

[From Democratic Vistas] 

Then, as towards our thought's finale, 
(and, in that, overarching the true scholar's 
lesson,) we have to say there can be no com- 
plete or epical iDresentation of democracy in 
the aggregate, or anything like it, at this 
day, because its doctrines will only be ef- 
fectually incarnated in any one branch, 
when, in all, their spirit is at the root and 
center. Far, far, indeed, stretch, in dis- 
tance, our Vistas ! How much is still to be 
disentangled, freed! How long it takes to 
make this American world see that it is, in 
itself, the final authority and reliance ! 

Did you, too, friend, suppose democ- 
racy was only for elections, for polities, and 
for a party name ? I say democracy is only 
of use there that it may pass on and come to 
its flower and fruits in manners, in the high- 
est forms of interaction between men, and 
their beliefs — in religion, literature, col- 
leges, and schools — democracy in all public 
and private life, and in the army and navy. 
I have intimated that as a paramount 
scheme, it has yet few or no full realizers 
and believers. I do not see either that it 
owes any serious thanks to noted propa- 
gandists or champions, or has been essen- 
tially help'd, though often harm'd, by them. 
It has been and is carried on by all the moral 
forces, and by trade, finance machinery, in- 
tercommunications, and, in fact, by all the 
developments of history, and can no more be 
stopp'd than the tides, or the earth in its 
orbit. Doubtless, also, it resides, crude and 
latent, well down in the hearts of the fair 
average of the American-born people, 
mainly in the agricultural regions. But it is 
not yet, there or anywhere, the fully- 
received, the fervid, the absolute faith. 

I submit, therefore, that the fruition of 
democracy, on aught like a grand scale, re- 
sides altogether in the future. As, under 
any profound and comprehensive view of 
the gorgeous-composite feudal world, we see 
in it, through the long ages and cycles of 
ages, the results of a deep, integral, human 
and divine principle, or fountain, from 
which issued laws, ecclesia, manners, insti- 
tutes, costumes, personalities, poems, (hith- 
erto unequall'd,) faithfully partaking of 
their source, and indeed only arising either 
to betoken it, or to furnish parts of that 
varied-flowing display, whose center was one 



AMERICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



587 



and absolute — so, long ages hence shall the 
due historian or critic make at least an equal 
retrospect, an equal history of the demo- 
cratic principle. It too must be adorn'd 
credited with its results ; then, when it, with 
imperial power, through amplest time, has 
dominated mankind, has been the source and 
test of all the moral esthetic, social, political, 
and religious expressions and institutes of 
the civilized world, has begotten them in 
spirit and in form, and has carried them to 
its own unprecedented heights, has had, (it 
is possible) monastics, more numerous, more 
devout than the monks and priests of all 
previous creeds, has sway'd the ages with a 
breadth and rectitude tallying Nature's own, 
has fashion'd, systematized, and triumph- 
antly finish'd and carried out, in its own 
interest, and with unparallel'd success, a new 
earth and a new man. 

Thus we presume to write, as it were, 
upon things that exist not, and travel by 
maps yet unmade, and a blank. But the 
throes of birth are upon us ; and we have 
something of this advantage in seasons of 
strong formations, doubts, suspense, for 
then the afflatus of such themes haply may 
fall upon us, more or less; and then, hot 
from surrounding war and revolution, our 
speech, though without polish'd coherence, 
and a failure by the standard called criti- 
cism, comes forth, real at least as the light- 
nings. 

And may-be we, these days, have too, our 
own reward, for there are yet some, in all 
lands, worthy to be so encouraged. Though 
not for us the joy of entering at the last the 
eonquer'd city, not ours the chance ever to 
see with our own eyes the peerless power 
and splendid eclat of the democratic prin- 
ciple, arriv'd at meridian, filling the world 
with effulgence and majesty far beyond 
those of past history's kings, or all dynastic 
sway, there is yet, to whoever is eligible 
among us, the prophetic vision, the joy of 
being toss'd in the brave turmoil of these 
times, the promulgation and the path, obe- 
dient, lowly reverent to the voice, the ges- 
ture of the god, or holy ghost, which others 
see not, hear not, — ^with the proud con- 
sciousness that amid whatever clouds, seduc- 
tions, or heart-wearying postponements, we 
have never deserted, never despaired, never 
abandoned the faith. 

So much contributed, to be eonn'd well, to 
help prepare and brace our edifice, our 
plann'd Idea, we still proceed to give it an- 
other of its aspects, perhaps the main, the 



high fagade of all. For to democracy, the 
leveler, the unyielding principle of the aver- 
age, is surely join'd another principle, 
equally unyielding, closely tracking the first, 
indispensable to it, opposite, (as the sexes 
are opposite,) and whose existence, con- 
fronting and ever modifying the other, often 
clashing, paradoxical, yet neither of the 
highest avail without the other, plainly sup- 
plies to these grand cosmic politics of ours, 
and to the launeh'd forth, mortal dangers 
of republicanism, today or any day, the 
counterpart and offset whereby Nature re- 
strains the deadly original relentlessness of 
all her first-class laws. This second prin- 
ciple is individuality, the pride and centri- 
petal isolation of a human being in himself, 
identity, personalism. Whatever the name, 
its acceptance and thorough infusion 
through the organizations of political com- 
monalty now shooting Aurora-like about the 
world, are of utmost importance, as the 
principle itself is needed for every life's 
sake. It forms, in a sort, or is to form, the 
compensating balance-wheel of the success- 
ful working machine of aggregate America. 

Dangers Within the State 

VfALT whitman 

[From Democratic Vistas] 

To practically enter into polities is an im- 
portant part of American personalism. To 
every young man, north and south, earnestly 
studying these things, I should here, as an 
offset to what I have said in former pages, 
now also say, that may-be to views of very 
largest scope, after all, perhaps the political, 
(perhaps the literary and sociological,) 
America goes best about its development its 
own way, sometimes to temporary sight ap- 
palling enough. It is the fashion among dil- 
ettants and fops (perhaps I myself am not 
guiltless,) to decry the whole formulation of 
the active polities of America, as beyond re- 
demption, and to be carefully kept away 
from. See you that you do not fall into this 
error. America, it may be, is doing very 
well upon the whole, notwithstanding these 
antics of the parties and their leaders, these 
half-brain'd nominees, the many ignorant 
ballots, and many elected failures and blath- 
erers. It is the dilettants, and all who shirk 
their duty, who are not doing well. As for 
you, I advise you to enter more strongly into 
polities. I advise every young man to do so. 
Always inform yourself ; always do the best 



588 



THE GEEAT TEADITlON 



you can; always vote. Disengage yourself 
from parties. They have been useful, and 
to some extent remain so; but the floating, 
uncommitted electors, farmers, clerks, me- 
chanics, the masters of parties — watching 
aloof, iiTclining victory this side or that 
side — such are the ones most needed, present 
and future. For America, if eligible at all 
to downfall and ruin, is eligible within her- 
self, not without; for I see clearly that the 
combined foreign world could not bear her 
down. But these savage, wolfish parties 
alarm me. Owing no law but their own will, 
more and more combative, less and less toler- 
ant of the idea of ensemble and of equal 
brotherhood, the perfect equality of the 
States, the ever-overarching American ideas, 
it behooves you to convey yourself implicitly 
to no party, nor submit blindly to their dic- 
tators, but steadily hold yourself judge and 
master over all of them. . . . 

Even today, amid these whirls, incredible 
flippancy, and blind fury of parties, infidel- 
ity, entire lack of first-class captains and 
leaders added to the plentiful meanness and 
vulgarity of the ostensible masses — that 
problem, the labor question, beginning to 
open like a yawning gnilf, rapidly widening 
every year — what prospect have we? We 
sail a dangerous sea of seething currents, 
cross and under-currents, vortices — all so 
dark, untried — and whither shall we turn? 
It seems as if the Almighty had spread be- 
fore this nation charts of imperial destinies, 
dazzling as the sun, yet with many a deep 
intestine difficulty, and human aggregate of 
cankerous imperfection — saying, lo ! the 
roads, the only plans of development, long 
and varied with all terrible balks and ebul- 
litions. You said in your soul, I will be 
empire of empires, overshadowing all else, 
past and present, putting the history of Old- 
World dynasties, conquests behind me, as of 
no account — ^making a new history, a history 
of democracy, making old history a dwarf — 
I alone inaugurating largeness, culminating 
time. If these, O lands of America, are in- 
deed the prizes, the determinations of your 
soul, be it so. But behold the cost, and al- 
ready specimens of the cost. Thought you 
greatness was to ripen for you like a pear? 
If you would have greatness, know that you 
must conquer it through ages, centuries — 
must pay for it with a proportionate price. 
For you too, as for all lands, the straggler, 
the traitor, the wily person in office, scrofu- 
lous wealth, the surfeit of prosperity, the 
demonism of greed, the hell of passion, the 



decay of faith, the long postponement, the 
fossil-like lethargy, the ceaseless need of rev- 
olutions, prophets, thunder-storms, deaths, 
births, new projections and invigorations of 
ideas and men. 

Yet I have dream'd, merged in that hid- 
den-tangled problem of our fate, whose long 
unraveling stretches mysteriously through 
time — dreamed out, portray'd, hinted al- 
ready, a little or a larger band, a band of 
brave and true, unprecedent yet, arm'd and 
equipt at every point; the members sep- 
arated, it may be, by different dates and 
States, or south or north, or east, or west — 
Pacific, Atlantic, Southern, Cana-dian; a 
year, a century here, and other centuries 
there, but always one, compact in soul, 
conscience-conserving, God-inculcating, in- 
spired achievers in all art; a new, undying 
order, dynasty, from age to age transmitted ; 
a band, a class, at least as fit to cope with 
current years, our dangers, needs, as those 
who, for their times, so long, so well, in 
armor or in cowl, upheld and made illus- 
trious, that far-back feudal, priestly world. 
To offset chivalry, indeed, those vanish'd 
countless knights, old altars, abbeys, priest, 
ages and strings of ages, a knightlier and 
more sacred cause today demands, and shall 
supply, in a New World, to larger, grander 
work, more than the counterpart and tally 
of them. 

Nationality — (And Yet) 

walt whitman 

[From Notes Left Over] 

It is more and more clear to me that the 
main sustenance for highest separate per- 
sonality, these States, is to come from that 
general sustenance of the aggTegate, (as air, 
earth, rains, give sustenance to a tree,) — 
and that such personality, by democratic 
standards, will only be fully coherent, grand 
and free, through the cohesion, grandeur 
and freedom of the common aggregate, the 
Union. . . . The theory and practice of both 
sovereignities, contradictory as they are, 
are necessary. As the centripetal law were 
fatal alone, or the centrifugal law deadlj' 
and destructive alone, but together forming 
the law of eternal kosmical action, evolution, 
preservation, and life; — so, by itself alone, 
the fullness of individuality, even the sanest, 
would surely destroy itself. This is what 
makes the importance to the identities of 
these States of the thoroughly fused, relent- 



AMERICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



less, dominating Union — a moral and spir- 
itual idea, subjecting all the parts with re- 
morseless power, more needed by American 
democracy than by any history's hitherto 
empires of feudalities, and the sine qua non 
of carrying out the republican principle to 
develop itself in the New World through 
hundreds, thousands of years to come. 

Indeed, what most needs fostering through 
the hundred years to come, in all parts of 
the United States, north, south, Mississippi 
valley, and Atlantic and Pacific coasts, is 
this fused and fervent identity of the indi- 
vidual, whoever he or she may be, and wher- 
ever the place, with the idea and fact of 
American totality, and with what is meant 
by the Flag, the stars and stripes. We need 
this conviction of nationality as a faith, to 
be absorbed in the blood and belief of the 
people everywhere, south, north, west, east, 
to emanate in their life, and in native liter- 
ature and art. We want the germinal idea 
that America, inheritor of the past, is the 
custodian of the future of humanity. Judg- 
ing from history, it is some such moral and 
spiritual ideas appropriate to them, (and 
such ideas only,) that have made the pro- 
foundest glory and endurance of nations in 
the past. The races of Judea, the classic 
clusters of Greece and Rome, and the feudal 
and ecclesiastical clusters of the Middle 
Ages, were each and all vitalized by their 
separate distinctive ideas, ingTain'd in them, 
redeeming many sins, and indeed, in a sense, 
the principal reason-why for their whole 
career. 

Then, in the thought of nationality espe- 
cially for the United States, and making 
them original, and different from all other 
countries, another point ever remains to be 
considered. There are two distinct princi- 
ples — aye, paradoxes — at the life-fountain 
and life-continuation of the States ; one, the 
sacred principle of the Union, the right of 
ensemble, at whatever sacrifice — yet another, 
an equally sacred principle, the right of each 
State, consider'd as a separate sovereign in- 
dividual, in its own sphere. Some go zeal- 
ously for one set of these rights, and some 
as zealously for the other set. We must have 
both; or rather, bred out of them, as our 
mother and father, a third set, the perennial 
result and combination of both, and neither 
jeopardized. I say the loss or abdication 
of one set, in the future, will be ruin to 
democracy just as much as the loss of the 



other set. The problem is, to harmoniously 
adjust the two, and play the part of the two. 
Observe the lesson of the divinity of Nature, 
ever checking the excess of one side of the 
same law. For the theory of this Republic 
is not that the General government is the 
fountain of all life and power, dispensing 
forth, around, and to the remotest portions 
of our territory, but that the People are, 
represented in both, underlying both the 
General and State governments, and consid- 
er'd just as well in their individualities and 
in their separate aggregates, or States, as 
consider'd in one vast aggregate, the Union. 
This was the original dual theory and foun- 
dation of the United States, as distinguish'd 
from the feudal and ecclesiastical single idea 
of monarchies and papacies, and the divine 
right of kings. Kings have been of use, 
hitherto, as reiDresenting the idea of the 
identity of nations. But, to American de- 
mocracy, both ideas must be filled, and in 
my opinion the loss of vitality of either one 
will indeed be the loss of vitality of the 
other. 

One Country 

frank l. stanton 

After all. 
One country, brethren ! We must rise or fall 
With the Supreme Republic. We must be 
The makers of her immortality, — 
Her freedom, fame, 
Her glory, or her shame; 
Liegemen to God and fathers of the free ! 

After all- 
Hark! from the heights the clear, strong, 

clarion call 
And the command imperious : "Stand forth. 
Sons of the South and brothers of the North ! 
Stand forth and be 
As one on soil and sea — 
Your country's honor more than empire's 
worth !" 

After all, 
'Tis Freedom wears the loveliest coronal ; 
Her brow is to the morning ; in the sod 
She breathes the breath of patriots; every 
clod 

Answers her call 

And rises like a wall 
Against the foes of liberty and God ! 



590 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



III. THE EVE OF A NEW ERA 



Not the Pilot 



WALT WHITMAN 



Not the pilot has charged himself to bring 

his ship into port, though beaten back 

and many times baffled ; 
Not the pathfinder penetrating inland weary 

and long, 
By deserts pareh'd, snows chill'd, rivers wet, 

perseveres till he reaches his destination. 
More than I have charged myself, heeded or 

unheeded, to compose a march ^r these 

States, 
For a battle-call, rousing the arms if need 

be, centuries hence. (1867) 

The Prophecy of a New Era 
walt whitman 

I see tremendous entrances and exits, new 
combinations, the solidarity of nations, 

I see that force advancing with irresistible 
power on the world's stage. . . . 

I see men marching and countermarching by 
swift millions, 

I see the landmark of European kings re- 
moved, 

I see this day the People beginning their 
landmarks (all others give way) : 

Never were such sharp questions ask'd as 
this day, 

Never was average man, his soul, more ener- 
getic, more like a God. . . . 

What whispers are these, lands, running 
ahead of you, passing under the seas f 

Are all nations communing? is there going 
to be but one heart to the globe ? 

Is humanity forming en masse? for, lo, 
tyrants tremble, crowns grow dim. 

The earth, restive, confronts a new era. 

The Destiny of America 

WALT whitman 

[From Collect] 

Is there not such a thing as the philosophy 
of American history and politics? And if 
so, what is it ? . . . Wise men say there are 
two sets of wills to nations and to persons — 
one set that acts and works from explain- 
able motives — from teaching, intelligence, 
judgment, circumstance, caprice, emulation, 
greed, etc., and then another set, perhaps 
deep, hidden, unsuspected, yet often more 



potent than the first, refusing to be argued 
with, rising as it were out of abysses, resist- 
lessly urging on speakers, doers, communi- 
ties, unwitting to themselves — the poet to his 
fieriest words — the race to pursue its loftiest 
ideal. Indeed, the paradox of a nation's life 
and career, with all its wondrous contradic- 
tions, can probably only be explained from 
these two wills, sometimes conflicting, each- 
operating in its sphere, combining in races 
or in persons, and producing strangest re- 
sults. 

Let us hope there is (indeed, can there 
be any doubt there is?) this great uncon- 
scious and abysmic second will also running 
through the average nationality and career 
of America. Let us hope that, amid all the 
dangers and defections of the present, and 
through all the processes of the conscious 
will, it alone is the permanent and sovereign 
force, destined to carry on the New World to 
fulfil its destines in the future — to resolutely 
pursue those destinies, age upon age; to 
build, far, far beyond its past vision, pres- 
ent thought; to form and fashion, and for 
the general type, men and women more 
noble, more athletic than the world has yet 
seen; to gTadually, firmly blend, from all 
the States, with all varieties, a friendly, 
happy, free, religious nationality — a nation- 
ality not only the richest, most inventive, 
most productive and materialistic the world . 
has yet known, but compacted indissolubly, 
and out of whose ample and solid bulk, and 
giving purpose and finish to it, conscience, 
morals, and all the spiritual attributes, shall 
surely rise, like spires above some group of 
edifices, firm-footed on the earth, yet sealing 
space and heaven. 

Great as they are, and greater far to be, 
the United States, too, are but a series of 
steps in the eternal process of creative 
thought. And here is, to my mind, their 
final justification, and certain perpetuity. 
There is in that sublime process, in the laws 
of the universe, and, above all, in the moral 
law, something that would make unsatisfac- 
tory, and even vain and contemptible, all the 
triumphs of war, the gains of peace, and the 
proudest worldly grandeur of all the na- 
tions that have ever existed, or that (ours 
included) now exist, except that we con- 
stantly see, through all their worldly career, 
however struggling and blind and lame, at- 



AMEEICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



591 



tempts, by all ages, all peoples, according to 
their development, to reach, to press, to 
progress on, and ever farther on, to more 
and more advanced ideals. 

The glory of the republic of the United 
States, in my opinion, is to be that, emerging 
in the light of the modern and the splendor 
of science, and solidly based on the past, it 
is to cheerfully range itself, and its politics 
are henceforth to come, under these univer- 
sal laws, and embody them, and carry them 
out, to serve them. And as only that indi- 
vidual becomes truly great who understands 
well that, while complete in himself in a cer- 
tain sense, he is but part of the divine, eter- 
nal scheme, and whose special life and laws 
are adjusted to move in harmonious rela- 
tions with the general laws of Nature, and 
especially with the moral law, the deepest and 
highest of all, and the last vitality of man 
or state — so the United States may only be- 
come the greatest and the most continuous, 
by understanding well their own harmonious 
relations with entire humanity and history, 
and all their laws and progi-ess, sublimed 
with the creative thought of Deity, through 
all time, past, present, and future. Thus will 
they expand to the amplitude of their des- 
tiny, and become illustrations and culminat- 
ing parts of the kosmos, and of civilization. 

The Meaning of the Declaration of 
Independence 

woodrow wilson 

[An Address delivered at Independence 
Hall, July 4, 1914] 

We are assembled to celebrate the one 
hundred and thirty-eighth anniversary of 
the birth of the United States. I suppose 
that we can more vividly realize the circum- 
stances of that birth standing on this historic 
spot than it would be possible to realize them 
anywhere else. The Declaration of Inde- 
pendence was written in Philadelphia; it 
was adopted in this historic building by 
which we stand. I have just had the privi- 
lege of sitting in the chair of the great man 
who presided over the deliberations of those 
who gave the declaration to the world. My 
hand rests at this moment upon the table 
upon which the declaration was signed. We 
can feel that we are almost in the visible and 
tangible presence of a great historic trans- 
action. 

Have you ever read the Declaration of 
Independence or attended with close com- 



prehension to the real character of it when 
you have heard it read? If you have, you 
will know that it is not a Fourth of July 
oration. The Declaration of Independence 
was a document preliminary to war. It was 
a vital piece of practical business, not a 
piece of rhetoric; and if you will pass be- 
yond those preliminary passages which we 
are accustomed to quote about the rights of 
men and read into the heart of the document 
you will see that it is very express and de- 
tailed, that it consists of a series of definite 
specifications concerning actual public busi- 
ness of the day. Not the business of our 
day, for the matter with which it deals is 
past, but the business of that first revolu- 
tion by which the Nation was set up, the 
business of 1776. Its general statements, its 
general declarations can not mean anything 
to us unless we append to it a similar spe- 
cific body of particulars as to what we con- 
sider the essential business of our own day. 

Liberty does not consist, my fellow citi- 
zens, in mere general declarations of the 
rights of man. It consists in the translation 
of those declarations into definite action. 
Therefore, standing here where the declara- 
tion was adopted, reading its businesslike 
sentences, we ought to ask ourselves what 
there is in it for us. There is nothing in it 
for us unless we can translate it into the 
terms of our own conditions and of our own 
lives. We must reduce it to what the lawyers 
call a bill of particulars. It contains a bill 
of particulars, but the bill of particulars of 
1776. If we would keep it alive, we must 
fill it with a bill of particulars of the year 
1914. 

The task to which we have constantly to 
readdress ourselves is the task of proving 
that we are worthy of the men who drew this 
great declaration and know what they would 
have done in our circumstances. Patriotism 
consists in some very practical things — prac- 
tical in that they belong to the life of every 
day, that they wear no extraordinary dis- 
tinction about them, that they are connected 
with commonplace duty. The way to be pa- 
triotic in America is not only to love Amer- 
ica but to love the duty that lies nearest to 
our hand and know that in performing it we 
are serving our country. There are some 
gentlemen in Washington, for example, at 
this very moment who are showing them- 
selves very patriotic in a way which does not 
attract wide attention but seems to belong, 
to mere everyday obligations. The Members 
of the House and Senate who stay in hot 



592 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



Washington to maintain a quorum of the 
Houses and transact the all-important busi- 
ness of the Nation are doing an act of pa- 
triotism. I honor them for it, and I am glad 
to stay there and stick by them until the 
work is done. 

It is patriotic, also, to learn what the facts 
of our national life are and to face them 
with candor. I have heard a great many facts 
stated about the present business condition 
of this country, for example — a great many 
allegations of fact, at any rate, but the alle- 
gations do not tally with one another. And 
yet I know that truth always matches with 
truth; and when I find some insisting that 
everything is going wrong and others insist- 
ing that everything is going right, and when 
I know from a wide observation of the gen- 
eral circumstances of the country taken as 
a whole that things are doinf»- extremely well, 
I wonder what those who are crying out that 
things are wrong are trying to do. Are they 
trying to serve the country, or are they try- 
ing to serve something smaller than the 
country 1 Are they trying to put hope into 
the hearts of the men who work and toil 
every day, or are they trying to plant dis- 
couragement and despair in those hearts'? 
And why do they cry that everything is 
wrong and yet do nothing to set it right? 
If they love America and anything is wrong 
amongst us, it is their business to put their 
hand with ours to the task of setting it right. 
When the facts are known and acknowl- 
edged, the duty of all patriotic men is to 
accept them in candor and to address them- 
selves hopefully and confidently to the com- 
mon counsel which is necessary to act upon 
them wisely and in universal concert. 

I have had some experiences in the last 
fourteen months which have not been en- 
tirely reassuring. It was universally admit- 
ted, for example, my fellow citizens, that 
the banking system of this country needed 
reorganization. We set the best minds that 
we could find to the task of discovering the 
best method of reorganization. But we met 
with hardly anything but criticism from the 
bankers of the country ; we met with hardly 
anything but resistance from the majority of 
those at least who spoke at all concerning the 
matter. And yet so soon as that act was 
passed there was a universal chorus of ap- 
plause, and the very men who had opposed 
the measure joined in that applause. If it 
was wrong the day before it was passed, 
why was it right the day after it was passed ? 
Where had been the candor of criticism not 



only, but the concert of counsel which makes 
legislative action vigorous and safe and 
successful ? 

It is not patriotic to concert measures 
against one another; it is patriotic to eon- 
cert measures for one another. 

In one sense the Declaration of Independ- 
ence has lost its significance. It has lost its 
significance as a declaration of national in- 
dependence. Nobody outside of America 
believed when it was uttered that we could 
make good our independence; now nobody 
anywhere would dare to doubt that we are 
independent and can maintain our independ- 
ence. As a declaration of independence, 
therefore, it is a mere historic document. 
Our independence is a fact so stupendous 
that it can be measured only by the size and 
energy and variety and wealth and power of 
one of the greatest nations in the world. 
But it is one thing to be independent and it 
is another thing to know what to do with 
your independence. It is one thing to come 
to your majority and another thing to know 
what you are going to do with your life and 
your energies; and one of the most serious 
questions for sober-minded men to address 
themselves to in the United States is this: 
What are we going to do with the infiuenee 
and power of this great Nation? Are we 
going to play the old role of using that 
power for our aggrandizement and material 
benefit only? You know what that may 
mean. It may upon occasion mean that we 
shall use it to make the people of other na- 
tions suffer in the way in which we said it 
was intolerable to suffer when we uttered our 
Declaration of Independence. 

The Department of State at Washington 
is constantly called upon to back up the 
commercial enterprises and the industrial 
enterprises of the United States in foreign 
countries, and it at one time went so far in 
that direction that all its diplomacy came to 
be designated as "dollar diplomacy." It was 
called u]3on to support every man who 
wanted to earn anything anywhere if he was 
an American. But there ought to be a limit 
to that. There is no man who is more inter- 
ested than I am in carrying the enterprise 
of American business men to every quarter 
of the globe. I was interested in it long be- 
fore I was suspected of being a politician. 
I have been preaching it year after year as 
the great thing that lay in the future for the 
United States, to show her wit and skill and 
enterprise and influence in every country in 
the world. But observe the limit to all that 



AMEEICAN IDEAL&— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



593 



which is laid upon us perhaps more than 
upon any other nation in the world. We set 
this Nation up, at any rate we professed to 
set it up, to vindicate the rights of iLen. We 
did not name any differences between one 
race and another. We did not set up any 
barriers against any particular people. We 
opened our gates to all the world and said, 
"Let all men who wish to be free come to us 
and they will be welcome." We said, "This 
independence of ours is not a selfish thing 
for our own exclusive private use. It is for 
everybody to whom we can find the means of 
extending it." We can not with that oath 
taken in our youth, we can not with that 
gieat ideal set before us when we were a 
young people and numbered only a scant 
three million, trke upon ourselves, now that 
we are one hundred million strong, any other 
conception of duty than we then entertained. 
If American enterprise in foreign countries, 
particularly in those foreign countries which 
are not strong enough to resist us, takes the 
shape of imposing upon and exploiting the 
mass of the i^eojDle of that country, it ought 
to be checked and not encouraged. I am 
willing to get anything for an American 
that money and enterprise can obtain except 
the suppression of the rights of other men.. 
I will not help any man buy a power which 
he ought not to exercise over his fellow 
beings. 

You know, my fellow countrymen, what a 
big question there is in Mexico. Eighty-five 
per cent of the Mexican people have never 
been allowed to have any genuine participa- 
tion in their own Government or to exercise 
any substantial rights with regard to the 
very land they live ujDon. All the rights that 
men most desire have been exercised by the 
other fifteen per cent. Do you suppose that 
that circumstance is not sometimes in my 
thought? I know that the American people 
have a heart that will beat just as strong for 
those millions in Mexico as it will beat, or 
has beaten, for any other millions elsewhere 
in the world, and that when once they con- 
ceive what is at stake in Mexico they will 
know what ought to be done in Mexico. I 
hear a great deal said about the loss of prop- 
erty in Mexico and the loss of .the lives of 
foreigners, and I deplore these things with 
all my heart. Undoubtedly, upon the con- 
clusion of the present disturbed conditions 
in Mexico those who have been unjustly de- 
prived of their property or in any wise 
unjustly put upon ought to be compensated. 
Men's individual rights have no doubt been 



invaded, and the invasion of those rights 
has been attended by many deplorable cir- 
cumstances which ought some time, in the 
proper way, to be accounted for. But back 
of it all is the struggle of a people to come 
into its own, and while we look upon the 
incidents in the foreground let us not forget 
the great tragic reality in the background 
which towers above the whole picture. 

A patriotic American is a man who is not 
niggardly and selfish in the things that he 
enjoys that make for human liberty and the 
rights of man. He wants to share them with 
the whole world, and he is never so proud 
of the great flag under which he lives as 
when it comes to mean to other people as 
well as to himself a symbol of hope and 
liberty, I would be ashamed of this flag if 
it did anything outside America that we 
would not permit it to do inside of America. 

The world is becoming more complicated 
every day, my fellow citizens. No man 
ought to be foolish enough to think that he 
understands it all. And, therefore, I am 
glad that there are some simple things in the 
world. One of the simple things is prin- 
ciple. Honesty is a perfectly simple thing. 
It is hard for me to believe that in most cir- 
cumstances when a man has a choice of ways 
he does not know which is the right way and 
which is the wrong way. No man who has 
chosen the wrong way ought even to come 
into Independence Square ; it is holy ground 
which he ought not to tread upon. He ought 
not to come where immortal voices have 
uttered the great sentences of such a docu- 
ment as this Declaration of Independence 
ui3on which rests the liberty of a whole 
nation. 

And so I say that it is patriotic sometimes 
to prefer the honor of the country to its 
material interest. Would you rather be 
deemed by all the nations of the world in- 
capable of keeping your treaty obligations 
in order that you might have free tolls for 
American ships? The treaty under which 
we gave up that right may have been a mis- 
taken treaty, but there was no mistake about 
its meaning. 

When I have made a promise as a man I 
try to keep it, and I know of no other rule 
permissible to a nation. The most distin- 
guished nation in the world is the nation 
that can and will keep its promises even to 
its own hurt. And I want to say parenthet- 
ically that I do not think anybody was hurt. 
I cannot be enthusiastic for subsidies to a 
monopoly, but let those who are enthusiastic 



594 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



for subsidies ask themselves whether they 
prefer subsidies to unsullied honor. 

The most patriotic man, ladies and gentle- 
men, is sometimes the man who goes in the 
direction that he thinks right even when he 
sees half the world against him. It is the 
dictate of patriotism to sacrifice yourself if 
you think that that is the path of honor and 
of duty. Do not blame others if they do not 
agree with you. Do not die with bitterness 
in your heart because you did not convince 
the' rest of the world, but die happy because 
you believe that you tried to serve your 
country by not selling your soul. Those were 
grim days, the days of 1776, Those gentle- 
men did not attach their names to the Dec- 
laration of Independence on this table ex- 
pecting a holiday on the next day, and that 
4th of July was not itself a holiday. They 
attached their signatures to that significant 
document knowing that if they failed it was 
certain that every one of them would hang 
for the failure. They were committing trea- 
son in the interest of the liberty of three 
million people in America. All the rest of 
the world was against them and smiled with 
cynical incredulity at the audacious under- 
taking. Do you think that if they could see 
this great Nation now they would regret 
anything that they then did to draw the gaze 
of a hostile world upon them? Every idea 
must be started by somebody, and it is a 
lonely thing to start anything. Yet if it is 
in you, you must start it if you have a man's 
blood in you and if you love the country that 
you profess to be working for. 

I am sometimes very much interested 
when I see gentlemen supposing that popu- 
larity is the way to success in America. The 
way to success in this great country, with 
its fair judgments, is to show that you are 
not afraid of anybody except God and His 
final verdict. If I did not believe that, I 
would not believe in democracy. If I did 
not believe that, I would not believe that 
people can govern themselves. If I did not 
believe that the moral judgment would be 
the last judgment, the final judgment, in the 
minds of men as well as the tribunal of God, 
I could not believe in popular government. 
But I do believe these things, and, therefore, 
I earnestly believe in the democracy not only 
of America but of every awakened people 
that wishes and intends to govern and con- 
trol its OAvn alfairs. 

It is very insioiring, my friends, to come 
to this that may be called the original foun- 
tain of independence and liberty in America 



and here drink draughts of patriotic feeling 
which seem to renew the very blood in one's 
veins. Down in Washington sometimes when 
the days are hot and the business presses 
intolerably and there are so many things to 
do that it does not seem possible to do any- 
thing in the way it ought to be done, it is 
always possible to lift one's thought above 
the task of the moment and, as it were, to 
realize that great thing of which we are all 
parts, the great body of American feeling 
and American principle. No man could do 
the work that has to be done in Washington 
if he allowed himself to be separated from 
that body of principle. He must make him- 
self feel that he is a part of the people of the 
United States, that he is trying to think not 
only for them, but with them, and then he 
can not feel lonely. He not only can not feel 
lonely but he can not feel afraid of any- 
thing. 

My dream is that as the years go on and 
the world knows more and more of America 
it will also drink at these fountains of yoiith 
and renewal ; that it also will turn to Amer- 
ica for those moral inspirations which lie at 
the basis of all freedom ; that the world will 
never fear America unless it feels that it is 
engaged in some enterprise which is incon- 
sistent with the rights of humanity ; and that 
America will come into the full light of the 
day when all shall know that she puts human 
rights above all other rights and that her flag 
is the flag not only of America but of 
humanity. 

What other great people has devoted itself 
to this exalted ideal ? To what other nation 
in the world can all eyes look for an instant 
sympathy that thrills the whole body politic 
when men anywhere are fighting for their 
rights? I do not know that there will ever 
be a declaration of independence and of 
grievances for mankind, but I believe that if 
any such document is ever drawn it will be 
drawn in the spirit of the American Declara- 
tion of Independence, and that America has 
lifted high the light which will shine unto 
all generations and guide the feet of man- 
kind to the goal of justice and liberty and 
peace. 

Abraham Lincoln 
vs^oodrow wilson 
[An Address delivered at the Lincoln Birth- 
place, Hodgenville, Kentucky, 
September 4, 1916] 

No more significant memorial could have 
been presented to the nation than this. It 



AMEEICAN IDEALS— NATIONAL PEEIOD 



595 



expresses so much of what is singular and 
noteworthy in the history of the country ; it 
suggests so many of the things that we prize 
most highly in our life and in our system of 
government. How eloquent this little house 
within this shrine is of the vigor of democ- 
racy! There is nowhere in the land any 
home so remote, so humble, that it may not 
contain the power of mind and heart and 
conscience to which nations yield and his- 
tory submits its processes. Nature pays no 
tribute to aristocracy, subscribes to no creed 
of caste, renders fealty to no monarch or 
master of any name or kind. Genius is no 
snob. It does not run after titles or seek 
by preference the high circles of society. It 
affects humble company as well as great. 
It pays no special tribute to universities or 
learned societies or conventional standards 
of greatness, but serenely chooses its own 
comrades, its own haunts, its own cradle 
even, and its own life of adventure and of 
training. Here is proof of it. This little 
hut was the cradle of one of the great sons 
of men, a man of singular, delightful, vital 
genius who presently emerged upon the 
great stage of the nation's history, gaunt, 
shy, ungainly, but dominant and majestic, 
a natural ruler of men, himself inevitably 
the central figure of the great plot. No man 
can explain this, but every man can see how 
it demonstrates the vigor of democracy, 
where every door is open, in every hamlet 
and countryside, in city and wilderness alike, 
for the ruler to emerge when he will and 
claim his leadership in the free life. Such 
are the authentic proofs of the validity and 
vitality of democracy. 

Here, no less, hides the mystery of democ- 
racy. Who shall guess this secret of nature 
and providence and a free polity? What- 
ever the vigor and vitality of the stock from 
which he sprang, its mere vigor and sound- 
ness do not explain where this man got his 
great heart that seemed to comprehend all 
mankind in its catholic and benignant sym- 
pathy, the mind that sat enthroned behind 
those brooding, melancholy eyes, whose vision 
swept many an horizon which those about 
him dreamed not of, — that mind that com- 
prehended what it had never seen, and un- 
derstood the language of affairs with the 
ready ease of one to the manner born, — or 
that nature which seemed in its varied rich- 
ness to be the familiar of men of every way 
of life. This is the sacred mystery of democ- 
racy, that its richest fruits spring up out of 
soils which no man has prepared and in cir- 



cumstances amidst which they are the least 
expected. This is a place alike of mystery 
and of reassurance. 

It is likely that in a society ordered other- 
wise than our own, Lincoln could not have 
found himself or the path of fame and 
power upon which he walked serenely to his 
death. In this place it is right that we 
should remind ourselves of the solid and 
striking facts upon which our faith in de- 
mocracy is founded. Many another man be- 
sides Lincoln has served the nation in its 
highest places of counsel and of action 
whose origins were as humble as his. Though 
the greatest example of the universal energy, 
richness, stimulation, and force of democ- 
racy, he is only one example among many. 
The permeating and all-pervasive virtue of 
the freedom which challenges us in America 
to make the most of every gift and power we 
possess, every page of our history serves to 
emphasize and illustrate. Standing here in 
this place, it seems almost the whole of the 
stirring story. 

Here Lincoln had his beginnings. Here 
the end and consummation of that great life 
seem remote and a bit incredible. And yet 
there was no break anywhere between begin- 
ning and end, no lack of natural sequence 
anywhere. Nothing really incredible hap- 
pened. Lincoln was unaffectedly as much 
at home in the White House as he was here. 
Do you share with me the feeling, I wonder, 
that he was permanently at home nowhere? 
It seems to me that in the case of a man, — I 
would rather say of a spirit, — like Lincoln 
the question where he was is of little sig- 
nificance, that it is always what he was that 
really arrests our thought and takes hold of 
our imagination. It is the spirit always that 
is sovereign, Lincoln, like the rest of us, 
was put through the discipline of tho world, 
— a very rough and exacting discipline for 
him, an indispensable discipline for every 
man who would know what he is about in the 
midst of the world's affairs; but his spirit 
got only its schooling there. It did not de- 
rive its character or its vision from the expe- 
riences which brought it to its full revela- 
tion. The test of every American must 
always be, not where he is, but what he is. 
That, also, is of the essence of democracy, 
and is the moral of which this place is most 
gravely expressive. 

We would like to think of men like Lin- 
coln and Washington as typical Americans, 
but no man can be typical who is so unusual 
as these great men were. It was typical of 



596 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



American life that it should produce such 
men Y«'ith supreme indifference as to the 
manner in which it produced them, and as 
readily here in this hut as amidst the little 
circle of cultivated gentlemen to whom Vir- 
ginia owed so much in leadership and exam- 
ple. And Lincoln and Washington were 
typical Americans in the use they made of 
their genius. But there will be few such 
men at best, and we will not look into the 
mystery of how and why they come. We will 
only keep the door open for them always, 
and a hearty welcome, — after we have recog- 
nized them. 

I have read many biogTaphies of Lincoln ; 
I have sought out with the greatest interest 
the many intimate stories that are told of 
him, the narratives of near by friends, the 
isketches at close quarters, in which those 
who had the privilege of being associated 
with him have tried to depict for us the very 
man himself "in his habit as he lived" ; but 
I have nowhere found a real intimate of Lin- 
coln's. I noAvhere get the impression in any 
narrative or reminiscence that the writer had 
in fact i3enetrated to the heart of his mys- 
tery, or that any man could jDenetrate to the 
heart of it. That brooding spirit had no real 
familiars. I get the impression that it never 
spoke out in complete self -revelation, and 
that it could not reveal itself completely to 
anyone. It was a very lonely spirit that 
looked out from underneath those shaggy 
brows and comprehended men without fully 
communing with them, as if, in spite of all its 
genial efforts at comradeship, it dwelt apart, 
saw its visions of duty where no man looked 
on. There is a very holy and very terrible 
isolation for the conscience of every man 
who seeks to read the destiny in affairs for 
others as well as for himself, for a nation as 
well as for individuals. That privacy no 
man can intrude upon. That lonely search 
of the spirit for the right, perhaps no man 
can assist. This strange child of the cabin 
kept company with invisible things, was 
born into no intimacy but that of its own 
silently assembling and deploying thoughts. 



I have come here today, not to utter a 
eulogy on Lincoln; he stands in need of 
none, but to endeavor to interpret the mean- 
ing of this gift to the nation of the place of 
his birth and origin. Is not this an altar 
upon which we may forever keep alive the 
vestal fire of democracy as upon a shrine at 
which some of the deepest and most sacred 
hopes of mankind may from age to age be 
rekindled ? For these ho2oes must constantly 
be rekindled, and only those who live can 
rekindle them. The only stuff that can retain 
the life-giving heat is the stuff of living 
hearts. And the hopes of mankind cannot 
be kept alive by words merely, by constitu- 
tions and doctrines of right and codes of 
liberty. The object of democracy is to trans- 
mute these into the life and action of society, 
the self-denial and self-sacrifice of heroic 
men and women willing to make their lives 
an embodiment of right and service and en- 
lightened purpose. The commands of democ- 
racy are as imperative as its privileges and 
opportunities are wide and generous. Its 
compulsion is upon us. It will be gTeat and 
lift a great light for the guidance of the na- 
tions only if we are great and carry that 
light high for the guidance of our own feet. 
We are not worthy to stand here unless we 
ourselves be in deed and in truth real demo- 
crats and servants of mankind, ready to give 
our very lives for the freedom and justice 
and spiritual exaltation of the great nation 
which shelters and nurtures us. 



America 
sidney lanier 

Long as thine art shall love true love. 

Long as thy science truth shall know, 
Long as thine eagle harms no dove. 

Long as thy law by law shall grow. 
Long as thy God is God above, 

Thy brother every man below, 
So long, dear land of all my love. 

Thy name shall shine, thy fame shall glow. 



THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY 

I. A CLASH IN IDEALS 



A Challenge to the Democratic Prin- 
ciple 

hugo munsterberg 

[From The Standing of Scholarship in 
America, 1909] 

Behind all of it [i.e., the American "dis- 
tortion of values"] stands a characteristic 
view of life, a kind of philosophy which is 
on the whole vaguely felt, but which not 
seldom even comes to definite expression. 
Whenever it becomes sha23ed in such definite 
form, it is proclaimed, not as a debatable 
proposition, and not as an argument which 
is upheld against any possible opposition, 
but it is always naively upheld as a matter- 
of-course principle. This naive philosophiz- 
incf crystallizes about the one idea that the 
end of all social striving is to be the happi- 
ness of individuals. Now, this is exactly the 
well-meaning philosophy of the eighteenth 
century, the philosophy of enlightenment. 
It is a philosophy which formed the back- 
ground of all the social movements of that 
important period, and was therefore the phi- 
losophy out of which the constitution of the 
United States naturally arose. 

The greatest happiness of the greatest 
number of individuals is indeed the social 
ideal which, outspoken or not, controls the 
best forward movements of the country. It 
seems to stand above the need of any de- 
fense, as it evidently raises itself above the 
low selfishness of the masses. He who works 
for the pleasures of millions must be in the 
right, because those who think only of their 
own pleasures are certainly in the wrong. . . . 

But the history of civilization shows that 
such philosophy is by no means a matter of 
course; it is a particular aspect seen from a 
particular standpoint. Other periods, other 
nations, have seen the world from other 
standpoints, and have emphasized other as- 
pects of reality. In a bird's-eye view we see 
throughout the history of mankind the fluc- 
tuations and alterations between positivism 



and idealism. The philosophy of enlighten- 
ment is positivism. It is true, in the trivial 
talk of the street, we call a man an idealist 
if he does not think of his personal profit, 
but of the pleasure of his neighbors. But, 
in a higher sense of the word, such unselfish 
altruism does not constitute an idealistic 
view of the world. On the contrary, it may 
have all the earmarks of positivism. 

We have positivism wherever the concrete 
experiences — and that means that which "is" 
— make up the whole of reality. We have 
idealism where the view of the world is con- 
trolled by a belief in absolute values for 
which there is no "is", but only an "ought" ; 
which have not the character of concrete 
experiences, but the meaning of obligations 
which are to be fulfilled, not in the interests 
of individuals, but on account of their abso- 
lute value. For the positivist, knowledge 
and truth and beauty and progress and 
morality have meaning merely in so far as 
they contribute to the concrete experiences 
of satisfaction in existing individuals : for 
the idealist, they represent ideals, the reali- 
zation of which gives meaning to individual 
life, but is eternally valuable independently 
of the question whether their fulfillment con- 
tributes to the pleasure of individuals. From 
such an idealistic point of view it seems shal- 
low and meaningless to see the end of striv- 
ing in a larger amount of individual happi- 
ness. The purpose of man is to do his duty, 
— not to be pleased. 

The Mind of Germany 

john dewey 

[From On Understanding the Mind of Ger- 
many, 1916] 

In contrast to the fiction of a com- 
plete rupture between the older and the 
present German thought, Professor Francke 
speaks words of soberness and truth in 
his article in the Atlantic Monthly for Octo- 
ber, when he argues for the essential conti- 



597 



598 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



nuity of German mind in the imperial Ger- 
many of the present and the cosmopolitan 
Germany of Kant, Schiller, and Goethe, and 
makes his appeal to Fichte and Hegel in- 
stead of to Nietsche, 

Continuity, observe ; not identity. Conti- 
nuity permits of development, even of trans- 
formation. Continuity may be understood 
from either end. We may employ the earlier 
stage to interpret the later ; we may employ 
the later to appreciate and understand the 
earlier. Thus it is that the fact of conti- 
nuity may seem to some the condemnation 
of the classic philosophy ; to others the justi- 
fication of the present mind of Germany. 
We are on safer ground when we ask after 
the ideas which have conferred continuity 
upon the German moral consciousness, and 
ask what changes of color they have under- 
gone in the century between Jena and Liege. 

I find nothing to subtract from the for- 
mulce of Professor Francke. Unconditional 
submission to duty, salvation through cease- 
less striving of will, the moral mission of 
aesthetic culture — so far as they go, these 
seem to me the ideas which have formed the 
continuing mind of Germany. If anything 
is to be added, it is an idea which in no way 
conflicts with"' the three ideas cited. It is the 
idea of historicism — to employ an expressive 
if barbarous locution. As for present pur- 
poses it makes no difference whether one 
connects the idea with Herder, or with Les- 
sing, or with Fichte (in his later period) 
and Hegel. By historicism I mean the no- 
tion of an Ideal, a Mission, a Destiny which 
can be found continuously unfolding in the 
life of a people (at least of the German peo- 
ple), in whose light the events which happen 
are to be understood, and by faithfulness to 
which a people stands condemned or jus- 
tified. 

This fourth conception is not, however, so 
much an addition to the other three factors 
as it is an expression of the way in which 
they are to be understood. For during the 
nineteenth century the ideas which were first 
applied to individuals were transferred to 
the state itself as an individual, and so 
gained a new meaning. The transfer is ob- 
vious in the case of the Kantian idea of 
duty. With Kant duty marked a connecting 
link between the individual and humanity; 
it expressed what was truly human and thus 
universal in man. But "humanity" is not 
yet organized. There are no social institu- 
tions in which humanity, as distinct from 



local or national citizenship, is embodied. 
It expresses a mere rational ideal; some- 
thing which is not realized, though it ought 
to be. Consequently Kant himself pro- 
claimed that while men are to act from the 
motive of duty, duty is an empty notion. 
It has to get its filling, its specific subject- 
matter, from empirical circumstance. 

This may sound like a mere philosophical 
technicality. But it turned out otherwise. 
Kant thought of duty as a command ; as, in 
his own words, an imperative. The essence 
of morality is obedience. That Kant thought 
of it as obedience to an abstract law of rea- 
son representing an ideal of an unrealized 
humanity, is evidence of his own noble aspi- 
rations. But human beings at large can 
hardly guide themselves by such remote ab- 
stractions. An identification of the essence 
of morality with obedience to law lends it- 
self to an implicit acquiescence in whatever 
laws happen to impinge upon the individual. 
The modern age inherited from medieval 
thought the notion of morality as obedience 
to a sovereign command. As late as the 
seventeenth century, the central question of 
all political moral theory, even in England, 
was the legitimacy of resistance to consti- 
tuted authority. In the eighteenth century, 
thought in England and France moved away 
from the medieval notion of obedience as 
central in morals. Kant was a means to 
fastening the idea upon German thought. 
The fact that he gave the idea a singularly 
elevated tone was just what enabled the idea 
to survive against the forces which every- 
where else had undermined the identification 
of morality with obedience to the command 
of authority. 

The merging of the idea of moral obliga- 
tion into that of political obedience was fur- 
thered by the Germanic exaltation of the 
state. When the authority which demands 
acquiescent obedience is thought of as "the 
manifestation of the divine upon earth"; 
when, as in Professor Francke's words, the 
state is thought of as "an organism uniting 
in itself all spiritual and moral aspirations," 
it is only too easy to identify moral duty 
with political subservience. The ideal of a 
collective nation embodying a divine pur- 
pose in its historic development took captive 
the Kantian idea of duty; it replaced the 
endeavor of the isolated individual to realize 
in his own humble sphere the ideal of a law 
as broad as humanity. A cosmopolitan ideal, 
evolved in an agricultural, quasi-feudal, 



THE CEISIS OF DEMOCEACY 



599 



weak, and divided Germany, became an in- 
tensely nationalistic reality in a united, im- 
perialistic, industrial, and prosperous Ger- 
many. Thus I think that Professor Francke 
is entirely right in saying that in the Ger- 
manic exaltation of the state as a supreme 
ethical entity, the line of moral regeneration 
which took its start from Kant reached its 
climax. But there are also opportunities 
for degeneration when moral obligation is 
found in political subordination and sub- 
servience. 

At all events, the fact that German 
thought still entertains a type of moral con- 
ception which has well-nigh evaporated in 
the cultures of other modern nationalities, 
throws light on the difficulties the non- 
German world has in understanding the lan- 
guage in which intellectual Germans formu- 
late their ideas and justify their practical 
policies. The Germans are always saying 
that the American lack of sympathy with the 
German cause is due to the fact that we get 
our information from British sources, and 
hence do not understand the Germans. Well, 
it is not a matter of the source of our infor- 
mation, but of the source of our ideas. And 
it is not a matter of the past year or the 
past twenty years. For over two hundred 
years our minds have been educated in Eng- 
lish political ideas to which German thought 
is foreign; for over a hundred years, our 
ideas have been fed upon an even more dis- 
parate social philosophy, that of the French 
struggle for liberie. There can be no dis- 
guising the fact that our American concep- 
tion of Freedom is incompatible with the 
idea of duty as that has developed in Ger- 
many. I make no attempt to decide which 
is right. I only say that they are so incom- 
patible that minds nourished on one ideal 
cannot readily understand the type of mind 
nurtured by the other. 

The second element in the continuous tra- 
dition of Germany is said to be the ideal of 
ceaseless, restless striving. The gospel of the 
strenuous life, of the value of energy of will 
for its own sake, has sometimes been thought 
to be peculiarly American. I think Profes- 
sor Francke is right in believing it to be dis- 
tinctively German. An American must after 
all have an end to call out and center his 
activities. Results are needed to justify an 
activity. Otherwise his restless striving, his 
taut energy, becomes neurasthenic. I fear 
we are not sufficiently particular as to the 
character of the end or the quality of the 
results. Almost anything will do, from win- 



ning a ball game, or forming the biggest 
business corporation in the woi'ld, to con- 
verting a community to Billy Sundayism, 
But some end there must be to account for 
the expenditure of energy. Otherwise the 
cult of will never lays hold of us. Conse- 
quently, when we find the example of Em- 
peror William cited as a "particularly con- 
spicuous evidence of this spirit of striving," 
as an example of "universal and impas- 
sioned impulse of achievement," our reaction 
is cynical rather than admiring. That, we 
say to ourselves, is just about the sort of 
example we should expect to find. We have 
difficulty in understanding it as other than a 
semi-pathological love of the lime-light. We 
may be wrong, but we cannot, it must be 
admitted, understand how and why we are 
wrong. For it is ingrained in us that some 
end there must be for energy which is exer- 
cised. Towards activity merely as ceaseless 
striving we react in what is perhaps our 
most characteristic national slang: Give us 
a rest. 

To the German, on the other hand, this 
inability of ours is another evidence of our 
utilitarianism, our Philistine culture. But 
even Germans recognize, I think, that this 
idea of universal striving as an end in itself 
is a child of Romanticism. Similarity of 
words is often a bar to mutual understand- 
ing. The Germans say Wille; we say will. 
Hence the easy assumption of a community 
of meaning. But our word is affected (or 
infected, if you please) with the spirit of a 
Puritanic morality, and of struggle for po- 
litical liberties and economic savings. The 
word suggests personal resolution and en- 
durance in the face of disagreeable odds. 
But Wille suggests an impersonal, an abso- 
lute energy striving through personal chan- 
nels for manifestation. It is affected by the 
Romantic movement. The conception is cal- 
culated to impart a tinge of enthusiasm to 
deeds otherwise prosaic ; it colors with emo- 
tional universality (or mysticism) the spe- 
cific jobs which have to be done. But it also 
is admirably calculated to serve as a pro- 
tective moral device. Activities which are 
"all too human," activities which have a defi- 
nite practical goal of advantage in view, 
seem to lose all taint of self-seeking and to 
gain a sacred character when they are felt 
to be manifestations of a universal Over- 
will. Materialistic things look quite differ- 
ent when they are viewed as the necessary 
consequences of an idealistic devotion to the 
gospel of ceaseless striving; when they are 



600 



THE GEEAT TEADITIOT^ 



looked upon as the conquest of spiritual will 
over matter. The doctrine lends itself, assur- 
edly, to intellectual confusion and to self- 
deception. 

Moreover, this conception has also been 
invaded by the nationalistic idea — by the 
conception of the German state as a pecu- 
liar incarnation of a spiritual force unfold- 
ing in history. The older Romanticism was 
at least confined to superior personalities 
striving for wide cultural achievements in 
their own private spheres. Transfer the 
habitat of spiritual energy from the striv- 
ings of the private person for the enrich- 
ment of his own life to the organized public 
state striving for the expansion of its own 
powers, and you get something like the cur- 
rent Teutonic apologia for the present war. 
I have no doubt that there are some German 
statesmen who know precisely what the pres- 
ent war is about; what particular concrete 
gains are at stake. But to the "intellectuals" 
of Germany — mde the manifestos they have 
showered upon us — the object is that utterly 
Romantic thing: the exi3ansion of Kultur, 
the spread of distinctively German ways of 
thinking and feeling. In short, the war is a 
part of the ceaseless striving for realization 
on the part of the Wille embodied in the 
German people. That the Trench and the 
English should have specific objects in view, 
particular advantages to gain and disadvan- 
tages to avoid, seems to many highly in- 
structed Germans (if we may trust their 
language) something peculiarly base. It is 
no wonder that the German rulers fre- 
quently speak with contempt of the political 
capacity of German subjects. But one must 
question whether there is anything but a 
diversion of what might have been political 
capacity into the channels of Romanticism. 

The extraordinary revival of interest in 
the Middle Ages associated with Romanti- 
cism is a familiar fact. To it we owe most 
of our modern appreciation of the real life 
of that jDcriod. One may ask, however, 
whether we are dealing with a revival or a 
reversion. The affection of the Romantic 
spirit for the Middle Ages seems to be an 
expression of its oAvn medieval quality. I 
am not ambitious to characterize the spirit 
of Romanticism as that has shown itself in 
Germany. But certainly one of its marked 
features is an exuberance of unchastened 
imagination, and an introspective reveling 
in the emotional accomplishments of such an 
imagination. How largely German philoso- 
phy has sought refuge in an inner world, a 



world of consciousness; how largely it has 
made traits of this inner life a measure of 
reality ! From the standpoint of one who 
is not a subject of Romanticism this means 
but one thing. The Romantic spirit has de- 
liberately evaded the testing and sifting of 
emotions and ideas; it has declined to sub- 
mit them for valuation to the tests of hard 
and sober fact. It has avoided the test of 
attempted execution in action. To those who 
believe that human consciousness is a wild 
riot of imagination until human beings act 
upon it and thus bring it to the test of real- 
ity, Romanticism can mean only an undisci- 
plined imagination, immaturity of mind. 

It sounds silly to say that Germans, with 
their devotion to science and their habits of 
subordination to authority, have brought 
into the modern world of politics the untried 
and unchastened fancies and feelings of me- 
dievalism. But I mean only what the Ger- 
mans themselves say when they tell us that 
they combine with supreme discipline in the 
outer world of action supreme freedom in 
the inner world of thought. I mean what 
they themselves mean when they say that the 
German people as a people lack the political 
sense, the political cajDacity of the self- 
governing nations of our day. For this is 
in effect an admission of unripeness, of im- 
maturity of thought with respect to the 
supreme concerns of human action. We live 
in a period of political disillusionment. The 
tree of political liberty, watered with blood 
and tears, has brought forth many bitter 
fruits. In our disappointments we overlook 
what the struggle for self-government has 
done for those who have participated in it. 
At least it has chastened the unbridled imag- 
ination of man ; it has developed a sense of 
realities; it has brought a certain maturity 
of mind as its outcome. 

Now, when not only the Bernhardis but 
the Bismarcks and the von Biilows tell us 
that the Germans are marked with an ab- 
sence of political sense and capacity, that 
they have not the gift of self-government, 
that they accomplish great things only under 
the leadings from authority from above, 
what are they saying except that the Ger- 
mans, with all their achievements, have 
missed the one great experience in which 
the national minds of Great Britain, France, 
and America have been educated and rip- 
ened ? With all our defects, is any measure 
of technical efficiency, of comfortable ease, 
in a "socialized Germany," a compensation 
for the absence, I do not say of political 



The CEisis OF bemoceacy 



601 



democracy, but of the experience which 
comes to men only in a struggle to be free 
and responsible in their moral and social 
action? Compared with such freedom, the 
irresponsible freedom of inner consciousness 
seems, I repeat, an extension into a modern 
world of the undisciplined mind of the 
Middle Ages. 

If there be any truth in this conception, — 
and unless there be truth in it, the struggle 
for democracy lacks intellectual significance, 
— we have probably the root of the difficulty 
of mutual understanding as between the 
German mind and that of other peoples. 
Politically we do not speak the same lan- 
guage because we do not think the same 
thoughts. My final word would not be one, 
however, uiDon this discouraging note. It is 
rather a word of hopefulness regarding what 
has given Americans so much cause for per- 
plexity — the "hyphen" problem. It is natu- 
ral in a time of emotional stress, and in a 
time when those of German ancestry find 
hard things said on all sides about their 
ancestral land, that German-Americans 
should indulge in idealization of their older 
country, should bring forth "with emphatic 
fervor the numerous fine things which cur- 
rent criticism is ignoring, and should in their 
irritation seek out the weak things in their 
adopted land and speak with harshness of 
its institutions. But I cannot believe that 
any large number of them have remained 
here without being profoundly influenced by 
the struggle for resjDonsible and self-respect- 
ing common management of common affairs. 

War brings with it a recrudescence of the 
spirit of Romanticism, a reversion to the un- 
disciplined mind, among all peoples. To be 
in an unsympathetic land, a land which does 
not understand, is a stimulus to the most 
tense kind of Romantic fancy. But when 
the emotional strain passes, there will be an 
equal reversion to the light of common day, 
with its usual tasks and the illumination of 
these tasks by the thought that we are all en- 
gaged together in the greatest enterprise 
which has ever enlisted human thought and 
emotion : the attainment of the common con- 
trol of the common interests of beings who 
live together. Whether German-Americans 
will then attempt to educate their country- 
men at home to an inherent lack in any Kul- 
tur of a modern state not based on the prin- 
ciple of self-government, I do not know. 
'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. 
But I am confident that all, except a few in- 
curable aliens who merely happen to be 



physically among us, will respond with 
eagerness to any call which Americans who 
are longer acclimated may issue, to make our 
own experiment in responsible freedom more 
of a reality. And this response is, after all, 
the final test of loyalty to American institu- 
tions. 



The Gospel op Duty and Its 
Implications 

john dewey 

[From German Philosophy and 
Politics, 1915] 

The gospel of duty has an invigorating 
ring. It is easy to present it as the most 
noble and sublime of all moral doctrines. 
What is more worthy of humanity, what bet- 
ter marks the separation of man from 
brute, than the will to subordinate selfish de- 
sire and individual inclination to the com- 
mands of stern and lofty duty ? And if the 
idea of command (which inevitably goes 
with the notion of duty) carries a sinister 
suggestion of legal authority, j)ains and pen- 
alties and of subservience to an external au- 
thority who issues the commands, Kant 
seems to have provided a final corrective in 
insisting that duty is self imposed by the 
higher, supranatural self upon the lower, 
empirical self, by the rational self upon the 
self of passions and inclinations. German 
philosophy is attached to antitheses and 
their reconciliation to a higher synthesis. 
The Kantian principle of Duty is a striking- 
case of the reconciliation of the seemingly 
conflicting ideas of freedom and authority. 

Unfortunately, however, the balance can- 
not be maintained in practice. Kant's faith- 
ful logic compels him to insist that the con- 
cept of duty is empty and formal. It tells 
men that to do their duty is the supreme law 
of action, but is silent as to what men's 
duties specifically are. Kant, moreover, in- 
sists, as he is in logic bound to do, that the 
motive which measures duty is wholly inner ; 
it is purely a matter of inner consciousness. 
To admit that consequences can be taken 
into account in deciding what duty is in a 
particular case would be to make concessions 
to the empirical and sensible world which 
are fatal to the scheme. The combination of 
these two features of pure internality and 
pure formalism leads, in a world where 
men's acts take place wholly in the external 
and empirical region, to serious conse- 
quences. 



602 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



The dangerous character of these conse- 
quences may perhaps be best gathered indi- 
rectly by means of a quotation. 

''While the French people in a savage re- 
volt against a spiritual and secular despot- 
ism had broken their chains and proclaimed 
their rights^ another quite different revolu- 
tion was working in Prussia — the revolution 
of duty. The assertion of the rights of the 
individual leads ultimately to individual ir- 
responsibility and to a repudiation of the 
State. Immanuel Kant, the founder of the 
critical philosophy, taught, in opposition to 
this view, the gospel of moral duty, and 
Scharnhorst grasped the idea of universal 
military service. By calling ujDon the indi- 
vidual to sacrifice property and life for the 
good of the community, he gave the clearest 
expression to the idea of the State, and cre- 
ated a sound basis on which claims to indi- 
vidual rights might rest." ^ 

The sudden jump, by means of only a 
comma, from the gospel of moral duty to 
universal military service is much more log- 
ical than the shock which it gives to an 
American reader would indicate. I do not 
mean, of course, that Kant's teaching was 
the cause of Prussia's adoption of universal 
military service and of the thorough-going 
subordination of individual happiness and 
liberty of action to that capitalized entity, 
the State. But I do mean that when the 
practical political situation called for mili- 
tary service in order to support and expand 
the existing state, the gospel of a Duty 
devoid of content naturally lent itself to the 
consecration and idealization of such spe- 
cific duties as the national order might 
prescribe. The sense of duty must get its 
subject matter somewhere, and unless sub- 
jectivism was to revert to anarchic or ro- 
mantic individualism (which is hardly in 
the spirit of obedience to authoritative law) 
its appropriate subject matter lies in the 
commands of a superior. Concretely what 
the State commands is the congenial outer 
filling of a purely inner sense of duty. That 
the despotism of Frederick the Great and 
of the jlohenzollerns who remained true to 
his policy was at least that hitherto un- 
known thing, an enlightened despotism, 
made the identification easier. Individuals 
have at all times, in epochs of stress, offered 
their supreme sacrifice to their country's 
good. In Germany this sacrifice in times of 
peace as well as of war has been systematie- 

^Bernhardi, Germany and the Next War, pp. 
63-64. 



ally reinforced by an inner mystic sense of a 
Duty elevating men to the plane of the uni- . 
versal and eternal. 

In short, the sublime gospel of duty has 
its defects. Outside of the theological and 
the Kantian moral traditions, men have gen- 
erally agreed that duties are relative to ends. 
Not the obligation, but some purpose, some 
good, which the fulfillment of duty realizes, 
is the principle of morals. The business of 
reason is to see that the end, the good, for 
which one acts is a reasonable one — that is 
to say, as wide and equitable in its working 
out as the situation permits. Morals which 
are based upon consideration of good and 
evil consequences not only allow, but im- 
periously demand the exercise of a discrim- 
inating intelligence. A gospel of duty sep- 
arated from empirical purposes and results 
tends to gag intelligence. It substitutes for 
the work of reason displayed in a wide and 
distributed survey of consequences in order 
to determine where duty lies an inner con- 
sciousness, empty of content, which clothes 
with the form of rationality the demands of 
existing social authorities. A. consciousness 
which is not based upon and cheeked by 
consideration of actual results upon human 
welfare is none the less socially irresponsible 
because labeled Reason. . . . 

The passage (from Bernhardi) quoted 
earlier puts the German principle of duty 
in opjDOsition to the French principle of 
rights — a favorite contrast in German 
thought. Men like Jeremy Bentham also 
found the Revolutionary Rights of Man 
doctrinaire and conducing t3 tyranny rather 
than to freedom. These Rights were a priori, 
like Duty, being derived from the supposed 
nature or essence of man, instead of being 
adopted as empirical expedients to further 
progress and happiness. But the concep- 
tion of duty is one-sided, expressing com- 
mand on one side and obedience on the 
other, while rights are at least reciprocal. 
Rights are social and sociable in accord with 
the spirit of French philosophy. Put in a 
less abstract form than the revolutionary 
theory stated them, they are things to be 
discussed and measured. They admit of 
more and less, of compromise and adjust- 
ment. So also does the characteristic moral 
contribution of English thought — intelligent 
self-interest. This is hardly an ultimate 
idea. But at least it evokes a picture of 
merchants bargaining, while the categorical 
imperative calls up the drill sergeant. Traf- 
i ficking ethics, in which each gives up some- 



THE CEISIS OF DEMOCRACY 



603 



thing that he wants to get something which 
he wants more, is not the noblest kind of 
morals, but at least it is socially responsible 
as far as it goes. "Give so that it may be 
given to you in return" has at least some 



tendency to bring men together ; it promotes 
agreement. It requires deliberation and dis- 
cussion. This is just what the authoritative 
voice of a superior will not tolerate; it is 
the one unforgivable sin. 



II. THE CASE AGAINST GERMANY 



1. BRITAIN'S INDICTMENT 



International Honor 

david lloyd george 

[From an Address delivered September 
19, 1914] 

I have come here this afternoon to talk 
to my fellow countrymen about this great 
war and the part we ought to take in it. I 
feel my task is easier after we have been 
listening to the greatest battle-song in the 
world. ^ 

There is no man in this room who has al- 
ways regarded the prospects of engaging in 
a great war with greater reluctance, with 
greater repugnance, than I have done 
throughout the whole of my political life. 
There is no man, either inside or outside of 
this room, more convinced that we could 
not have avoided it without national dis- 
honor. I am fully alive to the fact that 
whenever a nation has been engaged in any 
war she has always invoked the sacred name 
of honor. Many a crime has been committed 
in its name; there are some crimes being 
committed now. But, all the same, national 
honor is a reality, and any nation that dis- 
regards it is doomed. 

Why is our honor as a country involved 
in this war ? Because, in the first place, we 
are bound in an honorable obligation to de- 
fend the independence, tlie^liberty, the integ- 
rity of a small neighbor that has lived peace- 
ably, but she could not have compelled us, 
because she was weak. The man who de- 
clines to discharge his debt because his cred- 
itor is too poor to enforce it is a blackguard. 
We entered into this treaty, a solemn treaty, 
a full treaty, to defend Belgium and her in- 
tegrity. Our signatures are attached to the 
document. Our signatures do not stand 
alone there. This was not the only country 
to defend the integrity of Belgium. EuSsia, 
France, Austria, and Prussia — they are all 
there. Why did they not perform the obli- 

^ "The Men of Harlech." 



gation ? It is suggested that if we quote this 
treaty it is purely an excuse on our part. It 
is our low craft and cunning, just to cloak 
our jealousy of a superior civilization we are 
attempting to destroy. Our answer is the 
action we took in 1870. What was that? 
Mr. Gladstone was then Prime Minister. 
Lord Granville, I think, was then Foreign 
Secretary. I have never heard it laid to 
their charge that they were ever jingo. 

What did they do in 1870? That Treaty 
Bond was this: We called upon the bellig- 
erent Powers to respect that treaty. We 
called upon France; we called upon Ger- 
many. At that time, bear in mind, the great- 
est danger to Belgium came from France 
and not from Germany. We intervened to 
protect Belgium against France exactly as 
we are doing now to protect her against Ger- 
many. We are proceeding exactly in the 
same way. We invited both the belligerent 
Powers to state that they had no intention 
of violating Belgian territory. What was 
the answer given by Bismarck? He said it 
was superfluous to ask Prussia such a ques- 
tion in view of the treaties in force. France 
gave a similar answer. We received the 
thanks at that time from the Belgian people 
for our intervention in a very remarkable 
document. This is the document addressed 
by the municipality of Brussels to Queen 
Victoria after that intervention : 

"The great and noble people over whose 
destinies you preside have just given a fur- 
ther proof of their benevolent sentiments to- 
wards this country. The voice of the Eng- 
lish nation has been heard above the din of 
arms. It has asserted the princijDles of jus- 
tice and right. Next to the unalterable at- 
tachment of the Belgian people to their inde- 
pendence, the strongest sentiment which fills 
their hearts is that of an imperishable gTati- 
tude to the people of Great Britain." 

That was in 1870. Mark what follows. 

Three or four days after that document of 
thanks the French Army was wedged up 



604 



THE GSEAT TKADITION 



against the Belgian frontier. Every means 
of escape was shut up by a ring of flame 
from Prussian cannon. There was one way 
to escape. What was that? By violating 
the neuti'ality of Belgium. What did they 
do ? The French on tha'^. occasion preferred 
ruin, humiliation, to the breaking of their 
bond. The Trench Emperor, French Mar- 
shals, 100,000 gallant Frenchmen in arms 
preferred to be carried cajDtive to the strange 
land of their enemy rather than dishonor the 
name of their country. It was the last 
French Army defeat. Had they violated 
Belgian neutrality the whole history of that 
war would have been changed. And yet it 
was the interest of France to break the 
treaty. She did not do it. 

It is now the interest of Prussia to break 
the treaty, and she has done it. Well, why ? 
She avoAved it with cynical contempt for 
every pi-inciple of justice. She says treaties 
only bind you when it is to your interest to 
keep them. "What is a treaty?" says the 
German Chancellor. "A scrap of paper." 
Have you any £5 notes about you? I am 
not calling for them. Have you any of those 
neat little Treasury £1 notes ? If you have, 
burn them ; they are only ''scraps of paper." 
What are they made of? Bags. What are 
they worth? The whole credit of the Brit- 
ish Empire. "Scraps of paper." I have been 
dealing with scraps of paper within the last 
month. It is suddenly found the commerce 
of the world is coming to a standstill. The 
machine had stopped. Why? I will tell 
you. We discovered, many of us for the 
first time — I do not pretend to say that I 
do not know much more about the machinery 
of commerce today than I did six weeks ago, 
and there are a good many men like me — 
we discovered the machinery of commerce 
was moved by bills of exchange. I have 
seen some of them — wretched, crinkled, 
scrawled over, blotched, frowsy, and yet 
these wretched little scraps of paper moved 
great ships, laden with thousands of tons of 
precious cargo, from one end of the world 
to the other. What was the motive power 
behind them? The honor of commercial 
men. 

Treaties are the currency of international 
statesmanship. Let us be fair. German 
merchants, German traders had the reputa- 
tion of being as upright and straightforward 
as any traders in the world. But if the cur- 
rency of German commerce is to be debased 
to the level of her statesmanship, no trader 
from Shanghai to Valparaiso will ever look 



at a German signature again. This doctrine 
of the scrap of paper, this doctrine which is 
superscribed by Bernhardi, that treaties only 
bind a nation as long as it is to its interest, 
goes to the root of public law. It is the 
straight road to barbarism, just as if you re- 
moved the magnetic pole whenever it was in 
the way of a German cruiser, the whole navi- 
gation of the seas would become dangerous, 
difficult, impossible, and the whole machin- 
ery of civilization will break down if this 
doctrine wins in this war. 

We are fighting against barbarism. But 
there is only one way of putting it right. If 
there are nations that say they will only re- 
spect treaties when it is to their interest to 
do so, we must make it to their interest to do 
so for the future. What is their defense? 
Just look at the interview which took place 
between our Ambassador and great German 
officials when their attention was called to 
this treaty to which they were partners. 
They said : "We cannot help that." Rapidity 
of action was the great German asset. There 
is a greater asset for a nation than rapidity 
of action, and that is — honest dealing. 

What are her excuses ? She saiu Belgium 
was plotting against her, that Belgium was 
engaged in a great conspiracy with Britain 
and with France to attack her. Not merely 
is that not true, but Germany knows it is not 
true. What is her other excuse? France 
meant to invade Germany through Belgium. 
Absolutely untrue. Francs offered Belgium 
five army corps to defend her if she was at- 
tacked. Belgium said : "I don't require them. 
I have got the word of the Kaiser. Shall 
Caesar send a lie?" All these tales about 
conspiracy have been fanned up since. The 
great nation ought to be ashamed, ought to 
be ashamed to behave like a fraudulent 
bankrupt perjuring its way with its compli- 
cations. She has deliberately broken this 
treaty, and we were in honor bound to stand 
by it. . . . 

But Belgium was not the only little nation 
that has been attacked in this war, and I 
make no excuse for referring to the case of 
the other little nation — the case of Serbia. 
The history of Serbia is not unblotted. 
What history in the category of nations is 
unblotted? The first nation that is without 
sin, let her cast a stone at Serbia. A nation 
trained in a horrible school, but she won her 
freedom with her tenacious valor, and she 
has maintained it by the same courage. If 
any Serbians were mixed up in the assas- 
sination of the Grand Duke they ought to be 



THE CEISIS OF DEMOCEACY 



605 



punished. Serbia admits that; the Serbian 
Government had nothing to do with it. Not 
even Austria claimed that. The Serbian 
Prime Minister is one of the most capable 
and honored men in Europe. Serbia was 
willing to punish any one of her subjects 
who had been proved to have any complicity 
in that assassination. What more could you 
expect ? What were the Austrian demands 1 
Serbia sympathized with her fellow coun- 
trymen in Bosnia. That was one of her 
crimes. She must do so no more. Her 
newspapers were saying nasty things about 
Austria. They must do so no longer. That 
is the Austrian spirit. You had it in Zabern. 
How dare you criticize a Customs official? 
And if you laugh it is a capital offense. The 
colonel threatened to shoot them if they 
repeated it. 

Serbian newspapers must not criticize 
Austria. I wonder what would have hap- 
pened had we taken the same line about 
German newspapers. Serbia said: "Very 
well, we will give orders to the newspapers 
that they must not criticize Austria in fu- 
ture, neither Austria, nor Hungary, nor 
anything that is theirs." Who can doubt the 
valor of Serbia, when she undertook to tackle 
her newspaper editors'? She promised not 
to sympathize with Bosnia, promised to 
write no critical articles about Austria. She 
would have no public meetings at which any- 
thing unkind was said about Austria. 

That was not enough. She must dismiss 
from her Army officers whom Austria should 
subsequently name. But these officers had 
just emerged from a war where they were 
adding luster to the Serbian arms — gallant, 
brave, efficient. I wonder whether it was 
their guilt or their efficiency that prompted 
Austria's action. But, mark, the officers 
were not named. Serbia was to undertake 
in advance to dismiss them from the Army ; 
the names to be sent on subsequently. Can 
you name a country in the world that would 
have stood that? 

Supposing Austria or Germany had is- 
sued an ultimatum of that kind to this coun- 
try. "You must dismiss from your Army 
and from your Navy all those officers whom 
we shall subsequently name !" Well, I think 
I could name them now. Lord Kitchener 
would go; Sir John French would be sent 
about his business; General Smith-Dorrien 
would be no more; and I am sure that Sir 
John Jellicoe would go. And there is an- 
other gallant old warrior who would go — 
Lord Roberts. 



It was a difficult situation. Here was a 
demand made upon her by a great military 
. Power who could put five or six men in the 
field for every one she could; and that 
Power supported by the greatest military 
Power in the world. How did Serbia be- 
have? It is not what happens to you in 
life that matters; it is the way in which 
you face it. And Serbia faced the situa- 
tion with dignity. She said to Austria, "If 
any officers of mine have been guilty and 
are proved to be guilty, I will dismiss 
them." Austria said, "That is not good 
enough for me." It was not guilt she was 
after, but capacity. . . . 

That is the story of the little nations. The 
world owes much to little nations — and to 
little men. This theory of bigness — you 
must have a big empire and a big nation, 
and a big man — well, long legs have their 
advantage in a retreat. Frederick the Great 
chose his warriors for their height, and that 
tradition has become a policy in Germany. 
Germany applies that ideal to nations; she 
will only allow six-feet-two nations to stand 
in the ranks. But all the world owes much 
to the little five feet high nations. The 
greatest art of the world was the work of 
little nations. The most enduring literature 
of the world came from little nations. The 
greatest literature of England came from 
her when she was a nation of the size of Bel- 
gium fighting a great Empire. The heroic 
deeds that thrill humanity through genera- 
tions were the deeds of little nations fighting 
for their freedom. Ah, yes, and the salva- 
tion of mankind came through a little na- 
tion. God has chosen little nations as the 
vessels by which He carries the choicest 
wines to the lips of humanity, to rejoice 
their hearts, to exalt their vision, to stimu- 
late and to strengthen their faith ; and if we 
had stood by when two little nations were 
being crushed and broken by the brutal 
hands of barbarism our shame would have 
rung down the everlasting ages. 

But Germany insists that this is an attack 
by a low civilization upon a higher. Well, 
as a matter of fact, the attack was begun by 
the civilization which calls itself the higher 
one. Now, I am no apologist for Russia. 
She has perpetrated deeds of which I have 
no doubt her best sons are ashamed. But 
what Empire has not ? And Germany is the 
last Empire to point the finger of reproach 
at Russia. But Russia has made sacrifices 
for freedom — great sacrifices. You remem- 
ber the cry of Bulgaria when she was torn 



606 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



by tlie most insensate tyranny that Europe 
has ever seen. Who listened to the cry? 
The only answer of the higher civilization 
was that the liberty of Bulgarian peasants 
was not worth the life of a single Pomera- 
nian soldier. But the rude barbarians of the 
North — they sent their sons by the thousands 
to die for Bulgarian freedom. 

What about England? You go to Greece, 
the Netherlands, Italy, Germany, and 
France, and all these lands, gentlemen, could 
point out to you places where the sons of 
Britain have died for the freedom of these 
countries. France has made saerij[ices for 
the freedom of other lands than her own. 
Can you name a single country in the world 
for the freedom of vv'hich the modern Prus- 
sian has ever sacrificed a single lifef The 
test of our faith, the highest standard of 
civilization is the readiness to sacrifice for 
others. 

I would not say a word about the German 
people to disparage them. They are a great 
people ; they have great qualities of head, of 
hand, and of heart. I believe, in spite of 
recent events, there is as great a store of 
kindness in the German peasant as in any 
peasant in the world. But he has been 
drilled into a false idea of civilization,--ef- 
ficiency, capability. It is a hard civilization ; 
it is a selfish civihzation ; it is a material civ- 
ilization. They could not comprehend the 
action of Britain at the present moment. 
They say so. "France," they say, "we can 
understand. She is out for vengeance, she 
is out for territory — Alsace-Lorraine. Rus- 
sia, she is fighting for mastery, she wants 
Galicia." They can understand vengeance, 
they can understand you fighting for mas- 
tery, they can understand you fighting for 
greed of territory ; they cannot understand a 
great Empire pledging its resources, pledg- 
ing its might, pledging the lives of its chil- 
dren, pledging its very existence, to protect 
a little nation that seeks for its defense. 
God made man in His own image — high of 
purpose, in the region of the spirit. German 
civilization would re-create him in the image 
of a Diesler machine — precise, accurate, 
powerful, with no room for the soul to oper- 
ate. That is the "higher" civilization. 

What is their demand? Have you read 
the Kaiser's speeches? If you have not a 
copy, I advise you to buy it ; they will soon 
be out of print, and you won't have any 
more of the same sort again. They are full 
of the clatter and bluster of German mili- 
tarists — the mailed fist, the shining armor. 



Poor old mailed fist — its knuckles are get- 
ting a little bruised. Poor shining armor — ;^ 
the shine is being knocked out of it. But 
there is the same swagger and boastfulness 
running through the whole of the speeches. 
You saw that remarkable speech which ap- 
peared in the British Weekly this week. It 
is a very remarkable product, as an illustra- 
tion of the spirit we have got to fight. It 
is his speech to his soldiers on the way to the 
front : 

"Remember that the German people are the 
chosen of God. On me, on me as German Em- 
peror, the Spirit of God has descended. I am His 
weapon, His sword, and His vizard ! Woe to the 
disobedient ! Death to cowards and unbelievers !" 

There has been nothing like it since the 
days of Mahomet. 

Lunacy is always distressing, but some- 
times it is dangerous, and when you get it 
manifested in the head of the State, and it 
has become the policy of a great Empire, it 
is about time when that should be ruthlessly 
put away. I do not believe he meant all 
these speeches. It was simi^ly the martial 
straddle which he had acquired; but there 
were men around him who meant every word 
of it. This was their religion. Treaties? 
They tangled the feet of Germany in her 
advance. Cut them with the sword. Little 
nations? They hinder the advance of Ger- 
many. Trample them in the mire under the 
German heel. The Russian Slav ? He chal- 
lenges the supremacy of Germany and Eu- 
rope. Hurl your legions at him and massa- 
cre him. Britain ? She is a constant menace 
to the predominancy of Germany in the 
world. Wrest the trident out of her hands. 
Ah! more than that. The new philosophy 
of Germany is to destroy Christianity. 
Sickly sentimentalism about sacrifice for 
others — poor pap for German digestion. We 
will have a new diet. We will force it on the 
world. It will be made in Germany. A diet 
of blood and iron. What remains? Treaties 
have gone; the honor of nations gone; lib- 
erty gone. What is left? Germany — Ger- 
many is left — Deutschland iiber Alles. That 
is all that is left. 

That is what we are fighting, that claim to 
predominancy of a civilization, a material 
one, a hard one, a civilization which if once 
it rules and sways the world, liberty goes, 
democracy vanishes, and unless Britain 
comes to the rescue, and her sons, it will be a 
dark day for humanity. We are not fight- 
ing the German people. The German people 



THE CEISIS OF DEMOCRACY 



607 



are just as much under the heel of this Prus- 
sian military caste, and more so, thank God, 
than any other nation in Europe. It will 
be a day of rejoicing for the German peas- 
ant and artisan and trader when the military 
caste is broken. You know his pretensions. 
He gives himself the airs of a demi-god. 
Walking the pavements — civilians and their 
wives swept into the gutter; they have no 
right to stand in the way of the great Prus- 
sian junker. Men, women, nations — they 
have all got to go. He thinks all he has got 
to say is, "We are in a hurry." That is the 
answer he gave to Belgium. "Rapidity of 
action is Germany's greatest asset," which 
means "I am in a hurry. Clear out of my 
way." 

You know the type of motorist, the terror 
of the roads, with a 60-h.p. car. He thinks 
the roads are made for him, and anybody 
who impedes the action of his car by a single 
mile is knocked down. The Prussian junker 
is the road-hog of Europe. Small nation- 
alities in his way hurled to the roadside, 
bleeding and broken ; women and children 
crushed under the wheels of his cruel car; 
Britain ordered out of his road. All I can 
say is this : if the old British spirit is alive 
in British hearts, that bully will be torn from 
his seat. Were he to win, it would be the 
greatest catastrophe that has befallen de- 
mocracy since the days of the Holy Alliance 
and its ascendancy. They think we cannot 
beat them. It will not be easy. It will be a 
long job. It will be a terrible war. But in 
the end we shall march through terror to tri- 
umph. We shall need all our qualities, every 
quality that Britain and its people possess. 
Prudence in council, daring in action, tenac- 
ity in purpose, courage in defeat, modera- 
tion in victory, in all things faith, and we 
shall win. 

It has pleased them to believe and to 
preach the belief that we are a decadent na- 
tion. They proclaim it to the world, through 
their professors, that we are an unheroic 
nation skulking behind our mahogany coun- 
ters, whilst we are egging on more gallant 
races to their destruction. This is a descrip- 
tion given to us in Germany — "a timorous, 
craven nation, trusting to its fleet." I think 
they are beginning to find their mistake out 
already. And there are half a million of 
young men of Britain who have already reg- 
istered their vow to their King that they will 
cross the seas and hurl that insult against 
British courage against its perpetrators on 
the battlefields of France and of Germany, 



And we want half a million more. And we 
shall get them. 

But Wales must continue doing her duty. 
That was a great telegram that you, my 
Lord (the Chairman), read from Glamor- 
gan.^ I should like to see a Welsh army in 
the field. I should like to see the race who 
faced the Normans for hundreds of years in 
their struggle for freedom, the race that 
helped to win the battle of Crecy, the race 
that fought for a generation under Glen- 
dower, against the gTeatest captain in Eu- 
rope — I should like to see that race give a 
good taste of its quality in this struggle in 
Europe; and they are going to do it. 

I envy you young people your youth. 
They have put up the age limit for the 
Army, but I march, I am sorry to say, a 
good many years even beyond that. But 
still our turn will come. It is a great oppor- 
tunity. It only comes once in many centu- 
ries to the children of men. For most gen- 
erations sacrifice comes in drab weariness of 
spirit to men. It has come today to you; 
it has come today to us all, in the form of 
the glory and thrill of a great movement for 
liberty, that impels millions throughout Eu- 
rope to the same end. It is a great war for 
the emancipation of Europe from the thrall- 
dom of a military caste, which has cast its 
shadow upon two generations of men, and 
which has now plunged the world into a 
welter of bloodshed. Some have already 
given their lives. There are some who have 
given more than their own lives. They have 
given the lives of those who are dear to 
them. I honor their courage, and may God 
be their comfort and their strength. 

But their reward is at hand. Those who 
have fallen have consecrated deaths. They 
have taken their part in the making of a new 
Europe, a new world. I can see signs of its 
coming in the glare of the battlefield. The 
people will gain more by this struggle in all 
lands than they comprehend at the present 
moment. It is true they will be rid of the 
menace to their freedom. But that is not 
all. There is something infinitely greater and 
more enduring which is emerging already 
out of this great conflict ; a new patriotism, 
richer, nobler, more exalted than the old. I 
see a new recognition amongst all classes, 
high and low, shedding themselves of selfish- 
ness ; a new recognition that the honor of a 
country does not depend merely on the 
maintenance of its glory in the stricken field, 
but in i^roteeting its homes from distress as 

^ "Glamorgan has raised 20,000 men." 



608 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



well. It is a new patriotism, it is bringing 
a new outlook for all classes. A great flood 
of luxury and of sloth which had submerged 
the land is receding, and a new Britain is 
appearing. We can see for the first time the 
fundamental things that matter in life and 
that have been obscured from our vision by 
the tropical growth of prosperity. 

May I tell you, in a simple parable, what 
I think this war is doing for us ? I know a 
valley in North Wales, between the moun- 
tains and the sea — a beautiful valley, snug, 
comfortable, sheltered by the mountains 
from all the bitter blasts. It was very ener- 
vating, and I remember how the boys were 
in the habit of climbing the hills above the 
village to have a glimpse of the great moun- 
tains in the distance, and to be stimulated 
and freshened by the breezes which came 



from the hill-tops, and by the great spec- 
tacle of that great valley. 

We have been living in a sheltered valley 
for generations. We have been too comfort- 
able, too indulgent, many, perhaps, too self- 
ish. And the stern hand of fate has scourged 
us to an elevation where we can see the great 
everlasting things that matter for a na:tion ; 
the great peaks of honor we had forgotten — 
duty and patriotism clad in glittering white ; 
the great pinnacle of sacrifice pointing like 
a rugged finger to Heaven. We shall descend 
into the valleys again, but as long as the men 
and women of this generation last they will 
carry in their hearts the image of these great 
mountain peaks, whose foundations are un- 
shaken though Europe rock and sway in the 
convulsions of a great war. 



2. AMERICA'S INDICTMENT 



The Menace of Prussian Ambition 

woodeow wilson 

[An Address delivered at Washington on 
Flag Day, June 14, 1917] 

We meet to celebrate Flag Day because 
this flag which we honor and under which 
we serve is the emblem of our unity, our 
power, our thought and purpose as a nation. 
It has no other character than that which we 
give it from generation to generation. The 
choices are ours. It floats in majestic silence 
above the hosts that execute those choices, 
whether in peace or in war. And yet, though 
silent, it speaks to us, — speaks to us of the 
past, of the men and women who went be- 
fore us and of the records they wrote upon 
it. We celebrate the day of its birth; and 
from its birth until now it has witnessed a 
great history, has floated on high the symbol 
of great events, of a great plan of life 
worked out by a great people. We are about 
to carry it into battle, to lift it where it will 
draw the fire of our enemies. We are about 
to bid thousands, hundreds of thousands, it 
may be millions, of our men, the young, the 
strong, the capable men of the nation, to go 
forth and die beneath it on fields of blood 
far away, — for what? For some unaccus- 
tomed thing? For something for which it 
has never sought the fire before? American 
armies were never before sent across the 



seas. Why are they sent now? For some 
new purpose, for which this great fiag has 
never been carried before, or for some old, 
familiar, heroic purpose for which it has 
seen men, its own men, die on every battle- 
field upon which Americans have borne-arms 
since the Revolution ? 

These are questions which must be an- 
swered. We are Americans. We in our turn 
serve America, and can serye her with no 
private purpose. We must use her flag as 
she has always used it. We are accountable 
at the bar of history and must plead in utter 
frankness what purpose it is we seek to 
serve. 

It is plain enough how we were forced 
into the war. The extraordinary insults and 
aggressions of the Imperial German Govern- 
ment left us no self-respecting choice but to 
take up arms in defense of our rights as a 
free people and of our honor as a sovereign 
government. The military masters of Ger- 
many denied us the right to be neutral. They 
filled our unsuspecting communities with 
vicious spies and conspirators and sought to 
corrupt the opinion of our people in their 
own behalf. When they found that they 
could not do that, their agents diligently 
spread sedition amongst us and sought to 
draw our own citizens from their allegiance, 
— and some of those agents were men con- 
nected with the official Embassy of the Ger- 
man Government itself here in our own Cap- 



THE CRISIS or DEMOCRACY 



609 



ital. They sought by violence to destroy our 
industries and arrest our commerce. They 
tried to incite Mexico to take up arms 
against us and to draw Japan into a hostile 
alliance with her, — and that, not by indi- 
rection, but by direct suggestion from the 
Foreign Office in Berlin. They impudently 
denied us the use of the high seas and re- 
peatedly executed their threat that they 
would send to their death any of our people 
who ventured to approach the coasts of 
Europe. And many of our own people were 
corrupted. Men began to look upon their 
own neighbors with suspicion and to won- 
der in their hot resentment and surprise 
whether there was any community in which 
hostile intrigue did not lurk. What great 
nation in such circumstances would not have 
taken up arms? Much as we had desired 
peace, it was denied us, and not of our own 
choice. This flag under v hich we serve 
would have been dishonored had we with- 
held our hand. 

But that is only part of the story. We 
know now as clearly as we knew before we 
were ourselves engaged that we are not the 
enemies of the German people and that they 
are not our enemies. They did not originate 
or desire this hideous war or wish that we 
should be drawn into it ; and we are vaguely 
conscious that we are fighting their cause, 
as they will some day see it, as well as our 
own. They are themselves in the grip of the 
same sinister power that has now at last 
stretched its ugly talons out and drawn 
blood from us. The whole world is at war 
because the whole world is in the grip of 
that power and is trying out the great bat- 
tle which shall determine whether it is 
to be brought under its mastery or fling 
itself free. 

The war was begun by the military mas- 
ters of Germany, who proved to be also the 
masters of Austria-Hungary. These men 
have never regarded nations as peoples, 
men, women, and children of like blood and 
frame as themselves, for whom governments 
existed and in whom governments had their 
life. They have regarded them merely as 
serviceable organizations which they could 
by force or intrigue bend or corrupt to their 
own purpose. They have regarded the small- 
er states, in particular, and the peoples who 
could be overwhelmed by force, as their nat- 
ural tools and instruments of domination. 
Their pui"pose has long been avowed. The 
statesmen of other nations, to whom that 
purpose was incredible, paid little attention ; 



regarded what German professors expound- 
ed in their classrooms and German writers 
set forth to the world as the goal of German 
policy as rather the dream of minds detached 
from practical affairs, as preposterous pri- 
vate conceptions of German destiny, than as 
the actual plans of responsible rulers; but 
the rulers of Germany themselves knew all 
the while what concrete plans, what well- 
advanced intrigues lay back of what the 
professors and the writers were saying, and 
were glad to go forward unmolested, filling 
the thrones of Balkan states with German 
princes, putting German officers at the serv- 
ice of Turkey to drill her armies and make 
interest with her government, developing 
plans of sedition and rebellion in India and 
Egypt, setting their fires in Persia. The 
demands made by Austria upon Serbia were 
a mere single step in a plan which com- 
passed Europe and Asia, from Berlin to 
Bagdad. They hoped those demands might 
not arouse Europe, but they meant to press 
them whether they did or not, for they 
thought themselves ready for the final issue 
of arms. 

Their plan was to throw a broad belt of 
German military power and political con- 
trol across the very center of Europe and 
beyond the Mediterranean into the heart of 
Asia; and Austria-Hungary was to be as 
much their tool and pawn as Serbia or Bul- 
garia or Turkey or the ponderous states of 
the East. Austria-Hungary, indeed, was to 
become part of the central German Empire, 
absorbed and dominated by the same forces 
and influences that had originally cemented 
the German states themselves. The dream 
had its heart at Berlin. It could have had 
a heart nowhere else! It rejected the idea 
of solidarity of race entirely. The choice of 
peoples played no part in it at all. It con- 
templated binding together racial and polit- 
ical units which could be kept together only 
by force, — Czechs, Magyars, Croats, Serbs, 
Roumanians, Turks, Armenians, — the proud 
states of Bohemia and Hungary, the stout 
little commonwealths of the Balkans, the 
indomitable Turks, the subtle peoples of the 
East. These peoples did not wish to be 
united. They ardently desired to direct their 
own affairs, would be satisfied only by un- 
disputed independence. They could be kept 
quiet only by the presence or the constant 
threat of armed men. They would live under 
a common power only by sheer compulsion 
and await the day of revolution. 

But the German military statesmen had 



610 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



reckoned with all that and were ready to 
deal with it in their own way. 

And they have actually carried the greater 
part of that amazing plan into execution! 
Look how things stand. Austria is at their 
mercy. It has acted, not upon its own initia- 
tive or upon the choice of its own people, 
but at Berlin's dictation ever since the war 
began. Its people now desire peace, but 
cannot have it until leave is granted from 
Berlin. The so-called Central Powers are 
in fact but a single power. Serbia is at its 
mercy," should its hands be but for a moment 
freed. Bulgaria has consented to its will, 
and Roumania is overrun. The Turkish 
armies, which Germans trained, are serving- 
Germany, certainly not themselves, and the 
guns of German warships lying in the har- 
bor at Constantinople remind Turkish states- 
men every day that they have no choice but 
to take their orders from Berlin. From 
Hamburg to the Persian Gulf the net is 
spread. 

Is it not easy to understand the eagerness 
for peace that has been manifested from 
Berlin ever since the snare was set and 
sprung? Peace, peace, peace has been the 
talk of her Foreign Office for now a year 
and more; not peace upon her own initia- 
tive, but upon the initiative of the nations 
over which she now deems herself to hold 
the advantage. A little of the talk has been 
public, but most of it has been private. 
Through all sorts of channels it has come to 
me, and in all sorts of guises, but never with 
the terms disclosed which the German Gov- 
ernment would be willing to accept. 

That government has other valuable 
pawns in its hands besides those I have 
mentioned. It still holds a valuable part of 
France, though with slowly relaxing grasp, 
and practically the whole of Belgium. Its 
armies press close upon Russia and overrun 
Poland at their will. It cannot go further; 
it dare not go back. It wishes to close its 
bargain before it is too late and it has little 
left to offer for the pound of flesh it will 
demand. 

The military masters under whom Ger- 
many is bleeding see very clearly to what 
point Fate has brought them. If they fall 
back or are forced back an inch, their power 
both abroad and at home will fall to pieces 
like a house of cards. It is their power at 
home they are thinking about now more than 
their power abroad. It is that power which 
is trembling under their very feet ; and deep 
fear has entered their hearts. They have 



but one chance to perpetuate their military 
power or even their controlling political in- 
fluence. If they can secure peace now with 
the immense advantages still in their hands 
which they have up to this point apparently 
gained, they will have justified themselves 
before the German people: they will have 
gained by force what they promised to gain 
by it: an immense expansion of German 
power, an immense enlargement of German 
industrial and commercial opportunities. 
Their prestige will be secure, and with their 
prestige their political power. If they fail, 
their peojDle will thrust them aside; a gov- 
ernment accountable to the people them- 
selves will be set up in Germany as it has 
been in England, in the United States, in 
France, and in all the great countries of the 
modern time except Germany. If they suc- 
ceed, they are safe and Germany and the 
world are undone; if they fail, Germany is 
saved and the world will be at peace. If 
they succeed, America will fall within the 
menace. We and all the rest of the world 
must remain armed, as they will remain, and 
must make ready for the next step in their 
aggression; if they fail, the world may 
unite for peace and Germany may be of 
the union. 

Do you not now understand the new in- 
trigue, the intrigue for peace, and why the 
masters of Germany do not hesitate to use 
any agency that promises to effect their 
purpose, the deceit of the nations? Their 
present particular aim is to deceive all those 
who throughout the world stand for the 
rights of peoples and the self-government of 
nations ; for they see what immense strength 
the forces of justice and of liberalism are 
gathering out of this war. They are employ- 
ing liberals in their enterjorise. They are 
using men, in Germany and Avithout, as their 
spokesmen whom they have hitherto de- 
spised and oppressed, using them for their 
own destruction, — Socialists, the leaders of 
labor, the thinkers they have hitherto sought 
to silence. Let them once succeed and these 
men, now their tools, will be ground to pow- 
der beneath the weight of the great military 
empire they will have set up ; the revolution- 
ists in Russia will be cut off from all succor 
or cooi3eration -in western Europe and a 
counter revolution fostered and supported; 
Germany herself will lose her chance of 
freedom; and all Europe will arm for the 
next, the final struggle. 

The sinister intrigue is being no less ac- 
tively conducted in this country than in 



THE CEISIS OF DEMOCEACY 



611 



Russia and in every country in Europe to 
which the agents and dupes of the Imperial 
German Government can get access. That 
government has many spokesmen here, in 
places high and low. They have learned 
discretion. They keep within the law. It 
is opinion they utter now, not sedition. They 
proclaim the liberal purposes of their mas- 
ters; declare this a foreign war which can 
touch America with no danger to either her 
lands or her institutions ; set England at the 
center of the stage and talk of her ambition 
to assert economic dominion throughout the 
world; appeal to our ancient tradition of 
isolation in the politics of the nations ; and 
seek to undermine the government with false 
professions of loyalty to its principles. 

But they will make no headway. The false 
betray themselves always in every accent. 
It is only friends and partisans of the Ger- 
man Government whom we have already 
identified who utter these thinly disguised 
disloyalties. The facts are patent to all the 
world, and nowhere are they more plainly 
seen than in the United States, where we are 
accustomed to deal with facts and not with 
sophistries; and the great fact that stands 
out above all the rest is that this is a Peo- 
ple's War, a war for freedom and justice 
and self-government amongst all the nations 
of the world, a war to make the world safe 
for the peoples who live upon it and have 
made it their own, the German people them- 
selves included; and that with us rests the 
choice to break through all these hypocrisies 
and patent cheats and masks of brute force 
and help set the world free, or else stand 
aside and let it be dominated a long age 
through by sheer weight of arms and the 
arbitrary choices of self -constituted masters, 
by the nation which can maintain the biggest 
armies and the most irresistible armaments, 
— a power to which the world has afforded 
no parallel and in the face of which political 
freedom must wither and perish. 

For us there is but one choice. We have 
made it. Woe be to the man or group of 
men that seeks to stand in our way in this 
day of high resolution when every principle 
we hold dearest is to be vindicated and made 
secure for the salvation of the nations. We 
are ready to plead at the bar of history, and 
our flag shall wear a new luster. Once more 
we shall make good with our lives and for- 
tunes the great faith to which we were born, 
and a new glory shall shine in the face of 
our people. 



The Significance of America's Entry 
viscount grey 

[From the Preface to America and Free- 
dom, 1917] 

The entry of the United States is a tre- 
mendous fact even when considered only in 
the limited aspect of its direct effect upon 
the war. . . . But there is another aspect 
of the entry of the United States into the 
war that is much greater, of deeper signifi- 
cance, and more far-reaching consequence. 
It is to be seen in the reasons and spirit of 
the decision taken by the president and the 
nation. The public utterances of President 
Wilson when announcing the decision and 
subsequently are full of it and are inspired 
by it. The United States have departed from 
the policy of isolation not from favor to one 
set of combatants against another, real and 
strong though the sympathy with some of 
the Allies has been in large sections of the 
American people since the outbreak of the 
war. 

This has not been the motive that forced the 
tremendous national decision, but a grow- 
ing conviction which gi'adually became set- 
tled, deep, and j^aramount, that this terrible 
war is a desperate and critical struggle 
against something evil and intensely dan- 
gerous to moral law, to international faith, 
to everything that is essential if different 
nations are to live together in the world in 
equal freedom and friendshiiD. The will to 
power — it is a German phrase — has shown 
in the course of this war that it knows 
neither mercy, pity, nor limits. Militarism 
is one quality of it, and it stands for things 
that all democracies, if they wish to remain 
free and to be a part of a world that is 
free, must hate. 

This conviction and a sense that the old 
barriers of the world are broken down by 
modern conditions, that the cause of human- 
ity is one, and that no nation so great and 
free as the United States could stand aside 
in this crisis without sacrificing its honor and 
losing its soul, are — so we believe — the real 
motive and cause of the decision of the 
United States. Democracies are reluctant 
to take such decisions until they are attacked 
or until their own material interests are 
directly and deeply involved, and the United 
States did not take the decision till German 
action in the war made it imperative; but 
then they took it with a clearness, an empha- 
sis, and a declaration of principle that will 



612 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



be one of the landmarks and shining exam- 
ples of all human history. Comparison may 
be made between the entry of the United 
States into the war and that of the British 
peoiDle. There is some resemblance, but 
there is a difference. The outrageous inva- 
sion of Belgium, involving siDecial and sepa- 
rate treaty obligations, left Great Britain at 
the outset no alternative; her decision had 
to be sudden ; the whole people felt at once 
that there was no honorable way of avoiding 
war. Articles have been written since to 
show that the interest of Great Britain was 
directly involved, that though Belgium and 
France were attacked, she, too, was threat- 
ened, and all that is true. Numerous public 
utterances in Germany since the War began 
have disclosed that the German purpose was 
to subject not only Belgium and France, but 
also Great Britain, to German predominance. 
But the British people had not time at the 
outset to consider where their interest lay; 
had it not been so they would have taken 
time to consider and to argue, but as things 
were, honor was so clearly and peremptorily 
challenged, and sympathy so deeply out- 
raged by the initial action of Germany that 
there was no time for consideration and no 
place for argument. This it was that made 
the decision of the British people so practi- 
cally unanimous, so quick, and so thorough. 
The decision of the United States was slow 
and deliberate; it is apparently not less 
unanimous and thorough, and each deci- 
sion will have its own impressiveness in 
history. 

On our first entry into the War we were, 
as the United States now is, free to decide 
our own part and our own terms of peace. 
When Japan entered the War the obliga- 
tions of the Anglo-Japanese alliance to 
make war and peace in common came into 
effect; then the agreement of September, 
1914, made mutual and binding agreements 
between ourselves and France and Russia, 
and our position noAV is that of the other 
nations who are parties to the agi'eement of 
September, 1914. The United States are 
independent of that agreement; this is a 
difference, important and definite, though, 
I believe, it will be small in practical effect 
compared with the deep underlying identity 
of view, principle, and feeling. 

President Wilson said the other day that 
this is a conflict for "human liberty." That 
is what the Allies have been made by Ger- 
man action in the War to feel more and 
more deeply, and this feeling is a greater 



bond of union than anything else. There is 
one more thing to be added. I was talking 
the other day to a man who had been some 
two years at the front and was home for a 
ten days' leave. Of all feelings, those that 
have the most right to be considered with 
attention and deference are the feelings of 
the men who are risking their lives and 
undergoing the awful trial and suffering of 
trench warfare. In this man's feeling there 
was no hatred and no passion; there was 
great weariness and gTeat longing for the 
end of the War, but an intense desire to see 
the War end in such a way that, if he sur- 
vived, the rest of his life — he is a young 
man — should be free from war and the 
threats of war. That, too, as I understand, 
is President Wilson's policy and purpose — 
human liberty and secure peace. . . . 

There is but one other point on which I 
would touch; it is the prospective relations 
between Great Britain and the United States. 
Mr. Balfour's mission has, we hope, done 
something to make it felt in the United 
States that there is real community of ideas, 
sentiments, and sympathy. This country 
was fortunate in having Mr. Balfour to rep- 
resent it on such a mission at such a time, 
and he very likely did more to promote 
understanding of us in America than any 
one else could have done in the time. And 
the more closely the two peoples come into 
contact, the better they get to know each 
other, the more I believe it will be apparent 
to each not only that they speak the same 
language, but that they use it to mean the 
same things, that they both have the same 
idea of freedom and liberty, and desire the 
same sort of world in which to live. 

There is no reason in the forms of a con- 
stitutional Monarchy why the British people 
should not be as free, as truly and thor- 
oughly a democracy, as any republic can be. 
The American colonies of the eighteenth 
century by the War of Independence estab- 
lished not only independence but democracy. 
The states of Europe, whose intei'nal con- 
ditions were then different from those in 
America, were not yet ready for the same 
measure of democracy. Russia is only just 
beginning to establish it, but the change 
there promises to be thorough. All the other 
great States of Europe, except Germany (I 
omit Austria-Hungary because it is more 
impossible than ever to define the internal 
conditions of that mixed Empire), are now 
in form and in spirit and in fact democratic. 
Great Britain has attained it not less surely 



THE CEISIS OF DEMOCEACY 



613 



and thoroughly than others by the process of 
political evolution. 

In all dealings I have had with Americans, 
official and unofficial, I have felt that the out- 
look upon national and individual life was 
the same. No written agreement is neces- 
sary to draw the two nations together or to 
keep them in friendship; what is needed is 
that each should continually see in the utter- 
ances of representative men, and in the writ- 
ings of the press, not the eccentricities and 
the fringe, not the froth and eddies, but the 
main deep current of public opinion in both 
countries. 

That is what we feel about President Wil- 
son's recent announcements. They satisfy, 
they carry conviction, that make us feel that 
we really know what he thinks and why he 
thinks it and how firmly he grasps it; and 
we hope that the response from public men 
and from the press on this side is making 
the President and th-e people of the United 



States feel that we really do respond ear- 
nestly and truly; that the sentiments and 
principles expressed by him are ours also, 
and that in what he has said of this war and 
of his hopes for the future he has spoken 
what is also in our minds and hearts. 

If the millions of dear lives that have been 
given in this war are to have been given not 
in vain, if there is to be any lasting compen- 
sation for the appalling suffering of the last 
three years, the defeat of the Prussian will 
to power, however it is brought about, will 
not by itself be enough. 

Out of this defeat must come something 
constructive, some moral change in inter- 
national relations; and the entry of the 
United States of America into the War, in 
the spirit and with the principles that have 
inspired their action, is an invaluable and, I 
trust, a sure and unconquerable guarantee 
that in the peace and after the peace these 
hopes will be realized. 



III. PROBLEMS OF RECONSTRUCTION 



1. THE NEW DEMOCRACY 



A New Force in Politics 

CARLETON HAYES 

[From British Social Politics, 1913] 

Two historical factors have conspired to 
bring about in our own day a fundamental 
change in the convictions of many thought- 
ful persons as to the proper scope and func- 
tions of government. In the first place the 
French Revolution not only abolished legal 
class privilege and defined civil "rights" 
uniform for all citizens, but it sounded the 
death knell of absolutism; and its great 
dreams of individual liberty and social 
equality and political brotherhood provided 
a powerful stimulus, throughout the nine- 
teenth century, to ever-recurring and in- 
creasingly successful movements throughout 
Europe for the extension of the suffrage 
and the removal of legal disabilities in so- 
ciety. In France, political democracy was 
gradually evolved through kaleidoscopic 
changes of Legitimate Monarchy, July 
Monarchy, Republic, Empire, and Republic. 
In England, a like process was painfully 
in evidence during Peterloo Massacres, and 
Chartist riots, and Reform agitations. In 



both countries, before the close of the cen- 
tury, the electorate had supposedly attained 
a democratic mastery over one great insti- 
tution — the government. 

Of greater importance to us than the 
more or less theoretical principles pro- 
claimed and exemplified by the French 
Revolution are the very practical problems 
created by that series of marvelous mechan- 
ical inventions and adaptations which has 
passed under the name of the Industrial 
Revolution. Within the last hundred years 
the whole social fabric has undergone a com- 
plete transformation, until it has brought 
forth present day capitalism and the fac- 
tory system and a wage earning proletariat 
huddled in great towns; and novel facts 
have presented themselves which could not 
be faced in the manner of the eighteenth 
century nor run away from as the laissez- 
faire economists of the last century would 
have done. So long as highly developed in- 
dustrial states — countries directly affected 
by the Industrial Revolution — pursued a 
frank policy of non-intervention, the capi- 
talist class seemed to grow wealthier and 
more powerful, while the mass of wage earn- 
ers seemed to grow relatively poorer and 



614 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



more degraded. Under such conditions, 
written constitutional guarantees of reli- 
gious toleration and political equality did 
not suffice to render democracy real and 
vital. Soon after the French Revolution, 
Baboeuf had declared : 

"When I see the jDoor without the clothing 
and shoes which they themselves are engaged 
in making, and contemplate the small mi- 
nority who do not work and yet want for 
nothing, I am convinced that government is 
still the old conspiracy of the few against 
the many, only it has taken a new form." 

Gradually the working classes, whom the 
Industrial Revolution called into being, 
came to share Baboeuf 's ojDinion and to claim 
that they suffered from class privileges in- 
finitely more oppressive than any of those 
against which the French Revolution con- 
tended. They began to believe that political 
rights and written constitutions, of them- 
selves, might be quite sterile, and to demand 
the employment of political agencies in 
order to seeiu'e ec[uality of oiDportunity for 
all classes and the well-being of each and 
every citizen, worker as well as cajoitalist. 
It followed quite naturally from the inter- 
esting union of two revolutionary currents — 
the political and the industrial — that the 
people of each affected state thought of 
using their democratic representative mas- 
tery over government, in proportion to the 
extent to which they had achieved it, as a 
means through which to undertake indus- 
trial regulation and general social control. 
That has meant the socialization of jDolitics 
— government, in its widest significance, of 
the people and for the people. 

"Social politics" thus becomes a conven- 
ient phrase to indicate, loosely perhaps, the 
present day develoj^ment of political democ- 
racy and its utilization for social purposes. 
Social equality is its goal. Mr. Percy Alden, 
one of its distingiiished advocates in the 
British Parliament, writes in a recently pub- 
lished volume : 

"Without claiming too much for the new 
program which the Liberal party has put 
foi-ward, this, at least, may be asserted with 
confidence, that it implies a desertion of the 
old individualist standard and the adoption 
of a new princii^le — a principle which the 
Unionists call socialistic. If it be true that 
a positive policy of social reconstruction 
savors of socialism, then, of course, this con- 
tention can be justified. The main point is 
that the function of the state in the mind of 
the Liberal and Radical of today is much 



wider in scope than seemed possible to our 
predecessors. The state avowedly claims the 
right to interfere with industrial liberty and 
to modify the old economic view of the dis- 
posal of private property. Liberalism rec- 
ognizes that it is no longer possible to accept 
the view that all men have an ec[ual chance, 
and that there is nothing more to be done 
than to hold evenly the scales of govern- 
ment. As a matter of fact, the anomalies 
and injustices of our present social system 
have compelled even our oi^ponents to intro- 
duce ameliorative legislation. But the Lib- 
eral of today goes furthei'. He asks that 
such economic changes shall be introduced 
as will make it jDOSsible for every man to 
possess a minimum of security and comfort. 
Property is no longer to have an undue 
claim; gTeat wealth must be prepared to 
bear burdens in the interests of the whole 
community. Our social system must have an 
ethical basis." 



The Reconstruction of British Labor 

[From the Report of the Sub-Committee of 
the British Labor Party, 1918] 

It behooves the Labor party, in formulat- 
ing its own program for reconstruction after 
the war, and in criticizing the various prepa- 
rations and plans that are being made by 
the 23resent government, to look at the prob- 
lem as a whole. We have to make clear what 
it is that we wish to construct. It is impor- 
tant to emjDhasize the fact that, whatever 
may be the case with regard to other polit- 
ical parties, our detailed practical proposals 
proceed from definitely held principles. 

We need to beware of patchwork. The 
view of the Labor party is that what has to 
be reconstructed after the war is not this or 
that government department, or this or that 
piece of social machinery; but, so far as 
Britain is concerned, society itself. The indi- 
vidual worker, or for that matter the in- 
di^T-dual statesman, immersed in daily rou- 
tine — like the individual soldier in a battle — 
easily fails to understand the magnitude and 
far-reaching importance of what is taking 
place around him. How does it fit together 
as a whole? How does it look from a dis- 
tance? Count Okuma, one of the oldest, 
most experienced, and ablest of the states- 
men of Japan, watching the present conflict 
from the other side of the globe, declares it 
to be nothing less than the death of Euro- 
pean civilization. Just as in the past the 



THE CEISIS OF DEMOCEACY 



615 



civilization of Babylon, Egypt, Greece, Car- 
thage, and the great Roman empire have 
been successively destroyed, so, in the judg- 
ment of this detached observer, the civiliza- 
tion of all Europe is even now receiving its 
death blow. We of the Labor party can so 
far agree in this estimate as to recognize, in 
the present world catastrophe, if not the 
death, in Europe, of civilization itself, at 
any rate the culmination and collapse of a 
distinctive industrial civilization, which the 
workers will not seek to reconstruct. At 
such times of crisis it is easier to slip into 
ruin than to progress into higher forms of 
organization. That is the problem as it pre- 
sents itself to the Labor party. 

What this war is consuming is not merely 
the security, the homes, the livelihood, and 
the lives of millions of innocent families, 
and an enormous proportion of all the accu- 
mulated wealth of the world, but also the 
very basis of the peculiar social order in 
which it has arisen. The individualist system 
of capitalist production, based on the pri- 
vate ownership and competitive administra- 
tion of land and capital, with its reckless 
"profiteering" and wage slavery; with its 
glorification of the unhampered struggle for 
the means of life and its hypocritical pre- 
tense of the "survival of the fittest"; with 
the monstrous inequality of circumstances 
which it produces and the degradation and 
brutalization, both moral and spiritual, re- 
sulting therefrom, may, we hope, indeed 
have received a death blow. With it must 
go the political system and ideas in which it 
naturally found expression. We of the Labor 
party, whether in opposition or in due time 
called upon to form an administration, will 
certainly lend no hand to its revival. On the 
contrary, we shall do our utmost to see that 
it is buried with the millions whom it has 
done to death. If we in Britain are to 
escape from the decay of civilization itself, 
which the Japanese statesman foresees, we 
must ensui'e that what is presently to be 
built up is a new social order, based not on 
fighting but on fraternity — not on the com- 
petitive struggle for the means of bare life, 
but on a deliberately planned cooperation in 
production and distribution for the benefit 
of all who participate by hand or by brain — 
not on the utmot-t possible inequality of 
riches, but on a systematic approach towards 
a healthy equality of material circumstances 
for every person born into the world — not 
on an enforced dominion over subject na- 
tions, subject raees^ subject colonies, subject 



classes, or a subject sex, but, in industry as 
well as in government, on that equal free- 
dom, that general consciousness of consent, 
and that widest possible participation in 
power, both economic and political, which 
is characteristic of democracy. We do not, 
of course, ]3retend that it is possible, even 
after the drastic clearing away that is now 
going on, to build society anew in a year or 
two of feverish "reconstruction." What the 
Labor party intends to satisfy itself about 
is that each brick that it helps to lay shall 
go to erect the structure that it intends, and 
no other. 

We need not here recapitulate, one by 
one, the different items in the Labor party's 
progTam, which successive party confer- 
ences have adopted. These proposals, some 
of them in various publications worked out 
in jDractical detail, are often carelessly de- 
rided as impracticable, even by the politi- 
cians who steal them piecemeal from us! 
The members of the Labor party, themselves 
actually working by hand or by brain, in 
close contact with the facts, have perhaps at 
all times a more accurate appreciation of 
what is practicable, in industry as in poli- 
tics, than those who depend solely on aca- 
demic instruction or are biased by gTeat pos- 
sessions. But today no man dares to say 
that anything is impracticable. The war 
which has scared the old jDolitical parties 
right out of their dog-mas, has taught every 
statesman and every government official, to 
his enduring surprise, how very much more 
can be done along the lines that we have 
laid down than he had ever before thought 
possible. What we now promulgate as our 
policy, whether for opposition or for office, 
is not merely this or that specific reform, 
but a deliberately thought out, systematic, 
and comprehensive plan for that imme- 
diate social rebuilding which any ministry, 
whether or not it desires to grapple with the 
problem, will be driven to undertake. The 
four pillars of the house that we propose to 
erect, resting upon the common foundation 
of the democratic control of society in all its 
activities, may be termed : 

(a) The Universal Enforcement of the 
National Minimum; 

(&) The Democratic Control of Industry; 

(c) The Revolution in National Finance; 
and 

(d) The Surplus Wealth for the Common 
Good. 

[There follows an explanation of the 



616 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



meaning of these "Four Pillars," of which 
only the last part is here given.] 

In the disposal of the surplus above the 
standard of life society has hitherto gone as 
far wrong as in its neglect to secure the 
necessary basis of any genuine industrial 
efficiency or decent social order. We have 
allowed the riches of our mines, the rental 
value of the lands superior to the margin of 
cultivation, the extra profits of the fortunate 
capitalists, even the material outcome of 
scientific discoveries — ^whieh ought by now 
to have made this Britain of ours immune 
from class poverty or from any widespread 
destitution — to be absorbed by individual 
proprietors; and then devoted very largely 
to the senseless luxury of an idle rich class. 
Against this misappropriation of the wealth 
of the community, the Labor party — speak- 
ing in the interests not of the wage earners 
alone, but of every grade and section of pro- 
ducers by hand or by brain, not to mention 
also those of the generations that are to suc- 
ceed us, and of the permanent welfare of 
the community — emphatically protests. One 
main jDillar of the house that the Labor 
part}' intends to build is the future appro- 
priation of the surplus, not to the enlarge- 
ment of any individual fortune, but to the 
common good. It is from this constantly 
arising surplus (to be secured, on the one 
hand, by nationalization and municipaliza- 
tion and, on the other, by the steeply grad- 
uated taxation of private income and riches) 
that will have to be found the new capital 
which the community day by day needs for 
the perpetual improvement and increase of 
its various enterprises, for which we shall 
decline to be dependent on the usury-exact- 
ing financiers. It is from the same source 
that has to be defrayed the public provision 
for the sick and infirm of all kinds (includ- 
ing that for maternity and infancy) which 
is still so scandalously insufficient; for the 
aged and those prematurely incapacitated 
by accident or disease, now in many ways so 
imperfectly eared for; for the education 
alike of children, of adolescents, and of 
adults, in which the Labor party demands 
a genuine equality of opportunity, overcom- 
ing all differences of material circumstances ; 
and for the organization of public improve- 
ments of all kinds, including the brightening 
of the lives of those now condemned to al- 
most ceaseless toil, and a great development 
of the means of recreation. From the same 
source must come the greasy increased pub- 
lic provision that the Labor party will insist 



on being made for scientific investigatiom 
and original research, in every branch of 
knowledge, not to say also for the promo- 
tion of music, literature, and fine art, which 
have been under capitalism so greatly neg- 
lected, and upon which, so the Labor party 
holds, any real develojjment of civilization 
fundamentally de^Dends. Society, like the 
individual, does not live by bread alone — 
does not exist only for perpetual wealth 
production. It is in the proposal for this 
appropriation of every surjDlus for the com- 
mon good — in the vision of its resolute use 
for the building up of the community as a 
whole instead of for the magnification of 
individual fortunes — that the Labor party, 
as the party of the producers by hand or by 
brain, most distinctively marks itself off 
from the older political parties, standing, as 
these do, essentially for the maintenance, 
unimpaired, of the perpetual private mort- 
gage upon the annual product of the nation 
that is involved in the individual ownership 
of land and capital. 

The house which the Labor party intends 
to build does not stand alone in the world. 
Where will it be in the street of tomorrow? 
If we repudiate, on the one hand, the im- 
perialism that seeks to dommate other races, 
or to impose our own will on other parts of 
the British empire, so we disclaim equally 
any conception of a selfish and insular "non- 
interventionism," unregarding of our special 
obligation to our fellow-citizens overseas ; of 
the corporate duties of one nation to an- 
other; of the moral claims upon us of the 
non-adult races, and of our own indebted- 
ness to the world of which we are part. We 
look for an ever-increasing intercourse, a 
constantly developing exchange of commod- 
ities, a continually expanding friendly coop- 
eration among all the peoples of the world. 
With regard to that great commonwealth of 
all races, all colors, all religions, and all de- 
grees of civilization, that we call the British 
empire, the Labor party stands for its main- 
tenance and its progressive development on 
the lines of local autonomy and "Home Rule 
All Round"; the fullest respect for the 
rights of each people, whatever its color, to 
all the democratic self-government of which 
it is capable, and to the proceeds of its own 
toil upon the resources of its own territorial 
home; and the closest possible cooperation 
among all the various members of what has 
become essentially not an empire in the old 
sense, but a Britannic alliance. 

We desire to maintain the most intimate 



THE CEISIS OF DEMOCEACY 



617 



relations with the Labor parties overseas. 
Like them, we have no sympathy with the 
projects of "Imperial Federation," in so far 
as these imply the subjection to a common 
imperial legislature wielding coercive power 
(including dangerous facilities for coercive 
imperial taxation and for enforced military 
service), either of the existing self-govern- 
ing Dominions, whose autonomy would be 
thereby invaded ; or of the United Kingdom, 
whose freedom of democratic self -develop- 
ment would be thereby hampered; or of 
India and the colonial dependencies, which 
would thereby run the risk of being further 
exploited for the benefit of a "White Em- 
pire." We do not intend, by any such 
"Imperial Senate," either to brinpc the plu- 
tocracy of Canada and South Africa to the 
aid of the British aristocracy, or to enable 
the landlords and financiers of the mother 
country to unite in controlling the growing 
popular democracies overseas. The auton- 
omy of each self-governing part of the 
empire must be intact. 

What we look for, besides a constant 
' progress in democratic self-government of 
every part of the Britannic alliance, and 
especially in India, is a continuous partici- 
pation of the ministers of the Dominions, of 
India, and eventually of other dependencies 
(perhaps by means of their own ministers 
specially resident in London for this pur- 
pose) in the most confidential deliberations 
of the Cabinet, so far as foreign policy and 
imperial affairs are concerned, and the an- 
nual assembly of an Imperial Council, rep- 
resenting all constituents of the Britannic 
alliance and all parties in their local legis- 
latures, which should discuss all matters of 
common interest, but only in order to make 
recommendations for the simultaneous con- 
sideration of the various autonomous local 
legislatures of what should increasingly take 
the constitutional form of an alliance of free 
nations. And we carry the idea further. As 
regards our relations to foreign countries, 
we disavow and disclaim any desire .or inten- 
tion to dispossess or to impoverish any other 
state or nation. We seek no increase of ter- 
ritory. We disclaim all idea of "economic 
war." We ourselves object to all protective 
customs tariffs ; but we hold that each nation 
must be left free to do what it thinks best 
for its own economic development, without 
thought of injuring others. We believe that 
nations are in no way damaged by each 
other's economic prosperity or commercial 
progTess ; but, on the contrary, that they are 



actually themselves mutually enriched there- 
by. We would therefore put an end to the 
old entanglements and mystifications of se- 
cret diplomacy and the formation of leagues 
against leagues. We stand for the imme- 
diate establishment, actually as a part of the 
treaty of peace with which the present war 
will end, of a universal leagnie or society of 
nations, a supernational authority, with an 
international high court to try all justiciable 
issues between nations ; an international leg- 
islature to enact such common laws as can be 
mutually agreed upon, and an international 
council of mediation to endeavor to settle 
without ultimate conflict even those disputes 
which are not justiciable. We would have 
all the nations of the world most solemnly 
undertake and promise to make common 
cause against any one of them that broke 
away from this fundamental agreement. The 
world has suffered too much from war for 
the Labor party to have any other policy 
than that of lasting peace. 

The Labor party is far from assuming 
that it possesses a key to open all locks ; or 
that any policy which it can formulate will 
solve all the problems that beset us. But we 
deem it important to ourselves as well as to 
those who may, on the one hand, wish to join 
the party, or, on the other, to take up arms 
against it, to make quite clear and definite 
our aim and purpose. The Labor party 
wants that aim and purpose, as set forth in 
the preceding pages, with all its might. It 
calls for more warmth in politics, for much 
less apathetic acquiescence in the miseries 
that exist, for none of the cynicism that saps 
the life of leisure. On the other hand, the 
Labor party has no belief in any of the 
problems of the world being solved by good 
will alone. Good will without knowledge is 
warmth without light. Especially in all the 
complexities of polities, in the still undevel- 
oped science of society, the Labor party 
stands for increased study, for the scientific 
investigation of each succeeding problem, 
for the deliberate organization of research, 
and for a much more rapid dissemination 
among the whole people of all the science 
that exists. And it is perhaps specially the 
Labor party that has the duty of placing 
this advancement of science in the forefront 
of its political program. What the Labor 
party stands for in all fields of life is, essen- 
tially, democratic cooperation ; and coopera- 
tion involves a common purpose which can 
be agreed to; a common plan which can be 
explained and discussed, and such a measure 



618 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



of success in the adaptation of means to 
ends as will ensure a common satisfaction. 
An autocratic sultan may govern without 
science if his whim is law. A plutocratic 
party may choose to ignore science, if it is 
heedless whether its pretended solutions of 
social problems that may win political tri- 
umphs ultimately succeed or fail. But no 
Labor party can hojoe to maintain its posi- 
tion unless its jDroposals are, in fact, the out- 
come of the best political science of its time ; 
or to fulfil its purpose unless that science is 
continually wresting new fields from human 
ignorance. Hence, although the purpose of 
the Labor party must, by the law of its 
being, remain for all time unchanged, its 
policy and its progTam will, we hojDe, under- 
go a perpetual development, as knowledge 
grows, and as new phases of the social prob- 
lem present themselves, in a continually finer 
adjustment of our measures to our ends. If 
law is the mother of freedom, science, to 
the Labor party, must be the parent of law. 

An Experiment in Democracy 

donald hankey 
[From A Student in Arms, 1917] 

The unprecedented has occurred. For 
once a national ideal has proved stronger 
than class prejudice. In this matter of the 
war all classes were at one — at one not only 
in sentiment, but in practical resolve. The 
crowd that surged outside the central re- 
cruiting offices in great Scotland Yard was 
proof of it. All classes were there, strug- 
gling for the privilege of enlisting in the 
new citizen Army, conscious of their unity, 
and determined to give effect to it in the 
common life of service. It was an extraordi- 
nary crowd. Workmen were there in cord 
breeches and subfusc coats; boys from the 
East End in the latest fashion from Petti- 
coat Lane; clerks and shop assistants in 
sober black; mechanics in blue serge and 
bowler hats; travelers in the garments of 
prosperity; and, most conspicuously well 
dressed of all, gentlemen in their oldest 
clothes. It was like a section cut out of the 
nation. 

Men and boys of the working class formed 
the majority. They were in their element, 
shouting, singing, cheeking the "eoiDpers" 
with as much ribald good humor as if the 
recruiting office had been a music-hall. But 
some of the other classes were far less at 
their ease. They had been brought up from 



earliest youth to thank God that they were 
not as other men, to set store by innumerable 
little marks that distinguished them from 
''the lower classes." All these they were 
now sacrificing to an idea, and they felt 
horribly embarrassed. Even the gentleman, 
who had prided himself on his freedom from 
"the snobbishness of the suburbs," felt ill 
at ease. Of course he had been to working- 
men's clubs; but there he had been "Mr. 
Thingumy." Here he was "mate." He told 
himself that he did not mind being "mate," 
in fact he rather liked it; but he fervently 
wished that he looked the part. He felt as 
self-conscious as if he had arrived at a din- 
ner party in a Norfolk jacket. A little later 
on, when he sat, one of four nude men, in a 
cui)icle awaiting medical inspection, he did 
feel that for the moment they had all been 
reduced to the common denominator of their 
sheer humanity; but the embarrassment re- 
turned with his clothes and stayed with him 
all through the march to the station and the 
journey to the dejDot. 

At tiae depot he fought for the prize of a 
verminous blanket and six foot of floor to 
lie on. When he awoke the next morning 
his clothes were creased and dirty, his collar 
so filthy that it had to be discarded, and his 
chin unshaven. He perceived with some- 
thing of a shock that he was no longer con- 
spicuous. He was no more than the seedy 
unit of a seedy crowd. In any other circum- 
stances he would have been disgusted. As it 
was, he sought the canteen at the earliest 
opportunity and toasted the Unity of the 
Classes in a pint ! . . . 

In due course the citizen army reached the 
front. Now, the front may be divided into 
two parts, the trenches and the rest camps. 
In the trenches the real white man finally 
and conclusively comes to his own. The 
worm, no matter how exalted his rank, auto- 
matically ceases to count. The explanation 
of this phenomenon is very simple. In the 
moment of crisis the white man is always on 
the spot, while the worm is always in his 
dug-out. The rest camp, on the other hand, 
exists for the restoration of the status quo 
ante. It is the trench failure's opportunity 
to reassert himself. There the officer or 
N. C. 0. who has lost i^restige by his devo- 
tion to his dug-out regains it by the repe- 
tition of the ritual; and the private who 
has done ten men's work in repairing the 
trenches under fire is awarded an hour's 
extra drill for failing to cut away the left 
hand smartly. So is the damaged Religion 



THE CEISIS or DEMOCEACY 



619 



of the Army restored. In the rest camp, 
too, the shirker among the men raises again 
his diminished head, and comes out strong 
as a grumbler and, until his mates become 
unpleasantly reminiscent, a boaster. 

On the whole, though, actual experience 
of war brings the best man to the fore, and 
the best qualities of the average man. Offi- 
cers and men are welded into a closer com- 
radeshijD by dangers and discomforts shared. 
They learn to trust each other, and to look 
for the essential qualities rather than for the 
accidental graces. One learns to love men 
for their great hearts, their pluck, their in- 
domitable spirits, their irresponsible humor, 
their readiness to shoulder a weaker broth- 
er's burden in addition to their own. One 
.sees men as God sees them, apart from ex- 
ternals such as manner and intonation. A 
night in a bombing party shows you Jim 
Smith as a man of splendid courage. A 
shortness of rations reveals his wonderful 
unselfishness. One danger and discomfort 
after another you share in common till you 
love him as a brother. Out there, if any 
one dared to remind you that Jim was only 
a fireman while you were a bank clerk, you 
would give him one in the eye to go on with. 
You have learned to know a man when you 
see one, and to value him. 

When the war is over, and the men of the 
citizen Army return to their homes and their 
civil occupations, will they, I wonder, re- 
member the things that they have learned? 
If so, there will be a new and better Eng- 
land for the children. One would like to 
prophesy great things. In those days great 
talkers and boasters shall be of no account, 
for men shall remember that in the hour of 
danger they were wanting. In those days 
there shall be no more petty strife between 
class and class, for all shall have learned 
that they are one nation, and that they must 
seek the nation's good before their own. In 
those days men shall no longer pride them- 
selves on their riches, or on the material 
possessions which distinguish them from 
their brethren, for they shall have learned 
that it is the qualities of the heart which are 
of real value. Men shall be prized for their 
courage, their honesty, their charity, their 
practical ability. In those days there shall 
be no false pride, for all have lived hardly, 
all have done dirty and menial work, all 
have wielded pick and spade, and have 
counted it no dishonor but rather glory to 
do so. In those days charity and brotherly 
love shall prevail mightily, for all shall have 



learned mutual understanding and respect. 
Would that it might be so ! But perhaps it 
is more likely that the lessons will be for- 
gotten, and that men will slip back into the 
old grooves. Much depends on the women 
of England. If they carefully guard the 
ancient ruts against our return, and if their 
gentle fingers press us back into them, we 
shall acquiesce; but if at this hour of crisis 
they too have seen a wider vision of na- 
tional unity, and learned a more catholic 
charity, the future is indeed radiant with 
hope. 

The Organization of Democracy 

EDWIN A. alderman 

[From an Address at Raleigh, N. C, 
November 9, 1915] 

Let us prepare for our colossal moral and 
practical responsibilities in the world life, 
therefore, not alone by preparing common 
sense establishments of force on land and 
sea, until such time as human reason shall 
deem them not needed, but by the greater 
preparedness of self-restraint, self -analysis, 
and self-discipline. Let us not surrender 
our age-long dream of good, just self- 
government to any mechanical ideal of 
quickly obtaining material results erected 
into a crude dogma of efficiency. Democ- 
racy must know how to get material results 
economically and quickly. Democracy must 
and can be organized to that end, and this 
organization will undoubtedly involve cer- 
tain surrenders, certain social and political 
self-abnegations in the interests of collectiv- 
ism. But I hold the faith that all this can 
be done, yet retaining in the family of free- 
dom that shining jewel of individual liberty 
which has glowed in our life since the begin- 
ning. The great democratic nations — Amer- 
ica, England, France, Switzerland — have 
before them, therefore, the problem of re- 
taining their standards of individual liberty, 
and yet contriving juster and finer admin- 
istrative organs. Certainly the people that 
have built this Union can learn how to coor- 
dinate the activities of its people and obtain 
results as definite as those obtained under 
systems of mere authority. 

Since my college days I have been hearing 
about and admiring the German genius for 
research, for adaptation of scientific truth, 
and for organization. Now the whole world 
stands half astonished and half envious of 
their creed of efficiency. In so far as this 



620 



THE GEEAT TRADITION 



creed is opposed to slipshodness and waste, 
it is altogether good, but the question arises, 
Is the ability to get things done well deadly 
to liberty, or is it consistent with personal 
liberty? In examining German progress, I 
do not find as many examjDles of supreme 
individual efficiency or independent spirit as 
I find in the democratic nations. The steam 
engine, the factory system, telegraph, tele- 
phone, wireless, electric light, the gasoline 
engine, aeroplane, machine gun, the sub- 
marine, uses of rubber, dreadnought, the 
mighty names of Lister and Pasteur, come 
out for the democratic nations. The distinc- 
tive German genius is for administration 
and adaptation, rather than for independent 
creation. His civil service is the finest in 
the world. He knows what he wants. He 
decides what training is necessary to get that 
result. He universalizes that training. He 
enforces obedience to its discipline. A man 
must have skill; he must obey; he must 
work ; he must cooperate. The freer nations 
desire the same results, but neglect to en- 
force their realization. Their theory of 
government forces them to plead for its 
attainment. Certain classes and individuals 
heed this persuasion, and in an atmosphere 
of precious freedom great personalities 
spring into being. In the conflict between 
achievement based on subjection and splen- 
did obedience, and that based on political 
freedom, my belief is that the system of po- 
litical and social freedom will triumphantly 
endure. In essence, it is the conflict be- 
tweeen the efficiency of adaptation and or- 
ganization and the efficiency of invention 
and creation. What autocracy needs is the 
thrill and push of individual liberty; and 
the continental peasant will get it as the 
result of this war, for the guns of autocracy 
are celebrating the downfall of autocracy, 
even in its most ancient fastness — Russia. 
These autocracies will realize their real 
greatness when they substitute humility for 
pride, freedom for aecomj)lishment, as com- 
pelling national motives. What democracy 
needs is the discipline of patient labor, 
of trained skill, of thoroughness in work, 
and a more socialized conception of public 
duty. ... 

In order to organize an autocracy, the 
rulers ordain that it shall get in order and 
provide the means to bring about that end. 
To organize a democracy, we must organize 
its soul, and give it power to create its own 
ideals. It is primarily a peace organization, 
and that is proof that it is the forward 



movement of the human soul and not the 
movement of scientific reaction. It is 
through a severe mental training in our 
schools and a return to the conception of 
public duty which guided the sword and 
uplifted the heart of the founder of the Re- 
public that we shall find strength to organize 
the democracy of the future, revolutionized 
bj'^ science and urban life. The right to vote 
implies the duty to vote right; the right to 
legislate, the duty to legislate right; the 
right to judge about foreign policy, the duty 
to fight if necessary; the right to come to 
college, the duty to carry one's self hand- 
somely at college. Our youth must be taught 
to use their senses, to reason simply and cor- 
rectly from exact knowledge thus brought 
to them, to attain to sincerity in thought and 
judgment through work and patience. In 
our home and civic life we need some moral 
equivalent for the training which somehow 
issues out of war — the glory of self-sacrifice, 
obedience to just authority, contempt of 
ease, and a realization that through thought- 
ful, collective effort great results will be 
obtained. A great spiritual glory will come 
to these European nations through their sor- 
row and striving, which Avill express itself in 
great jDoems and great literature. They are 
preparing new shrines at which mankind 
will worship. Let us take care that pros- 
perity is not our sole national endowment. 
War asks of men denials and self-saciifice 
for ideals. Peace must somehow do the 
same. Autocracy orders men to forget self 
for an over-self called the State. Democ- 
racy must inspire men to forget self for a 
higher thing called Humanity. 



Natural Aristocracy 

paul elmer more 

[From Aristocracy and Justice, 1915] 

Leaders there will be, as there always have 
been. Leaders there are now, of each class, 
and we know their names. We still call the 
baser sort a demagogue, and his definition is 
still what it was among those who invented 
the term: "a flatterer of the people." . . . 
But the most notable example of demagog- 
uery today is not a man, though he be 
clothed with thunder, but an institution. 
There are newspajDers and magazines, reach- 
ing millions of readers, which have reduced 
the art to a perfect system. Their method 
is as simple as it is effective : always appeal 



THE CEISIS OF DEMOCRACY 



621 



to the emotion of the hour, and present it in 
terms which will justify its excess. . . . 

These are the agencies that, in varying 
forms, have been at work in many ages. 
Only now we have formulated them into a 
noble maxim, Avhich you will hear daily re- 
sounding in the pulpit and the press and in 
the street : "The cure of democracy is more 
democracy." It is a lie, and we know it is 
a lie. We know that this cry of the dema- 
gognie has invariably in the past led to an- 
archy and to despotism; and we know that 
today, were these forces unopposed, as hap- 
pily they are not unopposed, the same re- 
sult would occur — 

Our liberty reversed and charters gone, 
And we made servants to Opinion. 

The remedy for the evils of license is not 
irt the elimination of popular restraint, but 
precisely in bringing the people to respect 
and follow their right leaders. The cure for 
democracy is not more democracy but better 
democracy. 

Nor is such a cure dependent on the ap- 
pearance in a community of men capable of 
the light; for these the world always has, 
and these we too have in abundance; it de- 
pends rather on so relating these select 
natures to- the community that they 'shall be 
also men of leading. The danger is, lest, in 
a State which bestows influence and honors 
on its demagogues, the citizens of more re- 
fined intelligence, those true philosophers 
who have discourse of reason, and have won 
the difficult citadel of their own souls, should 
withdraw from public affairs and retire into 
that citadel — as it were, into an ivory tower. 
The harm wrought by such a condition is 
twofold : it deprives the better minds of the 
larger sustenance of popular sympathy, pro- 
ducing among them a kind of intellectual 
precosite and a languid interest in art as a 
refuge from life instead of an integral part 
of life; and, on the other hand, it tends to 
leave the mass of society a prey to the bru- 
talized emotions of indiscriminate pleasure- 
seeking. In such a State distinction be- 
comes the sorry badge of isolation. The need 
is to provide for a natural aristocracy. 

Now, it must be clearly understood that 
in advocating such a measure, at least under 
the conditions that actually prevail today, 
there is involved no futile intention of abro- 
gating democracy, in so far as democracy 
means government by and of the people. A 
natural aristocracy does not demand the res- 



toration of inherited privilege or a relapse 
into the crude dominion of money ; it is not 
synonymous with oligarchy or plutocracy. 
It calls rather for some machine or some 
social consciousness which shall ensure both 
the selection from among the community at 
large of the ''best" and the bestowal on them 
of "power"; it is the true consummation of 
democracy. And, again, it must be said em- 
phatically that it is not an academic question 
dealing with unreal distinctions. No one 
supposes that the "best" are a sharply de- 
fined class moving about among their fellows 
with a visible halo above them and a smile 
of beatific superiority on their faces. So- 
ciety is not made of such classifications, and 
governments have always been of a more or 
less mixed character. A natural aristocracy 
signifies rather a tendency than a conclusion, 
and in such a sense, it was taken, no doubt, 
by my sociological friend of radical ideas 
who pronounced it the gTeat practical prob- 
lem of today. 

The first requisite for solving this prob- 
lem is that those who are designed by nature, 
so to speak, to form an aristocracy, should 
come to an understanding of their own be- 
lief. There is a question to be faced boldly : 
What is the true aim of society ? Does jus- 
tice consist primarily in leveling the distri- 
bution of powers and benefits, or in propor- 
tioning them to the scale of character and 
intelligence? Is the main purpose of the 
machinery of government to raise the mate- 
rial welfare of the masses, or to create ad- 
vantages for the upward striving of the 
exceptional? Is the state of humanity to be 
estimated by numbers, or is it a true saying 
of the old stoic poet : humanum panels vivit 
genus ? Shall our interest in mankind begin 
at the bottom and progress upward, or begin 
at the top and progress downard ? To those 
who feel that the time has come for a rever- 
sion from certain present tendencies, the 
answer to this question cannot be doubtful. 
Before anything else is done we must purge 
our minds of the current cant of humanita- 
rianism. This does not mean that we are to 
deny the individual appeals of jDity and in- 
troduce a wolfish egotism into human rela- 
tions. On the contrary, it is just the preach- 
ing of false humanitarian doctrines that 
results practically in weakening the response 
to rightful obligations and, by "turning 
men's duties into doubts," throws the prizes 
of life to the hard grasping materialist and 
the coarse talker. In the end the happiness 



622 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



of the people also, in the wider sense, de- 
pends on the common recognition of the law 
of just subordination. But, wliatever the 
ultimate effect of this sort may be, the need 
now is to counterbalance the excess of emo- 
tional humanitarianism with an injection of 
the truth — even the contemptuous truth. 
Let us, in the name of a long-suffering God, 
put some bounds to the flood of talk about 
the wages of the bricklayer and the train- 
man, and talk a little more about the income 
of the artist and teacher and public censor 
who have taste and strength of character to 
remain in opposition to the tide. Let us have 
less cant about the great educative value of 
the theater for the people and less humbug 
about the virtues of the nauseous problem 
play, and more consideration of what is 
clean and nourishing food for the larger 
minds. Let us forget for a while our absorb- 
ing desire to fit the schools to train boys for 
the shop and the counting-room, and concern 
ourselves more effectively with the dwin- 
dling of those disciplinary studies which lift 
men out of the crowd. Let us, in fine, not 
number ourselves among the traitors to 
their class who invidice metu non audeant 
dicere. . . . 

It is a sound theorem of President Lowell's 
that popular government "may be said to 
consist of the control of political affairs by 
public opinion." Now there is today a vast 
organization for manipulating public opin- 
ion in favor of the workingman and for de- 
luding it in the interest of those who grow 
fat by pandering, in the name of emancipa- 
tion, to the baser emotions of mankind ; but 
of organization among those who suffer 
from the vulgarizing trend of democracy 
there is little or none. As a consequence, we 
see the conditions of life gTowing harder 
year by year — harder for those whose labor 
is not concerned immediately with the direc- 
tion of material forces or with the supply of 
sensational pleasure ; they are ground, so to 
speak, between the upper and the nether 
millstone. Perhaps organization is not the 
word to describe accurately what is desired 
among those who are fast becoming the 
silent members of society, for it implies a 
sharper discrimination into grades of taste 
and character than exists in nature; but 
there is nothing chimerical in looking for a 
certain conscious solidarity at the core of 
the aristocratical class (using "aristocrat- 
ical" always in the Platonic sense), with a 
looser cohesion at the edges. Let that class 
become frankly convinced that the true aim 



of the State is, as in the magnificent theory 
of Aristotle, to make possible the high 
friendship of those who have raised them- 
selves to a vision of the supreme good, let 
them adopt means to confirm one another in 
that faith, and their influence will spread 
outward through society and leaven the 
whole range of public opinion. 

The instrument by which this control of 
public opinion is effected is primarily the 
imagination; and here we meet with a real 
difficulty. It was the advantage of such a 
union of aristocracy and inherited oligarchy 
as Burke advocated that it gave something 
visible and definite -for the imagination to 
work upon, whereas the democratic aristoc- 
racy of character must always be compara- 
tively vague. But we are not left wholly 
without the means of giving to the imagina- 
tion a certain sureness of range while re- 
maining within the forms of popular gov- 
ernment. The opportunity is in the hands 
of our higher institutions of learning, and 
it is towards recalling these to their duty 
that the first efforts of reform should be 
directed. It is not my intention here to 
enter into the precise nature of this reform, 
for the subject is so large as to demand a 
separate essay. In brief, the need is to re- 
store to their predominance in the curricu- 
lum those studies that train the imagination, 
not, be it said, the imagination in its purely 
esthetic function, though this aspect of it 
also has been sadly neglected, I^ut the imagi- 
nation in its power to grasp in a single firm 
vision, so to speak, the long course of human 
history and of distinguishing therein what 
is essential from what is ephemeral. The 
enormous jDreponderance of studies that 
deal with the immediate questions of eco- 
nomics and government inevitably results in 
isolating the student from the great inherit- 
ance of the past ; the frequent habit of drag- 
ging him through the slums of sociology, in- 
stead of making him at home in the society 
of the noble dead, debauches his mind with 
a flabby, or inflames it with a fanatic, hu- 
manitarianism. He comes out of college, if 
he has learnt anything, a nouveau intellec- 
tuel, bearing the same relation to the men 
of general education as the nouveau riehe to 
the man of inherited manners ; he is narrow 
and unbalanced, a prey to the prevailing 
passions of the hour, with no feeling for the 
majestic claims of that within us which is 
unchanged from the beginning. In place of 
this excessive contemporaneity we shall give 
a larger share of time and honor to the 



THE CEISIS OF DEMOCEACY 



623 



hoarded lessons of antiquity. There is truth 
in the Hobbian maxim that "imagination 
and memory are but one thing" ; by their 
union in education alone shall a man acquire 
the uninvidious character of those broaden- 
ing influences which come to the oligarch 
through prescription — he is molded indeed 
into the true aristocrat. And with the asser- 
tion of what may be called a spiritual pre- 
scription he will find among those over 
whom he is set as leader and guide a meas- 



ure of respect which springs from something 
in the human breast more stable and honor- 
able and more conformable to reason than 
the mere stolidity of unreflecting prejudice. 
For, when everything is said, there could be 
no civilized society were it not that deep in 
our hearts, beneath all the turbulences of 
greed and vanity, abides the instinct of obe- 
dience to what is noble and of good repute. 
It awaits only the clear call from above. 



2. THE FELLOWSHIP OF NATIONS 



The British CdMMONWEALTH of Nations 

[From a speech made by Lieu tenant-General 

The Rt. Hon. J. C. Smuts, commanding 

the British forces in East Africa, at a 

banquet given in his honor by the 

members of the two Houses of 

Parliament, May 15, 1917] 

One of the by-products of this war has 
been that the whole world outside of Europe 
has been cleared of the enemy. Germany 
has been swept from the seas, and from all 
.continents except Central Europe. Whilst 
Germany has been gaining ground in Cen- 
tral Europe, from the rest of the world she 
has been swept clean; and, therefore, you 
are now in a position — almost providentially 
brought to this position — that once more you 
can consider the problem of your future as 
a whole. When peace comes to be made you 
have all these parts in your hand, and you 
can go carefully into the question of what is 
necessary for your future security and your 
future safety as an Empire, and you can 
say, so far as it is possible under war cir- 
cumstances, what you are going to keep and 
what you are going to give away. 

That is a very important precedent. I 
hope when the time comes — I am speaking 
for myself, and expressing nobody's opinion 
but my own — I feel when the time comes 
for peace, we should not bear only Central 
Europe in mind, but the whole British Em- 
pire. As far as we are concerned, we do not 
wish this war to have been fought in vain. 
We have not fought for material gain, or for 
territory ; we have fought for security in the 
future. If we attach any value to this group 
of nations which compose the British Em- 
pire, then we, in settling peace, will have to 
look carefully at our future safety and 
security, and I hope that will be do]»e, and 



that no arrangement will be made which will 
jeopardize the very valuable and lasting re- 
sults which have been attained. 

That is the geographical question. There 
remains the other question — a very difficult 
question — of the future constitutional rela- 
tions and readjustments in the British Em- 
pire. At a luncheon recently given by the 
Empire Parliamentary Association I said, 
rather cryptically, that I did not think this 
was a matter in which we should follow 
precedents, and I hope you will bear with 
me if I say a few words on that theme, and 
develop more fully what I meant. I think 
we are inclined to make mistakes in thinking 
about this group of nations to which we be- 
long, because too often we think of it merely 
as one state. The British Empire is much 
more than a state. I think the very expres- 
sion "Empire" is misleading, because it 
makes people think as if we were one single 
entity, one unity, to which that term "Em- 
pire" can be applied. We are not an Empire. 
Germany is an Empire, so was Rome, and so 
is India; but we are a system of nations, 
a community of states and of nations far 
greater than any empire which has ever 
existed; and by using this ancient term we 
really obscure the real fact that we are 
larger and that our whole position is difl'er- 
ent, and that we are not one nation, or state, 
or empire, but are a whole world by our- 
selves, consisting of many nations and states, 
and all sorts of communities under one flag. 
We are a system of states, not only a static 
system, a stationary system, but a dynamic 
system, growing, evolving all the time 
towards new destinies. 

Here you have a kingdom with a number 
of Crown colonies; besides, you have large 
protectorates like Egypt, which is an empire 
in itself— which Avas one of the greatest 



624 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



empires in the world. Beside that, you 
have great dependencies like India — an em- 
pire in itself, one of the oldest civilizations 
in the world, and we are busy there trying 
to see how East and West can work to- 
gether, how the forces that have kept the 
East going can be worked in conjunction 
with the ideas which we have evolved in 
Western civilization for enormous problems 
within that state. But beyond that we come 
to the so-called Dominions, a number of na- 
tions and states almost sovereign, almost 
independent, who govern themselves, who 
have been evolved on the princiiDles of your 
constitutional system, now almost independ- 
ent states, and who all belong to this group, 
to this community of nations, which I pre- 
fer to call the British Commonwealth of 
Nations. Now, you see that no political 
ideas which we have evolved in the past, no 
nomenclature, will apply to this world which 
is comprised in the British Empire ; any ex- 
pression, any name, which we have found so 
far for this group has been insufficient, and 
I think the man who would discover the real, 
appropriate name for this vast system of 
entities would be doing a great service not 
only to this country but to constitutional 
theory. 

The question is. How are you going to 
provide for the future government of this 
group of nations'? It is an entirely new 
problem. If you want to see how great it 
is you must take the United States in com- 
parison. There you find what is essential — 
one nation, not perhaps in the fullest sense, ; 
but more and more growing into one; one 
big state, consisting of subordinate parts; 
but whatever the nomenclature of the United 
States Constitution, you have one national 
state over one big, contiguous area. That is 
the problem presented by the United States, 
and for which they discovered this federal 
solution, which means subordinate govern- 
ments for the subordinate parts, but one na- 
tional Federal Parliament for the whole. 

Compare with that state of facts this 
enormous system comprised in the British 
Empire of Nations all over the world, some 
independent, living under diverse condi- 
tions, and all growing towards greater na- 
tions than they are at present. You can see 
at once that the solution which has been 
found practicable in the case of the United 
States probably never will work under our 
system. That is what I feel in all the em- 
pires of the past, and even in the United 
States — the effort has been towards forming 



one nation. AH the empires that we have 
known in the past and that exist today are 
founded on the idea of assimilation, of 
trying to force difl'erent human material 
through one mold so as to form one n:.tion. 
Your whole idea and basis is entirely differ- 
ent. You do not want to standardize the 
nations of the British Empire. You want 
to develop them into greater nationhood. 
These younger communities, the offspring 
of the Mother Country, or territories like 
that of my own people, which have been 
annexed after various vicissitudes of war — 
all these you want not to mold on any com- 
mon pattern, but you want them to develop 
according to the principles of self-govern- 
ment and freedom and liberty. Therefore 
your whole basic idea is different from any- 
thing that has ever existed before, either in 
the empires of the past, or even in the 
United States. 

I think that this is the fundamental fact 
which we have to bear in mind — that the 
British Empire, or this British Common- 
wealth of nations, does not stand for unity, 
standardization, or assimilation, or dena- 
tionalization; but it stands for a fuller, 
richer, and more various life among all the 
nations that compose it. An& even nations 
who have fought against you, like my own, 
must feel that they and their interests, their 
language, their religions, and all their cul- 
tural interests are as safe and as secure 
under the British flag as those of the chil- 
dren of your household and your own 
blood. It is only in proportion as that is 
realized that you will fulfil the true mission 
which you have undertaken. Therefore it 
seems, speaking my own individual opinion, 
that there is only one solution, that is the 
solution supplied by our past traditions of 
freedom, self-government, and the fullest de- 
velopment. We are not going to force com- 
mon governments, federal or otherwise, but 
we are going to extend liberty, freedom, and 
nationhood more and more in every part of 
the Empire. 

[General Smuts now speaks of the impor- 
tance of the hereditary kingship as the sym- 
bol of unity in the Empire, and of the need 
of a further development of common insti- 
tutions, such as an Imperial Cabinet, called 
together from all parts of the Empire at 
least once a year to determine a common 
policy. He then continues.] 

I am sure that the after-effects of such a 
change as this, although it looks a simple 
change, are going to be very important, not 



THE CEISIS OF DEMOCEACY 



625 



only for this community of nations, but for 
the world as a whole. Far too much stress 
is laid upon instruments of government. 
People are inclined to forget that the world 
is getting more democratic, and that forces 
which find expression in public opinion are 
going to be far more powerful in the future 
than they have been in the past. You will 
find that you have built up a spirit of com- 
radeship and a common feeling of patriot- 
ism, and that the instrument of government 
will not be the thing that matters so much 
as the spirit that actuates the whole system 
of all its parts. This seems to me to be your 
mission. You talk about an Imperial mis- 
sion. It seems to me this British Empire 
has only one mission, and that is a mission 
for greater liberty and freedom and self- 
development. Yours is the only system that 
has ever worked in history where a large 
number of nations have been living in unity. 
Talk about the League of Nations — you are 
the only league of nations that has ever 
existed; and if the line that I am sketching 
here is correct you are going to be an even 
greater league of nations in the future ; and 
if you are true to your traditions of self- 
government and freedom, and to this vision 
of your future and your mission, who knows 
that you may not exercise far greater and 
more beneficent influence on the history of 
mankind than you have ever done before. 

In the welter of confusion which is prob- 
ably going to follow the war in Europe you 
will stand as the one system where liberty to 
work successfully has kejDt together divers 
communities. You may be sure that the 
world such as is surrounding you in the 
times that are coming will be very likely to 
follow your example. You may become the 
real nucleus for the world-government for 
the future. There is no doubt that is the 
way things will go in the future. You have 
made a successful start ; and if you keep on 
the right track your Empire will be a solu- 
tion of the whole problem. 

America and England 

arthur j. balfour 

[An address given at a dinner of the Amer- 
ican Society, London, July 4, 1917] 

On this anniversary in every part of the 
world American citizens meet together and 
renew, as it were, their vows of devotion to 
the gTeat ideals which have animated them. 
All the world admires, all the world sym- 



pathizes with the vast work of the great 
American Republic. All the world looks 
back upon the one hundred forty-one years 
which have elapsed since the Declaration of 
Independence and sees in that one hundred 
forty-one years an expansion in the way of 
population, in the way of wealth and power, 
material and spiritual, which is unexampled 
in that period, and, as far as I know, in the 
history of the world. 

We of the British race, who do not fall 
short of the rest of the world in our admira- 
tion of this mighty work, look at it in some 
respects in a different way, and must look 
at it in a different way, from that of other 
people. From one point of view we have 
surely a right to look at it with a siDceial 
satisfaction, a satisfaction born of the fact 
that, after all, the thirteen colonies were 
British colonies; that the thirteen colonies, 
in spite of small controversies, grew up, 
broadly speaking, under the protection of 
England ; that it was our wars, the English 
wars with Spain in the sixteenth century, 
with Holland in the seventeenth century, 
and with France in the eighteenth century, 
which gave that security from external Eu- 
ropean attack which enabled those thirteen 
colonies to develop into the nucleus of the 
great community of which they were the 
origin. 

We British may also surely, without un- 
due vanity, pride ourselves on the fact that 
the men who founded the great American 
Republic, the men whose genius contrived its 
constitution, their forefathers who, strug- 
gling in the wilderness, gradually developed 
the basis of all that has happened since, 
were men sjDeaking the English language, 
obeying and believing in English laws, and 
nourished upon English literature; and al- 
though we may say that the originality and 
power and endurance were theirs, they were 
men of our own race, born of the same 
stock, and to that extent at least we may 
feel that we have some small and not insig- 
nificant part in the great development which 
the world owes to their genius, courage, and 
love of liberty. 

In that sense we may well look with pecu- 
liar pride and satisfaction upon this great 
anniversary. There is, of course, another 
side to the question. The Fourth of July is 
the anniversary of the separation, the final 
political separation — not, thank God, the 
final separation in sentiment, in emotion, or 
in ideal — but the final political separation 
between the thirteen colonies and the Mother 



626 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



Countrj'.. We of the Mother Country cannot 
look back on that event as representing one 
of our successes. No doubt there was some- 
thing to be said, though perhaps it is not 
often said, for those on this side of the At- 
lantic who fought for unity, who desired to 
preserve the unity of the Empire. Unity is 
the cause for which the American people 
have sacrificed rivers of blood and infinite 
treasure. 

I am not going into ancient history, but 
the mistake we made — an almost inevitable 
mistake at that particular period of the de- 
velopment of the history of the world — was 
in supposing that unity was possible so long 
as one part of the Empire which you tried 
to unite, speaking the same language, hav- 
ing the same traditions and laws, having the 
same love of liberty and the same ideals, 
would consent to remain a part of the Em- 
pire except on absolutely equal terms. That 
was a profound mistake, a mistake which 
produced a great schism and produced all 
the collateral, though I am glad to think 
subordinate, evils which followed on that 
great schism. 

All I can say in excuse for my fore- 
fathers is that, utterly defective as the colo- 
nial policy of Great Britain in the middle 
of the eighteenth century undoubtedly was, 
it was far better than the colonial policy of 
any other country. Imperfectly as we con- 
ceived the kind of relations that might, or 
could, bind the colonies to their Mother 
Country, thoroughly as we misconceived 
them, we misconceived them less than most 
of our neighbors. 

I went on Monday last to the ceremonial 
at Westminster Abbey in which the fiftieth 
anniversary of the Constitution of Canada 
was .celebrated. There is a great difference 
between fifty years and one hundred forty- 
one years. It took us a long time to learn 
the lesson that if you want to make an 
empire of different widely separated com- 
munities of the British race you must do it 
on terms of absolute equality. We have 
learnt the lesson and in our own way we are 
now carrying out a task as great, as mo- 
mentous as — even more difficult than — fell 
to the great and illustrious framers of the 
Americaj-i Constitution. We are endeavor- 
ing to carry out by slow degrees an Impe- 
rial Constitution which shall combine this 
absolute equality of different communities 
with the machinery for the perpetual attain- 
ment of common Imperial ends. 

But that great experime:.t was begun in 



its fulness only fifty years ago, within my 
lifetime. It will take the lifetime of many 
generations of statesmen all over the world 
in this great and scattered Empire to bring 
it to a full and successful fruition. It is 
impossible not to speculate as to how many 
ills would have been spared us if in 1776 
those who preceded us could have foreseen 
the future and understood wherein the true 
path of political wisdom lay. Many people 
have plunged in endless speculations as to 
what would have happened if there had been 
no violent division between the two great 
sections of our people. I do not follow 
them in their speculations. No man can do 
so. No man can say, what would have hap- 
pened if a country which has now one hun- 
dred millions of population, with infinite 
resources and admirable organization, had 
never been formally separated from these 
small islands. But this at all events would 
have happened : the separation, if and when 
it had occurred, would have been a friendly 
separation. 

There would never have been a memory 
of the smallest kind dividing the feelings of 
those, every one of whose emotions moved 
in the same key, to be directed towards the 
same end. That would have been a great 
gain. It is a loss to us in this country. I 
almost venture to say it might have been in 
some respects a loss to those of you, the 
great mass of my audience, who own a dif- 
ferent allegiance. It would have been an 
infinite gain if there had been no memory in 
either of the two nations which pointed to 
sharp divisions, to battles lost and won, with 
all the evils of war, with all the evils of de- 
feat, with all the evils, almost as great, of 
victory, if any sting or soreness remained 
behind. 

If I rightly read the signs of the times, a 
truer perspective and a more charitable per- 
spective is now recognized and felt by all 
the heirs of these sad and ancient glories. 
Heaven knows I do not grudge the glories 
of Washington and his brother soldiers. I 
do not shed tears over the British defeat 
which ended in the triumphant establish- 
ment of the American Republic. I do not 
express any regrets on that subject. My 
only regrets are that the memories of it 
should carry within them the smallest trace 
of bitterness on your side, but it should be 
a triumph seen in its true perspective, and 
by this true jDcrspective seen in such a way 
that it does not interfere with the continuity 
of history in the development of free insti- 



THE CEISIS OF DEMOCEACY 



627 



tutions, with the consciousness of common 
kinship and common ideals, and the consid- 
erations which ought to bind us together, 
and which have bound us together, and 
which day by day and year by year, genera- 
tion by generation, and century by century 
are going to bind us still closer together in 
the future. 

Therefore I rejoice to find myself joining 
with my American friends in celebrating 
this great anniversary. Hitherto, from the 
necessities of history, battles that have been 
waged on American soil have been battles 
waged between peoples of the same speech 
and of the same traditions. In the future 
the ideas which, even in the moment of 
struggle, were ahvays fundamentally and 
essentially the same, will find a sphere of 
action outside even the ample limits of the 
United States, and bind us together in a 
world task. This is the great thought. We 
are not brought together in this colossal 
struggle; we are not working together at 
this identical moment — this great and un- 
surpassed moment in the history of the 
world — aiming at narrow and selfish objects, 
or bound together partly by antiquated tra- 
ditions. We are working together in all the 
freedom of great hopes and with great ideals. 
These hopes and those ideals we have not 
learned from each other. We have them in 
common from a common history and from 
a common ancestry. We have not learned 
freedom from you or you from us. We both 
spring from the same root. We both culti- 
vate the same great aims. We both have the 
same hopes as regards the future of West- 
ern civilization, and now we find ourselves 
united in this great struggle againjt a power 
which if it be allowed to prevail is going to 
destroy the very roots of that Western civili- 
zation from which we draw all our strength. 
We are bound together in that. 

Are we not bound together forever ? Will 
not our descendants, when they come to look 
back upon this unique episode in the history 
of the world, say that among the incalculable 
circumstances which it produces, the most 
beneficent and the most permanent is, per- 
haps, that we are brought together and 
united for one common purpose in one com- 
mon understanding — the two great branches 
of the English-speaking race? That was 
the theme on which the ambassador dwelt. 
That is the theme which I have endeavored 
to develop. It is a theme which absorbs my 
thoughts day and night. It is a theme which 
moves me more, I think, than anything con- 



nected with public affairs in all my long 
experience. It is a theme which I hope you 
will dwell upon ; a theme which I hope and 
trust you will do your best to spread abroad 
in all parts of the world, so that from this 
date onward, for all time, we who speak the 
common lang-uage and have these common 
ideals, may feel that we are working not 
merely for ourselves individually, nor even 
for our joint interests, but that we are work- 
ing together for the best interests of the 
whole of mankind and for the civiHzation 
not only of the Old World but of the New. 

America in the World 

john dewey 

[From an address delivered at Smith College 
on Washington's Birthday, 1918] 

■There seems to be a little irony in the 
fact that upon Washington's birthday the 
topic most apt for discussion is connected 
with the participation of America in a 
world war. Instead of a little strip of ter- 
ritory sparsely populated, able to maintain 
its own with the great nations of the world 
chiefly because of the advantage of remote- 
ness, we are now a continental state, able to 
confer with the nations of the world on 
equal terms. While once there was enough 
to do in conquering a wilderness, we have 
now come to the end of the pioneer period, 
and have a margin of energy to draw upon. 

The change has, of course, been brought 
about by that same development of indus- 
try and commerce which has annihilated dis- 
tance, drawn all peoples into closer relations, 
and made the affairs and interests of one 
nation the concern of all, for weal or for 
woe. The fact that the interdependence 
which the new industry and the new meth- 
ods of transportation and intercommunica- 
tion have brought about should first reveal 
itself in strains and alignments for conflict 
does not alter the essential fact that the 
world for the first time now finds itself a 
round world, politically and economically as 
well as astronomically. That nations from 
every continent on the globe are engaged in 
the war is the outer sign of the new world 
struggling to be delivered. 

It is a commonplace that whatever else the 
war means, it signifies for our own country 
the end of its period of isolation. Whether 
for better or for worse, America is no longer 
a people unto itself. Amei'iea is now in the 
world. Unless this change of position is to 



628 



THE GEEAT TKADITION 



mean that we are to be affected by the jeal- 
ousies, the intrigues, and hostilities which 
have marked other nations longer in the 
world, we must see to it that those other 
nations accept and are influenced by the 
American idea rather than ourselves by the 
European idea. Of late we have been 
afflicted with national bashfulness, with a 
shy self -consciousness as to noting even that 
there is an American idea, lest we be guilty 
of spread-eagleism. We have assumed a 
self-depreciatory, almost apologetic, attitude 
towards the rest of the world. But unless 
our contribution to the present world strug- 
gle is to be confined to military and economic 
force, it must be that we have an idea to 
contribute, an idea to be taken into account 
in the world reconstruction after the war. 
What are the important aspects of this 
idea? 

Politically, federation; e pluribus unum, 
where the unity does not destroy the many, 
but maintains each constituent factor in 
full vigor. It is not accident that the con- 
ceptions of a world federation, a concert of 
nations, a supreme tribunal, a league of na- 
tions to enforce peace, are peculiarly Amer- 
ican contributions. They are conceptions 
which spring directly out of our own expe- 
rience, which we have already worked out 
and tested on a smaller scale in our own 
political life. Leaders of other nations may 
regard them as iridescent dreams ; we know 
better, for we have actually tried them. 

One of the greatest problems which is 
troubling the old world is that of the rights 
of nationalities which are included within 
larger political units — the Poles, the Irish, 
the Bohemians, the Jugo-Slavs, the Jews. 
Here, too, the American contribution is rad- 
ical. We have solved the problem by a com- 
plete separation of nationality from citizen- 
ship. Not only have we separated the church 
from the state, but Ave have separated lan- 
guage, cultural traditions, all that is called 
race, from the state — that is, from problems 
of political organization and power. To us 
language, literature, creed, group ways, na- 
tional culture, are social rather than polit- 
ical, human rather than national, interests. 
Let this idea fly abroad ; it bears healing in 
its wings. 

Federation, and release of cultural in- 
terests from political dictation and control, 
are the two great positive achievements of 
America. From them spring the other qual- 
ities which give distinction and inspiration 
to the American idea. We are truly inter- 



racial and international in our own internal 
constitution. The very peoples and races 
who are taught in the old world that they 
have an instinctive and ineradicable antipa- 
thy to one another live here side by side, in 
comity, often in hearty amity. We have be- 
come a peace-loving nation both because 
there are no strong Powers close to our bor- 
ders and because the diversified elements of 
our people have meant hope, opportunity, 
release of virile powers from subjection to 
dread, for use in companionship and un- 
constrained rivalries. Our uncoerced life 
has been at liberty to direct itself into chan- 
nels of toleration, a general sjDirit of live 
and let live. Since our minds have not been 
constantly impressed withi the idea that the 
growth of another power means the decay of 
our own, we have been emancipated to enjoy 
shai'ing in the struggles which exist wher- 
ever there is life, and to take its incidental 
defeats in good humor. 

In working out to realization the ideas of 
federation and of the liberation of human 
interests from political domination, we have 
been, as it were, a laboratory set aside from 
the rest of the world, in which to make, for 
its benefit, a great social experiment.' The 
war, the removal of the curtain of isolation, 
means that this period of experimentation 
is over. We are now called to declare to all 
the world the nature and fruits of this ex- 
periment, to declare it not by words or 
books, but by exhibiting the two primary 
conditions under which the world may 
achieve the happiness of a peace which is 
not the mere abseiace of war, but which is 
fruit-bearing concord. That we should have 
lost something of our spirit of boasting 
about our material greatness is a fine thing. 
But we need to recover something of the 
militant faith of our forefathers that Amer- 
ica is a great idea, and add to it an ardent 
faith in our capacity to lead the world to 
see what this idea means as a model for its 
own future well-being. 

International Justice 

woodrow wilson 

[From an address delivered before Con- 
gress, January 8, 1918] 

. . . We entered this war because viola- 
tions of right had occurred which touched us 
to the quick and made the life of our own 
people impossible unless they were corrected 
and the world secured once for all against 



THE CEISIS OF DEMOCEACY 



629 



their recurrence. What we demand in this 
war, therefore; is nothing peculiar to our- 
selves. 

It is that the world be made fit and safe 
to live in ; and particularly that it be made 
safe for every peace-loving nation which, 
like our own, wishes to live its own life, 
determine its own institutions, be assured of 
justice and fair dealing by the other peoples 
of the world as against force and selfish 
aggression. 

All the peoples of the world are in effect 
partners in this interest, and for our own 
pai't we see very clearly that unless justice 
be done to others it will not be done to us. 

The program of the world's peace, there- 
fore, is our program, and that program, the 
only possible program, as we see it, is this : 

I. Open covenants of peace, openly ar- 
rived at, after which there shall be no pri- 
vate international understandings of any 
kind, but diplomacy shall proceed always 
frankly and in the public view. 

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon 
the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in 
peace and in war, except as the seas may be 
closed in whole or in part by international 
action for the enforcement of international 
covenants. 

III. The removal, so far as possible, of 
all economic barriers and the establishment 
of an equality of trade conditions among all 
the nations consenting to the jDeace and asso- 
ciating themselves for its maintenance. 

IV. Adequate guaranties given and taken 
that national armaments will be reduced to 
the lowest points consistent with domestic 
safety. 

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely 
impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, 
based upon a strict observance of the prin- 
ciple that in determining all such questions 
of sovereignty the interest of the popula- 
tions concerned must have equal weight with 
the equitable claims of the government 
whose title is to be determined. 

VI. The evacuation of all Russian terri- 
tory and such a settlement of all questions 
affecting Russia as will secure the best and 
freest cooperation of the other nations of 
the world in obtaining for her an unham- 
pered and unembarrassed opportunity for 
the independent determination of her own 
political development and national policy, 
and assure her of a sincere welcome into the 
society of free nations under institutions of 
her own choosing; and, more than a wel- 
come, assistance also of every kind that she 



may need and may herself desire. The treat- 
ment accorded Russia by her sister nations 
in the months to come will be the acid test 
of their good will, of their comprehension of 
her needs as distinguished from their own 
interests, and of their intelligent and un- 
selfish sympathy. 

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, 
must be evacuated and restored without any 
attempt to limit the sovereignty which she 
enjoys in common with all other free na- 
tions. No other single act will serve as this 
will serve to restore confidence among the 
nations in the laws which they have them- 
selves set and determined for the govern- 
ment of their relations with one another. 
Without this healing act the whole structure 
and validity of international law is forever 
impaired. 

VIII. All French territory should be 
freed and the invaded portions restored 
and the wrong done to France by Prussia 
in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, 
which has unsettled the peace of the world 
for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in 
order that peace may once more be made 
secure in the interest of all. 

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of 
Italy should be effected along clearly recog- 
nizable lines of nationality. 

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, 
whose place among the nations we wish to 
see safegaiarded and assured, should be ac- 
corded the freest opportunity of autono- 
mous development. 

XI. Roumania, Serbia, and Montenegro 
should be evacuated; occupied territories 
restored; Serbia accorded free and secure 
access to the sea; and the relations of the 
several Balkan states to one another deter- 
mined by friendly counsel along historically 
established lines of allegiance and nation- 
ality; and international guaranties of the 
political and economic independence and 
territorial integrity of the several Balkan 
states should be entered into. 

XII. The Turkish portions of the present 
Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure 
sovereignty, but the other nationalities which 
are now under Turkish rule should be as- 
sured an undoubted security of life and an 
absolutely unmolested opportunity of auton- 
omous development, and the Dardanelles 
should be permanently opened as a free 
passage to the ships and commerce of all 
nations under international guaranties. 

XIII. An independent Polish state should 
be erected which should include the territo- 



630 



THE GEEAT TEADITION 



ries inhabited by indisputably Polish popu- 
lations, -which should be assured a free and 
secure access to the sea, and whose political 
and economic independence and territorial 
integrity should be guaranteed by inter- 
national covenant. 

XIV. A general association of nations 
must be formed under specific covenants for 
the purpose of affording mutual guaranties 
of political independence and territorial in- 
tegrity to great and small states alike. 

In regard to these essential rectifications 
of wrong and assertions of right we feel 
ourselves to be intimate partners of all the 
governments and peoples associated together 
against the imperialists. We can not be sep- 
arated in interest or divided in purpose. We 
stand together until the end. 

For such arrangements and covenants we 
are willing to fight and to continue to fight 
until they are achieved ; but only because we 
wish the right to prevail and desire a just 
and stable peace such as can be secured only 
by removing the chief provocations to war, 
which this program does remove. 

We have no jealousy of German greatness 
and there is nothing in this progTam that 
impairs it. We grudge her no achievement 
or distinction of learning or of pacific enter- 
prise such as have made her record very 
bright and very enviable. We do not wish 
to injure her or to block in any way her 
legitimate influence or power. We do not 
wish to fight her either with arms or with 
hostile arrangements of trade, if she is will- 
ing to associate herself with us and the other 
peace-loving nations of the world in cove- 
nants of justice and law and fair dealing. 
We wish her only to accept a place of equal- 
ity among the peoples of the world — the 
new world in which we now live — instead of 
a place of mastery. 

Neither do we presume to suggest to her 
any alteration or modification of her insti- 
tutions. But it is necessary, we must frank- 
ly say, and necessary as a preliminary to 
any intelligent dealings with her on our 
part, that we should know whom her spokes- 
men speak for when they speak to us, 
whether for the reichstag majority or for 
the military party and the men whose creed 
is imperial domination. 

We have spoken now, surely, in terms too 
concrete to admit of any further doubt or 
question. 

An evident principle runs through the 
whole program I have outlined. It is the 
principle of justice to all peoples and na- 



tionalities, and their right to live on equal 
terms of liberty and safety with one an- 
other, whether they be strong or weak. Un- 
less this principle be made its foundation, 
no part of the structure of international 
justice can stand. The people of the United 
States could act upon no other principle, 
and to the vindication of this principle they 
are ready to devote their lives, their honor, 
and everything that they possess. The 
moral climax of this, the culminating and 
final war for human liberty, has come, and 
they are ready to put their strength, their 
own highest purpose, their own integrity 
and devotion to the test. 



The Associated Peoples of the World ^ 

woodrow wilson 

[An address delivered at the Tomb of 
Washington, July 4, 1918] 

Gentlemen of the Diplomatic Corps 
AND My Fellow Citizens : I am happy to 
draw apart with you to this quiet place of 
old counsel in order to speak a little of the 
meaning of this day of our nation's inde- 
pendence. The place seems very still and 
remote. It is as serene and untouched by the 
hurry of the world as it was in those great 
days long ago when General Washington 
was here and held leisurely conference with 
the men who were. to be associated with him 
in the creation of a nation. From these 
gentle slopes they looked out upon the world 
and saw it whole, saw it with the light of the 
future upon it, saw it with modern eyes that 
turned away from a past which men of lib- 
erated spirits could no longer endure. It is 
for that reason that we cannot feel, even 
here, in the immediate presence of this sa- 
cred tomb, that this is a place of death. It 
was a place of achievement. A great prom- 
ise that was meant for all mankind was here 
given plan and reality. The associations by 
which we are here surrounded are the in- 
spiriting associations of that noble death 
which is only a glorious consummation. 
From this green hillside we also ought to be 
able to see with comprehending eyes the 
world that lies about us, and should conceive 
anew the purposes that must set men free. 

1 On July 4, 191^, foreign born citizens of the 
United States belonging to thirty-three nationali- 
ties journeyed to Mount Vernon to place wreaths 
of palms on the tomb of Washington and to listen 
to an address by President Wilson. The keynote 
to this address is its promise that America's 
declaration of Independence is to be extended to, 
the associated peoples of the world. 



THE CKISIS OF DEMOCEACY 



631 



It is significant — significant of their own 
character and purpose and of the influence 
they were setting afoot — that Washington 
and his associates, like the barons at Runny- 
mede, spoke and acted, not for a class, but 
for a people. It has been left for us to see 
to it that it shall be understood that they 
spoke and acted, not for a single people 
only, but for all mankind. They were think- 
ing, not for themselves and of the material 
interests which centered in the little groups 
of land holders and merchants and men of 
affairs with whom they were accustomed to 
act in Virginia and the colonies to the north 
and south of her, but of a people which 
wished to be done with classes and special 
interests and the authority of men whom 
they had not themselves chosen to rule over 
them. They entertained no private purpose, 
desired no peculiar privilege. They were 
conscientiously planning that men of every 
class should be free, and America a place to 
which men out of every nation might resort 
who wished to share with them the rights 
and privileges of free men. And we take 
our cue from them — do we not ? 

We intend what they intended. We here 
in Amei'ica believe our participation in this 
present war to be only the fruitage of what 
they planted. Our case differs from theirs 
only in this, that it is our inestimable privi- 
lege to concert with men out of every nation 
what shall make not only the liberties of 
America secure but the liberties of every 
other people as well. We are happy in the 
thought that we are permitted to do what 
they would have done had they been in our 
place. There must now be settled once for 
all what was settled for America in the great 
age upon whose inspiration we draw today. 

This is surely a fitting place from which 
calmly to look out upon our task, that we 
may fortify our spirits for its accomplish- 
ment. And this is the appropriate place 
from which to avow, alike to friends who 
look on and to the friends with whom we 
have the happiness to be associated in ac- 
tion, the faith and purpose with which we 
act. 

This, then, is our conception of the great 
struggle in which we are engaged. The plot 
is written plain upon many places and in 
every part of the supreme tragedy. On the 
one hand stand the peoples of the world — 
not only the peoples actually engaged, but 
many others also who suffer under mastery, 
but cannot act ; peoples of many races and 
in every part of the world — the peojjle of 



stricken Russia still, among the rest, though 
they are for the moment unorganized and 
helpless. Opposed to them, masters of 
many armies, stand an isolated, friendless 
group of governments who speak no com- 
mon purpose, but only selfish ambitions of 
their own by which none can profit but 
themselves, and whose peoples are fuel in 
their hands; governments which fear their 
people and yet are for the time their sover- 
eign lords, making every choice for them 
and disposing of the lives and fortunes of 
every people who fall under their power — 
governments of an age that is altogether 
alien and hostile to our own. The past and 
the present are in deadly grapple, and the 
peoples of the world are being done to death 
between them. 

There can be but one issue. The settle- 
ment must be final. There can be no com- 
promise. No halfway decision would be 
tolerable. No halfway decision is conceiv- 
able. These are the ends for which the asso- 
ciated peoples of the world are fighting, and 
which must be conceded them before there 
can be peace: 

I. The destruction of every arbitrary 
power anywhere that can separately, secret- 
ly, and of its single choice disturb the peace 
of the world, or, if it cannot be presently 
destroyed, at the least its reduction to vir- 
tual impotence. 

II. The settlement of every question, 
whether of territory, of sovereignty, of eco- 
nomic relationship, upon the basis of the 
free acceptance of that settlement by the 
people immediately concerned and not upon 
the basis of the material interest or advan- 
tage of any other nation or people which 
may desire a different settlement for the 
sake of its own exterior influence or mastery. 

III. The consent of all nations to be 
governed in their conduct towards each 
other by the same principles of honor and 
of respect for the common law of civilized 
society that govern the individual citizens 
of all modern states in their relations with 
one another, to the end that all promises and 
covenants may be sacredly observed, no pri- 
vate plots or conspiracies hatched, no selfish 
injuries wrought with impunity, and a mu- 
tual trust established upon the handsome 
foundation of mutual respect for right. 

IV. The establishment of an organiza- 
tion of peace which shall make it certain 
that the combined power of free nations 
will check every invasion of right and serve 



632 



THE GREAT TRADITION 



to make peace and justice the more secure 
by affording a definite tribunal of opinion 
to which all must submit and by which every 
international readjustment that cannot be 
amicably agreed upon by the people directly 
concerned shall be sanctioned. 

These great ends cannot be achieved by 
debating and seeking to reconcile and ac- 
commodate what statesmen may wish, with 
their projects for balances of power and of 
national ojDportunity. They can be realized 
only by the determination of what the think- 
ing peoples of the world desire, with their 
longing hope for justice and for social free- 
dom and opportunity. 

I can fancy that the air of this place car- 
ries the accents of such principles with a 



peculiar kindness. Here were started forces 
which the great nation against which they 
were primarily directed at first regarded as 
a revolt against its rightful authority, but 
which it has long since seen to Lave been a 
step in the liberation of its own people as 
well as of the people of the United States ; 
and I stand here now to speak — speak 
proudly and with confident hope — of the 
spread of this revolt, this liberation, to the 
great stages of the world itself. The blinded 
rulers of Prussia have roused forces they 
knew little of — forces which, once roused, 
can never be crushed to earth again; for 
they have at their heart an inspiration and 
a purpose which are deathless and of the 
very stuff of triumph. 



COMMENTARY ON AUTHORS AND WORKS 

Addison, Joseph (1672-1719) 
The Spectator (1711-1714) 

The Spectator as an Instrument of Reform 198-199 

See footnote. The Tatler and The Spectator, written in collaboration by Addison, 
Steele, and others, are in one aspect part of the effort to restore morality to a place of 
esteem In the English mind after the profligacy of the Restoration. The court, 
hitherto leader In the tendency to ridicule virtue and sobriety, now threw Its in- 
fluence on the side of decency. Laws restraining immorality and blasphemy were 
passed and societies organized for the purification of English life. Addison, by 
employing wit and humor in the service of virtue and religion, did perhaps more than 
any other agency for the promotion of the cause. 

The Spectator Club 201-203 

Public Opinion in the Making 203-205 

With the introduction of party government public opinion began to play an in- 
creasingly important part in English political life. The rise of the coffee houses and 
of club life in the sociable reign of Queen Anne afforded a medium for the exchange 
of news and ideas at a time when the newspaper and magazine had not yet attained 
the position of importance they enjoy today. English politics were closely interwoven 
with the ambitious career of Louis XIV (see note on Swift). Hence the flutter of 
discussion at the report of his death. Addison shows, in his best vein of light raillery, 
how men's political opinions are colored by their interests. 

A Busy Life 207-209 

It was a part of the aim of Steele and Addison, particularly of the latter, to 
banish folly and triviality from the minds of men, and to promote virtue and common 
sense by recommending culture and the habit of serious thought. In this essay and 
the next he pours ridicule on the emptiness of intellect of the typical men and women 
of fashion of his time. 

A Lady's Library 209-210 

See preceding note. "Cassandra," "Cleopatra," "Astrsea," "The Grand Cyrus," 
and "Clelia," were English versions of the long-winded and sentimental French 
romances of the day. The "Spelling Book" was probably the most essential volume 
in the collection. 

The British Constitution 216-218 

Addison, In common with the other Whigs of his time, felt that In the Revolution 
of 1688 a practical solution of British politics had been attained, and took great 
satisfaction in contemplating the instrument by which English liberties had been in a 
measurable degree secured. The attitude, like Pope's (see note on An Essay on Man), 
led to a spirit of complaisant acquiescence in the existing order. It is characteristic of 
Addison's scholarship that he finds the analogies of English institutions in the Roman 
constitution. 

A Vision of Human Life 242-244 

The essay contains a famous and beautiful expression of the underlying serious- 
ness and solemnity of Addison's view of life. Allegory is a favorite form with him, 
but nowhere else does he express himself with so much majesty and impressiveness. 
His religion is wholly orthodox. Moral and spiritual exaltation were alien to the 
age, but Addison is deeply and sincerely Christian. 

633 



634 COMMENTAEY ON AUTHOES AND WOEKS 

The Tatler (1709-1711) 

A Political Busybody 205-207 

Addison does not mean to Imply that upholsterers should not bother their heads 
about politics, matters of state being proper to a special class, not to the people. 
This politician's interest in public affairs Is simply a vulgar curiosity. With his lack 
of training and thoughtful Intelligence he had much better stick to his work-bench 
and his family. If he would read The Tatler consistently he might ultimately acquire 
a title to converse on European affairs. 

How to Judge a Play 213-215 

The recipe for criticism given here shows Addison's common sense reaction against 
the mechanical tendencies of the insistence on rules of art, unintelligently applied 
(see note on Pope's Essay on Criticism). 

Alderman, Edwin A. (1861 ) 

The Organization of Democracy (1915) L ... .619-620 

Arnold, Matthew (1822-1888) 

Dover Beach (1867) 53'* 

Arnold does not share with Browning and Tennyson a new and buoyant faith built 
on the ruins of the old. To him faith Is lost forever, leaving a barren and aimless 
world, and the thought carries with it a profound sense of melancholy. 

Morality (1852) 535 

The idea here should be compared with that of Wordsworth's Ode to Duty. The 
struggle and difficulty of man's moral conquest is proof of his higher origin than 
Nature, which accomplishes its tasks without effort. See Quiet Work. 

Oherviann Once More (1867) 

The Storm 304-305 

The "tide of common thought" is the faith which was the vital principle of the 
medieval system in Europe. See Burke's On Chivalry, page 313. 

Quiet Work (1849) 534-535 

Self-Dependence (1852) 535 

Arnold finds a sort of substitute for faith In a stoic calm and self-sufficiency, 
won by the contemplation of nature. 

Sweetness and Light (1869) 495-507 

Arnold opposes to the materialism of the age an ideal very different from the 
purely moral ideal of Carlyle and Ruskin. Indeed Carlyle was, by his insistence 
on character as the one thing needful, in Arnold's own phrase "carrying coals to 
Newcastle." What his countrymen needed was a refinement rather than an intensify- 
ing of the moral faculties and above all an increased illumination of the spirit. The 
English were characteristically Hebraists ; that is they placed all their emphasis on 
conduct and action. They needed the influence of Hellenism, with its insistence 
on the primacy of the reason as a guide of action, in order to become a nation of com- 
plete and well rounded men. Arnold here defines the ideal of culture as a spiritual 
state in which sweetness of moral temper is united with intelligence and reason, and 
shows how inconsistent with this ideal is the worship of the merely material alms in 
which England, particularly under the liberal and democratic regime, has placed its 
faith. Arnold's idea of a human nature perfect on all its sides is essentially Greek 
in origin, and it is to the study of the classics and to that of poetry generally that 
he looks as the means of achieving this great end. He was an uncompromising oppo- 
nent of purely vocational and scientific study and a defender of the "humanities" as 
the heart of the educational system. 

To a Friend (1849) ; . 535 

West London (1867) 474 



COMMENTARY ON AUTHORS AND WORKS 635 

Bacon, Francis (1561-1626) 
Essays (1597, 1612, 1625) 

Counsels of Experience 50-56 

Bacon's Essays were the product of keen observation of men's characters and 
the methods by which they attained success. He called them "certain brief notes, 
set down rather significantly than curiously," that is, for their meaning rather than 
their style. They abound in "aphorisms," formulas like remedies in medicine or gen- 
eralizations in science, applied to experience. They are wise, witty, somewhat lacking 
in idealism, a philosophy of success, valuable for Insight into human nature. They 
record Bacon's own efforts to rise In the world, and supply a body of material for 
education not found in the universities of the time. 

Truth (page 50) : Note the different sense in which the word is used: at first 
a distinction between truth (fact) and fiction, which includes poetry and all imagina- 
tive writing ; next, a definition of truth as the object of all study and research ; and, 
in the last paragraph, truth as honor in relations among men. 

Travel (page 51) : An example of the numerous treatises giving advice on the 
subject. Polonius gives such advice to his son Laertes in Hamlet. Englishmen 
traveled widely in Bacon's time, visiting France and Italy to complete their educa- 
tion, to study foreign governments, to gain knowledge of matters affecting English 
policy in a time when communication was difficult and uncertain, and to seek adven- 
ture. It is the young courtier, the man who proposes to enter public service, whom 
Bacon addresses. See Fulke Greville's L-ife of Sidney for a record of the travels of 
the most loved young Englishman of his time. 

Studies (page 52) : The most famous of the Essays. "Expert men" are men of 
practical experience, lacking college training. "Scholar" has the sense of pedant. 
"Crafty men" are men who follow handicrafts. 

Of Nature in Men (page 53) : A treatise on habit and self-control. 

Of Great Place (page 53) : First published in 1612, when Bacon was on the high 
road to great place, after a long and painful struggle. The first part of the essay 
deals with the limitations of high position ; the second part consists of observations 
on how a man who has won success should conduct himself. 

Of Dispatch (page 55) : Also from the edition of 1612. 

Two Counsels on Government 101-102 

Both as a writer and as a statesman Bacon sought to bring about a better under- 
standing between James I and the Parliament. His policy, if it had been adopted, 
would have prevented the crisis that led to the Commonwealth. Of several Essays 
that deal with political subjects, Of Empire is a treatise on the Prince, particularly 
In regard to matters of state policy. It shows familiarity with the theories of 
Machiavelli, the great Italian writer on how a prince should rule, but Bacon expresses 
sharp disagreement on some points with the Machiavellian policy. The essay on 
Innovations should be compared with the position of Burke (French Revolution). 

Letter to Lord Burghley (1592) 13 

The great Elizabethans thought In terms of conquest : conquest ol other kingdoms, 
conquest of lands previously unknown, conquest of the ideal perfection, conquest of 
universal knowledge. In this famous letter Bacon, five years before his slender volume 
of Essays appeared and thirteen years before his great survey of scholarship {Advance- 
ment of Learning), sets forth his ambition to be the general who with the help of 
others might reduce the state of learning to order. The relation between active and 
contemplative life, the man of affairs and the poet, philosopher, and scholar, was a 
favorite subject in Renaissance thought. An ambitious man sought renown in both 
fields. The careers of Sidney, Raleigh, Bacon, and many others are illustrations. 
Bacon's plan, as detailed in this letter, is to secure a government post that will give 
him a living while allowing time to survey the state, or province (note the military 
sense), of knowledge, purging it of rovers (adventurers) of two sorts: the scholastic 
dlsputers of the universities, who prevent all progress in learning (compare the open- 
ing scene in Marlowe's Doctor Faustus, the comment on logic), and the charlatans 
of necromancy and superstition who misunderstand the province of science, and 
thus prevent the advance in science that Bacon thought offered the greatest promise 
of human happiness. The last part of the letter shows that he thinks he can do 
more as a leader and Insplrer of others than as an investigator. This ideal he held to 
all his life. 



(j36 COMMENTAEY ON AUTHOES AND WOEKS 

The Advancement of Learning (1605) 

The Service of Learning to the State 56-63 

Bacon's great survey of learning in his time, the promise of which had been made 
in his letter to Lord Burghley. The treatise is divided into two books, the first of 
which considers the discredits of learning, due chiefly, Bacon thinks, to the narrow- 
ness of the church authorities who still controlled the universities, to the contempt 
for learning shown by men who had to do. with government, and to the errors and 
imperfections of learned men themselves ; the book closes with a defense of learning, 
not only from the standpoint of the church but from that of the great advantages of 
learning to the state. The second book is devoted to the survey of what has been done 
for the advancement of learning in the fields of history, poetry, and philosophyj with 
a treatise on divine learning (theology). 

Balfour, Arthur J. (1848 ) 

America and England (1917) 625-627 

Bradford, William (1590-1657) 
History of Plymouth Plantation 

The Pilgrims and Their Compact 162-164 

Bright, John (1811-1889) 

Progress of the Nation Under the Liberal Eegime (1877) 440-443 

Bright, with Cobden and others, had an important part In the abolition of the prohib- 
itive tax on grain and in securing the passage of other great reform measures of the 
Liberal Party in the middle of the nineteenth century. He stood for free trade, exten- 
sion of the suffrage, a peaceful foreign policy, and universal education. 

Browning, Egbert (1812-1899) 

Abt Vogler (1855) 530-531 

The poem expresses Browning's faith In the permanence of good and the ultimate 
fulfillment and completion of man's highest aspirations. The musician rises to a state 
of exaltation through the exercise of his own art, which seems to him more like the 
creative act of God than any other form, because it is so immediately and entirely the 
work of his own spirit. His work is imperfect only because it is transitory, but he 
reasons that as it is divine it cannot be wholly lost. And all good is of the same nature. 
Incomplete here but destined to persist and come to completeness in the future. Though 
he is obliged to come back to earth he has enjoyed in his moment of inspiration an 
experience of the divine and eternal life. 

An Epistle (1855) 526-529 

The poem illustrates the conflict of science and faith in an imaginary Arab physician 
of the time of Christ, who has met and talked with Lazarus, arisen from the dead. He 
naturally explains the phenomenon as a simple case of trance, but he is puzzled by the 
wonderful change in point of view which has come over the man and his conviction 
that he who brought him back to life was God himself. He wishes to explain it all as 
mania but in spite of himself he is shaken in his scientific doubt. It might be true, 
and if it were, it would constitute a new and wonderful revelation of the nature of God. 
This thought he dismisses but it keeps coming back, and we feel that he is on the road 
to complete faith. The poem embodies a favorite idea of Browning's, that doubt and 
faith are closely related and that doubt is a condition to vital faith. Compare 
Tennyson's 

There lives more faith in honest doubt. 
Believe me, than in half the creeds. 

Asolando, Epilogue (1890) 534 

Browning's vigorous masculine spirit reproaches those who would pity him In death. 
Throughout his life he has fronted diiBculty and failure and he would be thought of 
as courageously facing the future in whatever state of being. 

Home-Thoughts, from Abroad (1845) 444-445 



COMMENTARY ON AUTHORS AND WORKS 637 

Home-Thoughts, from the Sea (1845) 445 

Browning is on ship-board off the northwest coast of Africa. The places he mentions 
are the scenes of Nelson's victories. 

On the Monument Erected to Mazsini 455-456 

Prospice (1864) 534 

The title means "look forward." The poem was written in the autumn following 
Mrs. Browning's death. 

BabU Ben Ezra (1864) 531-534 

One of the most characteristic expressions of Browning's moral and religious 
philosophy. The speaker, a medieval Jewish thinlier, looks back on life from the 
vantage point of old age and sees the whole divine plan in which love plays an equal 
part with power. Youth shows power only, the struggle of man's soul with doubt and 
the flesh. In the peace of old age the man can estimate his gains in the conflict, and, 
pronouncing judgment not on its accomplishment but on its purpose and aspiration, can 
thus see God's love revealed even in the adverse circumstances which were designed 
for the exercise and strengthening of the soul to its heavenly use. He can therefore 
face death with entire confidence. 

The Italian in England (1845) 453455 

The speaker is one of the Italian patriots who took part in the early unsuccessful 
attempts to throw off the Austrian yoke. The intensity of his devotion to the cause 
of Italy is characteristic of the Italian Idealists of Mazzini's generation, as BrowolDg's 
appreciation is characteristic of the sympathy of the English liberals. 

The Lost Leader (1845) 444 

The speaker laments the desertion, for mercenary reasons, of one who has been a 
champion of the people's cause. Browning admitted that he had Wordsworth in mind, 
thinking of him after the fashion of Shelley and Byron as an apostate, but he denied 
that he intended the portrait as a fair or complete representation of the poet. 

The Patriot (1855) 455 

Why I Am a Liberal (1885) 444 

The question was asked by Cassell and Co. of various English men of letters. This 
was Browning's answer. 

Bryant, William Cullen (1794-1887) 

Mother of a Mighty Bace (1847) 539 

Reflects American sensitiveness to the European hostility which saw In the success 
of the American experiment a menace to absolutism on the continent. Closely allied, 
in Bryant's thought, is the conception of America as ao asylum for the oppressed of 
every land. 

BuNYAN, John (1628-1688) 

The Pilgrim's Progress (1678) 

The Fight with Apollyon 114-115 

Pilgrim's Progress, the greatest of religious allegories and perhaps the most widely 
read of all English books, contains the essence of the Puritan view of life. Man is 
conceived of as having but one possible object in his earthly sojourn, to flee from sin 
and attain salvation. "The journey of Christian from the City of Destruction to the 
Heavenly City is simply a record of the life of such a Puritan as Bunyan himself, seen 
through an imaginative haze of spiritual idealism in which its commonest incidents are 
heightened and glorified." The dangers which he encounters on the way are the temp- 
tations of the fiesh and the hostile might of Satan. His struggle with evil is here 
symbolized as a physical encounter with the fiend, to which Bunyan, by his simple and 
vivid style, gives wonderful reality. 

Vanity Fair 115-117 

Vanity Fair is the world full of wickedness, as Bunyan saw it in Restoration Eng- 
land. The mockery and persecution to which the wayfarers are subjected is a vivid 



638 COMMENTAEY ON AUTHORS AND WORKS 

transcript of Bunyan's own experience of life. He was himself a prisoner for twelve 
years in Bedford jail, on a charge of preaching in unlicensed conventicles, and it was 
there, with the Bible as his sole comfort and literary inspiration, that he composed the 
first part of The Pilgrim's Progress. 

BuEKE, Edmund (1729-1797) ' . 

American Taxation (1774) 

An Imperial Britain. 274-277 

See selection from Morley's Edmund Burke, pp. 305-307. In defending the American 
colonies against arbitrary government Burke is defending the traditional rights and 
privileges of Englishmen. In this selection he lays the broad foundation for the true 
theory of the nature of the British Empire and defines with far-reaching insight the 
kind of benefit that England may legitimately expect to derive from her colonial pos- 
sessions. For the full implications of Burke's principles see Smuts, "The British Com- 
monwealth of Nations." Burke's hatred of abstract theory of right, severed from 
experience, comes out in this passage, also his conception of the true end of government 
— the reconciliation of subordination and order with liberty. During this period of his 
political activity, when the principle of liberty is being assailed, Burke's emphasis is on 
this element in government ; in the time of the French Revolution he inevitably becomes 
a champion of order. His fundamental ideas undergo no change. 

Leiter to the Sheriffs of Bristol (1777) 

On the Affairs of America 283-294 

On Conciliating the Colonies (1775) 277-283 

A thorough-going knowledge of actual conditions is with Burke the first essential in 
dealing with problems of government. His analysis of the causes of the spirit of liberty 
in the Colonies is the result of a patient and sympathetic study. The temperance of 
Burke, his unwillingness to allow his judgment to be influenced by vindictiveness, and 
his hesitation in passing judgment in his own cause is a model for all international 
statesmanship which looks toward peace instead of war. 

Reflections on the French Revolution (1790) 

"A Liberty Connected with Order" 307-319 

In the French Revolution Burke saw a challenge to his profoundest convictions 
regarding the nature of society and the true principles of government. Alarmed at the 
progress which revolutionary ideas were making in England he set himself to oppose 
them with all his eloquence, addressing his discourse to a French friend. Burke's' 
opposition to the theory underlying the Revolution is not the result of prejudice but of 
an enlightened perception of the great opposing principle, which lay at the basis of the 
British constitution. He is little concerned with the abstract principle of the sov- 
ereignty of the people, and has no faith in sudden and radical improvement of the social 
system ; for human society is not a mechanism but an organism. Its institutions are a 
product of slow evolution under the guiding light of experience. The wisdom of any 
one body of men or of any one generation is inadequate to the task of remodelling it.. 
It is founded as much on instinct as on reason and has at its heart a moral ideal which 
is its life. Hence the first duty of statesmen is to preserve the inheritance of the past, 
lest in destroying an institution they impair the very bond which unites men in 
allegiance to the social order and end by losing all the benefits which government confers 
on men. In all this Burke is taking his stand against the purely rationalistic and 
materialistic philosophy which dominated the Eighteenth Century and is asserting the 
claims of mysterious forces in and above men which are not to be explained by the 
scientific law of cause and effect. 

Burns, Robert (1750-1796) 

A Bream (1786) 262-3 

With much fine irony of compliment Burns addresses the king and his nobles as 
something better than an equal.- The virtuous George III is spared his abuse; not so 
his sons, the scandalous Prince of Wales, "Young Tarry Breeks," and the worldly 
Bishop of Osnaburg. The reference in stanza 4 is to the loss of the American 
colonies, leaving less than a third of the former British dominion. In stanza 7 
Burns protests against the proposed reduction of the navy. 



COMMENTARY ON AUTHORS AND WORKS 639 

A Man's a Man for A ' That (1795) 258 

The poem Is the classic expression of the fierce sentiment of equality which accom- 
panied the French Revolution. 

A Vision 265-266 

A Winter Night (1786) 256-257 

The severity of winter moves Burns to a deep pity for the sufferings of animals 
and to an indignant protest against human cruelty and oppression. The sentiment 
expressed in the last lines is the cardinal doctrine in Burns's religion. 

Address to the Deil (1786) 266-268 

Burns finds in the popular superstitions about the Devil a highly picturesque and 
humorous product of the Scottish imagination. The light of a kindred love of mischief 
glints in the poet's eyes as he gleefully recounts his pranks and drolly deprecates his 
evil ways. The touch of pity at the close is characteristic. "Burns cannot hate even 
the Devil with a right orthodoxy." It is needless to say that Burns himself is without 
a touch of real superstition. 

The reference in stanza 9 is to the pact that witches were supposed to make with the 
Evil One. Stanza 14 refers to Masonic initiations in which the Devil was propitiated 
by the offering of a cock or cat. The "Lallan tongue," or dialect English, and the Erse, 
or Gaelic, in stanza 19, are the languages spoken in the southern and. northern parts of 
Scotland, respectively. 

Macpherson 's Farewell 261 

Burns has set new words to the traditional air supposed to have been played -on the 
violin by the daring robber, James Macpherson, hanged in 1700. The lines breathe a 
spirit of dauntless freedom with which Burns was in full sympathy. 

Scots Wha Eae (1794) 265 

An imaginary address of Robert Bruce to his army before the battle of Bannockburn. 
The "proud usurpers" are the English under Edward II. 

The American War (1787) 264-5 

The sympathies of Burns were entirely with the colonists in the Revolutionary War, 
which he, like many Englishmen, regarded as a struggle for British liberties. The 
publication of a poem which rejoices over the defeats of English arms was a daring 
act and Burns hesitated before he gave the poem to the pre^s. 

The Cotter's Saturday Night (1786) 253-256 

Burns paints peasant life not as an observer but as a sharer in its joys and sorrows. 
He appreciates its hardships but emphasizes rather its essential dignity, its simple 
beauty, and its humor. The poem is inspired by the deepest love of Scotland and its 
people, — their customs, character, and household language. 

The Dumfries Volunteers 266 

The Toast (1793) 266 

The Tree of Liberty 263-264 

A Liberty Tree, sixty feet high, with a red cap on it, was erected by the French on 
the site of the Bastile as a symbol of the Revolution. Burns gives a partisan and not 
very poetic account of the struggle for freedom in France, suggesting in stanza 4 that 
the root of the Tree was brought from America and deploring the fact that liberty is 
no longer to be found in England. 

The Twa Dogs (1786) 258-260 

The brotherhood of man is foreshadowed in the brotherhood of dogs. Burns 
contrasts the virtue and simple happiness of the peasant with the feverish and dissolute 
life of the aristocracy. 

To a Mouse (1785) 261 

The poem Illustrates the tender sympathy of Burns, extending itself to all forms of 
humble life. 



540 COMMENTARY ON AUTHORS AND WORKS 

Butler, Samuel (1612-1680) 
Eudibras (1667-1668) 

The Puritan 177-178 

Butler turns the Puritan cause to ridicule in a mock epic. The poem was received 
with great enthusiasm, especially by Charles II, who rewarded Butler with a gratuity 
of £300. 

Byron, George Gordon, Lord (1788-1824) 
CMlde Harold's Pilgrimage (1812-1818) 

Waterloo 366-371 

Childe Harold, whose journey to all the famous historic scenes of the continent 
Byron recounts, is the poet himself, and this memorable description of and meditation 
on the great battle of the age is full of characteristic Byronic sentiment. The dra- 
matic and emotional values of Waterloo are what chiefly appeal to him. 

Solitude 407-409 

Byron loves the passionate aspects of nature because they feed the emotions of his 
soul. He looks to nature as an escape from the limitations of his own personality, 
annexing, as it were, the power of mountains and ocean as a part of his being. With 
his egotistical sense of ownership contrast Wordsworth's attitude of reverence. 

The Onward March of Freedom 409 

The spectacle of the apparent failure of the French Revolution does not lead Byron, 
as it did Wordsworth, to conservatism. He retains a passionate belief in the cause of 
freedom, and continues a champion of rebellion. His admiration of Washington is 
characteristic of all English liberals. 

The Ocean 409-410 

To Byron the ocean is a symbol of power. With it he feels an essential kinship, 
rejoicing in the havoc it plays with the petty works of men. 

Don Juan (1819-1824) 

The Renegade Poets (1819) 410-412 

See footnote. Southey succeeded Pye as Poet Laureate. His acceptance of the 
office was evidence to Byron of his mercenary subservience to the tyrannical government 
headed by Castlereagh. 

The Isles of Greece (1821) 412-413 

The poem is an eloquent expression of the sympathy which Byron and other English 
liberals felt for the cause of Greek independence. This sentiment is the fruit, partly 
of the sense of the greatness of the Greek tradition, partly of the romantic passion for 
liberty. Byron's interest in the Greek cause dates from his visit to Greece in the years 
1810-11. He was later to give to it his fortune and his life. Today he is regarded by 
the Greeks almost as a national hero, and his statue stands in one of the public squares 
in Athens. The faithless king of the Franks alluded to at the end is Louis XVIII, 
who had joined the league of monarchs under Metternich pledged to the suppression of 
popular revolts. 

Prometheus ( 1816) 406 

Prometheus, in the Greek myth, stole fire from heaven for the benefit of man. He 
was punished by Zeus by being transfixed on the top of Mt. Caucasus and made a prey 
to a vulture which tore his vitals. At last he was released when he consented to 
reveal to Zeus the secret of his doom. To Byron and other rebellious and passionate 
romanticists Prometheus was a symbol of the will to resist and defy tyranny and fate. 
They refused to believe that he ever yielded up his secret to escape suffering. The 
treatment of Prometheus by Byron and by Shelley is an important index to their 
difference in point of view. Shelley makes much of his divine vision of the good of 
human kind as the source of his resistance. Byron insists more on his proud defiance, 
on his elemental force as a revelation of the power of the individual soul. Shelley sees 
him as a rebel against the tyrannical power of evil, Byron as a rebel against fate. In 
other words he is a projection of Byron's own personality, with its passionate defiance 
of all forms of restraint. Compare Arnold's lines on the significance of Byron : 



COMMENTAEY ON AUTHOES AND WOEKS 641 

With shivering hearts the strife we saw 
Of passion with eternal law. 
And yet with reverential awe 
We watch'd the fount of fiery life 
Which served for that Titanic strife. 

Sonnet on Chillon 406-407 

The castle of Chillon, situated on Lake Geneva, was made memorable by the impris- 
onment from 1519 to 1536 of the Genevese patriot Bonnivard. The poem is prefixed to 
Byron's Prisoner of Chillon, 1816. 

The Vision of Judgment (1822) 413-415 

See footnote. 

Carlyle, Thomas (1795-1881) 

An Essay on Burns (1828) 

The Sincerity of Burns 268-269 

Past and Present (1843) 

The Inheritance 463-464 

Happiness and Labor 464-465 

Carlyle attacks the materialism of his age by an exhortation to men to place duty 
above happiness. Worship of the fruit of labor, emphasized by the utilitarian philosophy 
of the English economists since Adam Smith, must give way to a sense of the nobility 
labor pursued for ideal ends and without thought of material reward. 

Plugson of Undershot 465-468 

Carlyle's imaginary firm are representatives of unideal commercialism. Its achieve- 
ments because they are purely selfish are no more to be admired than the successes of 
pirates and savages but the great energies of conquest represented by organized industry 
may be turned to the higher object of human welfare. 

Labor 468-470 

Captains of Industry 470-473 

Sartor Eesartus (1833-1834) 

Natural Supernaturalism 516-521 

Under the fiction of expounding the philosophy of a German professor of his own 
Invention Carlyle proclaims his belief in the reality of an all embracing divine spirit of 
which the whole material world is but a manifestation. Natural supernaturalism means 
the supernatural behind the natural and revealed in it. The term "clothes-philosophy" 
refers to Carlyle's symbolism in which phenomena or material appearances are "the 
clothing of the living God." Carlyle is a transcendentalist, deriving his philosophy 
from the German idealists who followed in the wake of Kant. His point in this chapter 
is that the laws of nature are but a second cause ; the real miracle lies behind them and 
is independent of any mere temporary suspension of natural law. Space and time are 
themselves appearances. Man's real existence is not dependent on his bodily relation 
to these illusions but transcends them and is a part of the eternal world of spirit. . 

The French Bevolution (1837) 

Storm and Victory 299-304 

The Death-Birth of a World 304 

Clough, Arthur Hugh (1819-1861) 

Say Not the Struggle Nought Availeth (1849) 453 

The poem was written with reference to the apparent failure of the cause of Italian 
freedom in 1848. 



642 COMMENTAEY ON AUTHOES AND WOEKS 

Where Lies the Land to Which the Ship Would Go 536 

The yearning sense of a loss of direction brought into man's life by doubt Is char- 
acteristic of the poetry of Clough. He clings tenaciously to a vague and distant hope, 
unsupported by any solid and certain convictions. 

CoLEKiDGE, Samuel Taylor (1772-1834) 

Biographia Liter aria (1817) 

Propaganda and Poetry 395-401 

The work from which this selection is taken traces the development of its author's 
political, philosophical, and literary opinions in a manner roughly corresponding to 
Wordsworth's account of the growth of his own mind in The Prelude, When he made 
his memorable Watchman campaign, in 1796, Coleridge was still a liberal, though not a 
Jacobin, in politics and religion. When he wrote the Biographia he had experienced the 
great change of heart recorded in the ode to France. He looks back on the impractical 
enthusiasm of his earlier days with a keen sense of the absurdity of the role he was 
playing as a propagandist. 

Coleridge's subsequent association with Wordsworth, by this time cured of his demo- 
cratic sympathies, at Stowey in 1797, furnished material for the delicious piece of 
comedy given on pages 399-400. The incident, though of course exaggerated, illustrates 
the prevailing spy-fever of those days. In reality the thoughts of the two friends were 
far removed from political mischief, for both had turned their minds to nature and to 
poetry. The idea which underlies their experiment in the Lyrical Ballads is that which 
we have already seen exemplified in Wordsworth's poetry, the union, namely, of external 
nature with a mystical sense of the supernatural life revealed in nature. It was inev- 
itable that Coleridge, with his dreamy metaphysical tendencies, should have chosen to 
work rather with such materials as The Ancient Mariner and Christabel, leaving to 
Wordsworth the task of revealing the higher significance of incidents from common life. 
See selection from Preface to the Lyrical Ballads and note. 

Christabel (1797; published 1816) .401-404 

The poem illustrates Coleridge's haunting sense of the supernatural and his magic 
power producing a corresponding illusion in the mind of the reader. "The thing 
attempted in Christabel," wrote a reviewer, "is the most difficult of execution in the 
whole field of romance — witchery by daylight — and the success is complete." Cole- 
ridge's escape from reality is through the surrender of his spirit to romantic dreams, 
but Christaiel is to be read and appreciated primarily as a work of art. 

Dejection : An Ode (1802) 404-406 

Written' at a time when Coleridge was depressed by a sense of the failure of his 
creative powers, Dejection gives a final commentary on the romantic use of nature as a 
source of spiritual consolation. It is the imagination alone which lends to nature its 
divine glory, or, as Coleridge and Wordsworth chose to put it. It is by the imagination 
alone that we penetrate into its divine mystery. 

France: An Ode (1798) 350-351 

See footnote. 

CowPER, William (1731-1800) 
Letters 

On the American Eevolution (1781) 298 

On the French Eevolution (1790-1793) 336-337 

The Task (1785) 

The Wrongs of Man 247-251 

The poetry of Cowper shows a strong reaction against the prevailing intellectuality 
of the earlier Eighteenth Century. The claims of emotion, which had already begun to 
be asserted by writers of the sentimental school, are deeply felt by him. On the reli- 
gious side Cowper is afifected by the evangelical movement which led under the Wesleys 



COMMENTAEY ON AUTHOES AND WORKS 643 

to a great revival of the spiritual life. He is in full sympathy with the related tendency 
toward humanitarian reform and, gentle spirited though he was himself, protests with 
passionate indignation against all forms of cruelty and wrong. In the selection "Of 
Slavery" Cowper is pleading for the cause championed by Wilberforce, who in 1788 
induced Pitt to bring in a bill abolishing the British slave-trade. This bill fell before 
the opposition of the Liverpool merchants and was not finally passed till 1807. Colonial 
slavery was abolished in 1833. Corruption and tyranny in government are also objects 
of Cowper's attack, but his revolutionary sympathies are tempered by patriotism and 
by Christian patience. It is said of him that he "translated the gospel of Rousseau 
into the gospel of St. Paul." Cowper's remarks about the Bastile In the selection "Of 
Tyranny" derive a special significance from the fall of that symbol of oppression at the 
hands of the Paris mob three years after this passage was written. 

Crabbe, George (1754-1832) 

The Village (1783) 

The Reality of Humble Life. 251-253 

Crabbe paints the lot of poverty in even darker colors than Cowper, but he does so 
as a severe realist, without display of sympathy, protesting vigorously against the 
conventional idealization of humble life in literature. He had himself known the reality 
as a country doctor and the picture he paints, though sordid, is not untrue, especially 
in the squalid villages of southern England with which he was acquainted. It is inter- 
esting to compare his view of the peasant with that of Burns in The Cotter's Saturday 
Night and of Wordsworth in Michael. The references in lines 11 ff. are to the stereo- 
typed pastorals imitated from Virgil's BucoUcs. 

Cbomwell, Oliver (1599-1658) 
Speeches (1653-1658) 

The Triumphs of the Commonwealth 171-173 

Cromwell was a fighter and a governor, not an orator. The roughness of his utter- 
ance and the fact that his speeches were imperfectly reported do not, however, prevent 
their being an impressive record of a powerful personality and a revelation of the 
guiding ideals of the Puritan regime. Looking back over the victories of the Common- 
wealth Cromwell sees the whole history as a manifestation of the will of God. 

Peace Hath Its Victories 173-174 

The selection shows the difficulties which beset the Commonwealth just before the 
Eestoration and illustrates the force of Cromwell's leadership which alone prevented it 
from being overwhelmed. 

An Appeal for Unity 174-175 

Defoe, Daniel (1661 (?) -1731) 
An Essay upon Projects (1697) 

The Education of Women ". 210-212 

In his Essay upon Projects the practical minded and original Defoe saw far into the 
future in more than one respect. It has remained for the modern era to carry into prac- 
tice the plan which he here proposes. The typical attitude of the eighteenth century 
toward woman was, as we see in The Rape of the Loch, a. mixture of gallantry and 
scorn. To do embroidery and grace a tea or card table were the highest accomplish- 
ments demanded of her. Defoe would admit her to the category of rational beings, and 
he proposes the true and only remedy for the emptiness and intellectual triviality of 
which Addison complains in the preceding selection. 

The True Born Englishman (1701) 215-216 

Defoe, a partisan and defender of the house of Orange, meets the argument that 
William is a foreigner and no true born English king by showing that there is no such 
thing as a pure blooded Englishman. To be a true born Englishman is not to have a 
long heredity but to be possessed of English virtues. 



544 COMMENTAEY ON AUTHOES AND WORKS 

Dewey, John (1859 ) 

German Philosophy and Polities (1915) 

The Gospel of Duty and Its Implicationa 601-603 

In this selection and more largely in the volume from which it is taken Professor 
Dewey traces the development of German philosophical idealism from its beginnings in 
Kant with special reference to. its determining influence on the modern German concep- 
tion of the state and on the actual course of German history. Readers who wish to con- 
sider the extreme perversions of German idealism, with its anti-democratic tendencies 
and its violation of the common principle of individual morality, will consult the works 
of such writers as Nietsche, Treitschke, Bernhardi, representative passages from which 
are collected in "Conquest and Kultur," a pamphlet issued by the Committee on Public 
Information. That some Americans are not altogether unaffected by the philosophy 
of power is strikingly illustrated in the following statement by Dr. Oscar Levy, a recog- 
nized authority on Nietsche and a translator of his works into English : 

"This war will result in greatly strengthening the opposition to democracy. The 
democratic parties announce that a war like this will never happen again, but their 
announcements will be distrusted by most thinking men. They have had their chance 
for over a hundred years now, since the French Revolution, and they have made a mess 
of it. The more numerous they got, the worse matters went, until it finally came to 
this war. 

"The democratic play is over. It was the greatest theatrical swindle ever produced 
by any manager. On the billboard, outside the theater, was announced a play entitled 
'Fraternity, Brotherhood, Peacefulness and Mutual Understanding,' and when you had 
paid your money, gone in, and sat down to see the play, you saw the bloodthirstiest 
melodrama ever acted, and, worst of all, it was not even melodrama, but a dreadful 
reality. 

"Democracy has been caught red-handed in connection with this war. The peaceful- 
ness of democracy does not arise from strength but from weakness ; its teachings in- 
crease the number of weak people in responsible positions, and experience proves that 
weak people are prone to quarrel. The presence of one Bismarck or Disraeli would have 
prevented this war. Democracy suppresses great men. It claims to give every one a 
chance. By giving every one a chance you give no one a chance. If everybody is some- 
body, nobody is anybody ! If you educate all, you suppress genius which can seldom 
flower under a 'popular' or 'democratic' education. . . . This war will teach people 
the world over to distrust their old values. It will warn them against longer trusting 
' their teachers and philosophers and their politicians as well. It will undermine the 
belief in the people and also that of the people in itself. It will illumine the absurdity 
of government by the slaves for the slaves. It will in short shake the faith in democ- 
racy to its foundations. . . . The future has plenty of wars and revolutions in store 
for us all. An unbiased viewpoint is a necessity for those of us who will have to face 
life one day in a responsible position. The old Romanticism will not do any longer; 
the future belongs to Friedrich Nietsche." 

To such a challenge of democracy the Anglo-Saxon political idealism represented 
in this volume, the history both of England and America, and the facts concerning the 
origin and results of the present war constitute the effective answer. 

On Understanding the Mind of Germany (1916) 

The Mind of Germany 597-601 

America in the "World 627-628 

DoBELL, Sidney (1824-1878) 

America (1855) 461 

Dobell deplores the growing spirit of hostility between England and America and 
points to the common inheritance of freedom and culture as a bond of friendship be- 
tween the two great Anglo-Saxon peoples. 

Donne, John (1573-1631) 

Death 105 



COMMENTARY ON AUTHORS AND WORKS 645 

Drayton, Michael (1563-1631) 

Ballad of Agincourt , 34-35 

One of many poems in which Drayton celebrates the glories of England. Much of 
his poetry is a record of travel in England, with description of historic places and 
legends of national history. This ballad is also of interest because it deals with 
events dramatized by Shal^espeare in Henry V. 

To the Virginian Voyage 36-37 

Compare the selections from Hakluyt and Raleigh, with the notes. 

Dbydkn, John (1631-1700) 

Absalom and Achitophel (1681) 184-137 

In this poem Dryden undertook to influence public opinion against a project enter- 
tained by Lord Shaftesbury to insure a protestant successor to Charles II by setting 
aside the Duke of York and pushing the claims of Charles's illegitimate son, the Duke 
of Monmouth. Dryden satirizes the situation by presenting it in terms of the Biblical 
story of the revolt of Absalom (Monmouth) against his father, David (Charles), under 
the seditious instigation of Achitophel (Shaftesbury). Dryden is exceedingly ingeni- 
ous in finding parallels for every factor in the English situation. The Jebusites are 
the Catholics, the Jews the protestant Englishmen, The plot, referred to in line 24, 
is the alleged Catholic conspiracy against the King, denounced by Titus Gates and 
made by Shaftesbury the occasion of rousing popular feeling against a possible 
Catholic succession. In the characterization of Achitophel, Dryden portrays a type o 
restless and mischievous leader of sedition. Zimri was the dissolute and unstable 
George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. 

Astrcea Bedux (1660) 183-184 

Dryden's panegyric on the return of Charles II, which he likens to the coming of 
the Golden Age, when the goddess Astrsea, Justice, should appear again on earth. 

The Hind and the Panther (1687) 186-187 

The Hind is the Catholic Church, to which Dryden became a convert after the ac- 
cession of James II. The other beasts are the various protestant sects ; the Bear the 
Independents, the Hare the Quakers, the Ape the atheists, the Boar the Baptists. 
The Panther, next in purity and dignity to the Hind, but spotted and false, is the 
Church of England. 

Dyer, Sir Edward (d. 1607) 

My Mind to Me a Kingdom Is 105 

Elyot, Sir Thomas (About 1488-1546) 
Bolce of the Governour (1531) 

The Education of Men Who Are to Rule 42-46 

From the first book in English on the subject of education. The author was a 
friend of Sir Thomas More (see the selections from Utopia), and became interested 
in that aspect of Humanism that looked toward training men for service of the state. 
The book, therefore, is a treatise on the perfect commonwealth as well as on education. 
It is one of many similar books produced in Western Europe during the Renaissance. 

"The Rank Is But the Guinea's Stamp" 46 

' ' One Sovereign Governor " 84-85 

The Garden of the Commonwealth 85 

Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803-1882) 

A Nation of Men (1837) 564-567 

From the oration afterwards known as The American Scholar, and called our decla- 
ration of intellectual independence. Emerson's interest in democracy was not, like 



g46 COMMENTARY ON AUTHORS AND WORKS 

Webster's, concerned with government, but with the development of the powers of the 
individual to the highest possible point. His ideas of self-reliance, of what he calls 
the "chief enterprise of the world . . . the upbuilding of a man" are here set 
forth. He has little sympathy for the welfare of the masses, for humanitarianism, 
except as this comes through bringing to pass "a nation of men." 

Concord Hymn 294 

Sung at the completion of the battle monument at Concord, July 4, 1837. 

Fitzgerald, Edward (1809-1883) 

The Bubaiyat of Omar Khayyam (1859) 

"Carpe Diem" 536-537 

The philosophy of the old Persian poet, to whom Fitzgerald gave a new life by his 
translation, is frankly materialistic. He makes sport of the superstitions of the creeds 
and repeats ad nauseam the counsel to hie to the tavern. The point of view should 
be compared and contrasted with that of Herrick. Browning is perhaps thinking of 
this poem in Rabbi Ben Ezra where he makes the Biblical simile of the Potter do 
service to a nobler doctrine. 

George, David Lloyd (1863 — ) 

International Honor (1914) 603-608 

Godwin, William (1756-1836) 

An Inquiry Concerning Political Justice (1793) 

Political Justice 333-336 

Godwin's exposition of the principles underlying the French Revolution is less 
passionate than Paine's but it is more closely reasoned and more far-reaching. The 
Inquiry is, indeed, the most conspicuous English product of eighteenth century ration- 
alism brought to bear on the problems of human society in a radical and thorough- 
going analysis, Godwin is the exact opposite of Burke in his indifference to tradi- 
tion, in his belief in the power of abstract reason to, change men's mode of action, 
and in his distrust of the benefits of government. In the first selection, "Wealth and 
Poverty," Godwin shows as keen a sense as any modern socialist of the injustice of a 
social system which condemns the many to go without the necessaries of life while 
the few are luxuriating in wealth. But his consciousness of present evil does not 
daunt his hope for the future. Absolute faith in progress is the key-note of his phi- 
losophy, as of that of all the radical idealists of his age. Granted the premise that 
man is by nature good and amenable to reason, the conclusion follows that through 
education and enlightenment he is destined to advance indefinitely on the road to a 
perfect social state. It is this doctrine, transmuted into a passionate dream of ideal 
justice, which gives the central motive of the poetry of Godwin's son-in-law, Shelley. 
The third selection states the fundamental principle of equality of privilege, in con- 
tradiction to Burke's theory of vested right and of the absolute value of class dis- 
tinction as a basis of organized society. The conclusions in this chapter were as self- 
evident to Jeflferson and the founders of American democracy as they were to Godwin 
and Rousseau. 

Gray, Thomas (1716-1771) 

An Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard (1751) 245-247 

The mood of melancholy, induced by reflection on the limitation and vanity of life, 
and the inequality of condition and opportunity among men, is in striking contrast 
with the facile optimism which dominated the thought of writers of the school of 
Pope (see note on Pope's Essay on Man). Gray is not a revolutionist but a quiet, 
brooding scholar, of fine and tender feelings, writing on the immemorial theme of 
death. There is, however, implicit in the Elegy the new sympathy with man as man, 
and the sense of dignity of soul independent of rank or station. It is to Gray some 
consolation for the thought of a "mute inglorious Milton" that all classes are equal in 
the grave. 



COMMENTARY ON AUTHORS AND WORKS 547 

Green, John Richard (1837-1883) 

A Short History of the English People (1870) 

The. Character of Elizabeth 25-28 

The Menace of Spain 28-31 

These two. selections characterize the two principal figures of the sixteenth cen- 
tury, antagonists in the great struggle between free national development, as repre- 
sented in England, and the idea of world empire and repression of nationality, as rep- 
resented by Philip's ambition. 

The Puritan Spirit 109-111 

The Character of Pitf 269-272 

The Destiny of England and America 298-299 

This remarkable prophecy deserves careful reading in the light of recent events. 

Grey, Sir Edward (1862-—) 

■ Preface to America and Freedom (1917) 

The Significance of America's Entry 611-613 

Haklutt, Richard 
Voyages (1859) 

The Deeds of Elizabethan Seamen 36 

The reign of Elizabeth was an age of action, in which England not only attained 
national self-consciousness but also found broader outlook through discovery and the 
development of commerce and colonization. Hakluyt devoted his life to collecting 
accounts of travel and publishing them in great books. He has been called the English 
Homer. He was interested in pointing out opportunities for commerce in all parts 
of the world, and by making Englishmen familiar with the exploits of their seamen, 
helped to lay the foundations for the expansion of Britain. 

Hankey, Donald (1884-1917) 
A Student in Arms (1917) 

An Experiment in Democracy 618-619 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1804-1864) 
Twice Told Tales (1837) 

The May-Pole of Merry Mount 165-171 

Hayes, Carleton (1882 ) 

British Social Politics (1913) 

A New Force in Politics 613-614 

Henley, William Ernest (1849-1903) 

Invictus 538 

Henley faces life, not with the optimistic courage of Browning or with the patient 
fortitude of Arnold, but with a bold defiance of Fate to do its worst. 



648 



CGMMENTAEY ON AUTHOES AND WOEKS 



Henry, Patrick (1736-1799) 

Liberty or Death (1775) 295-296 

From a speech delivered at the Virginia convention, March 28, 1775. Henry had been 
active for some years in stirring up resistance to the tyrannical acts of the British 
government. At the revolutionary convention a resolution was offered to put the colony 
into a state of defense. Henry's fiery eloquence bore down all opposition to the measure. 

Herbert, George (1593-1633) 

The Collar (1631) 112 

Herbert illustrates the deeper piety which in the second quarter of the seventeenth 
century was coming into the writings of the more serious-minded Englishmen, even 
among those who, like Herbert, remained within the Church. The intimate expression 
of personal religion in this and the following selections points forward to the Puritanism 
of men like Milton and Bunyan. The intricacy with which Herbert, following the 
literary fashion of his day, expresses himself renders his work quaint and difficult, but 
does not disguise its sincerity of feeling. The collar is the bond which draws the poet, 
in restive and rebellious mood, to God. 

Love (1631) 112 

The importunity of the divine love, which compels the sinner, against his own sense 

of unworthiness to sit down to the feast. "Go out into the highways and hedges, and 

compel them to come in." 
Virtue (1631) , • - 112 

Herrick, Egbert (1691-1648) 

A Thanksgiving to God for His House (1648) 11B-I19 

Corinna's Going a-Maying (1648) 117-118 

Herrick's attitude toward life is in str&ing contrast with that of the other writers 
represented in this and the succeeding section. In a day when Milton had set aside his 
dearest ambitions at the call of duty and when serious and conscientious men were 
battling for religious truth and political liberty Herrick, with all the irresponsibility 
of a child, surrenders himself to delicate emotions aroused by all the lovely objects 
of sense perception. His philosophy is very simple. Life is sweet but fleeting ; accept 
its gifts of beauty and pleasure and enjoy them while you can. Herrick is an exquisite 
poet, one of the very greatest artists in the language. His tone is delicate and refined, 
not sensual, and the wistful note of melancholy at the thought of the swift decay of 
earthly loveliness, is never absent. He inherits the Renaissance on its aesthetic side 
alone, and his poetry, taken in contrast with that of Herbert, illustrates the great 
spiritual break which had come about in the consciousness of men. 

Herrick's religion is as childlike as his love of beauty. He naively thanks God for 
material, not spiritual benefits. 

To Daffodils (1648) 118 

To Keep a True Lent (1648) , 119 

To the Virgins (1648) 118 

Hobbes, Thomas (1588-1679) 
Leviathan (1651) 

Of Commonwealth 178-183 

See footnote. Hobbes developed his political philosophy when the country "was boil- 
ing hot with questions concerning the rights of dominion, and the obedience due from 
Bubjects." Leviathan is the Commonwealth, the supreme power of the state in relation 
to which individual rights are nothing. In Hobbes's mind .there is no alternative between 
absolute rule and social anarchy. By living in a Commonwealth a man takes the law 
for his conscience. Sovereignty, whether residing in one man or an assembly (and 
Hobbes always maintained the superiority of monarchy as a form of government), 
cannot be limited, divided, or forfeited. The sovereign is sole legislator, supreme ruler, 
and supreme judge. 



COMMENTAEY ON AUTHOES AND WORKS 649 

Hood, Thomas (1799-1845) 

The Song of the Shirt (1843) 473-474 

The protest against the Industrial exploitation of poverty began in literature long 
before it began to be embodied in law. Charles Dickens and Charles Kingsley devoted 
themselves to the cause in Victorian fiction. 

Hooker, Eichard (1553-1600) 

Ecclesiastical Polity (1594) 

A More Divine Perfection 14-15 

This passage is from the great work in which one of the most learned men of his time 
defended the Anglican church against Calvinism ; the first of the five books is a splendid 
defense of law and order in nature and society. The selection here given illustrates 
once more the great aims of those who lived in the "spacious days" of Queen Elizabeth. 
Compare the praise of beauty in Marlowe's Tamburlaine (page 13), and also the passage 
from Spenser given on page 23. 

Of Government 93-101 

These selections from the Ecclesiastical Polity constitute an eloquent and unified 
defense of the theory of government held by Englishmen through centuries. The second 
selection should be compared with the passage from Shakespeare's Troilus (Of 
"Degree") ; the third with the selections from Burke's letter on the French Revolution 
and with Mill's essay on Liberty ; the third discusses international honor in a way that 
finds new meaning in the events of recent years ; and the fourth is to be compared with 
Wordsworth's Ode to Duty. Hooker's theme is "the reconciliation of government with 
liberty," the foundations of "free government." He himself says, "The general and 
perpetual voice of men is as the sentence of God himself." 

Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895) 

The Physical Basis of Life (1868) 507-516 

This essay more than any other of Huxley's expositions of the claims of science over 
men's thought disturbed the orthodox belief in the divine and miraculous government 
of the world and of a special creation of man according to Biblical tradition. Huxley 
shows that life itself is subject to the same natural law which rules in the material 
world, and so throws out a challenge to those who would retain a belief in man's 
spiritual nature and his immortal destiny. The succeeding selections are all answers, 
from various points of view, to the great problem thus presented. 

Irving, Washington (1783-1859) 

KnicTcerbocTcer's History of New Yorh. Selections. (1809) 546-560 

These selections are from the first American book of distinction in the field of 
helle lettres. In it, Irving pretends to have found a history of the Dutch colony of 
New Amsterdam, written by one Diedrich Knickerbocker. The book was introduced by 
an elaborate machinery, and through advertisements and notes in the papers about the 
mythical Knickerbocker, Irving not only stirred up interest in his book but led many peo- 
ple to believe it an authentic historical document. It has often been listed in libraries 
under the caption "History." The humorous treatment of Dutch customs and history 
is one characteristic of the book ; his satire of "Yankees" is as keen. But there is not a 
little seriousness about Irving's treatment of politics in the years preceding war with 
England. Irving was a Federalist, and was opposed to Jefferson's policies on party 
grounds. But he was also an interested observer of the workings of party govern- 
ment. He spoke of a debate in Congress, extending over several days, as more absorb- 
ing than any drama ever staged. His letters are filled with evidence of his patriotism, 
and contain many wise comments on contemporary problems of government. He was 
not merely a writer of graceful prose ; he was a keen observer of human nature. 

Jefferson, Thomas (1743-1826) 

Declaration of Independence (1776) 296-297 

See footnote. In his statement of the "self-evident truths" about the equality of 
man and the true origin and function of government Jefferson shows the influence of 
his contact with the radical thought of England and France in the eighteenth 



650 COMMENTAEY ON AUTHOES AND WOEKS 

century. The political doctrine is essentially the same as that which was later 
embodied in the French declaration of the Rights of Man, drawn up by the National 
Assembly in 1789. 

First Inaugural Address (1801) 

The Foundations of Our Government. , 545-546 

An early discussion of the strength of a democracy, an admirable summary of 
the American principle, as seen at the beginning of the nineteenth century. 

Johnson, Edward (1598-1672) 

A Wonder-WorTcing Providence (1654) 

The First Promotion of Learning 164-165 

JoNSON, Ben (1573-1637) 

A Pindaric Ode 106-107 

"Junius" 

A Letter to the Buke of Grafton (1769) 

Cabinet Government under George III 272-273 

See footnote. John Wilkes, who had boldly criticized the administration in his 
journal, the North Briton, was prosecuted for libel, expelled from Parliament in 1764, 
reelected as member for Middlesex and again expelled in 1769. The Commons arbi- 
trarily seated Colonel Luttrell, the defeated candidate, in defiance of the deliberate 
choice of Wilkes by the electorate. The incident aroused a storm of protest on the 
ground that under such a system the House of Commons had ceased to represent the 
people. The identity of "Junius" has never been revealed, though a strong case has 
been made out for Sir Philip Francis (1740-1818). 

An Address to the King (1769) 273-274 

See footnote. 

Keats, John (1795-1821) 

Endymion (1818) 

Beauty 429 

Keats, like Shelley, is a worshiper of Beauty, but he is content to dwell forever 
with the concrete beauty of this earth, surrendering himself to the enjoyment of 
exquisite sensations. 

La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1819) 429 

Ode on a Grecian Urn (1820) 431 

The Urn Is to Keats the very embodiment of the eternity of beauty. It is con- 
trasted in his thought with the swiftly failing lives of men. The very incomplete- 
ness of the tale told by this sylvan historian is an essential element in its self- 
sufficiency and perfection. What "men or gods" these are we know not. The melodies 
of the pipes are heard in the imagination alone. The lover never consummates his kiss. 
But it is better so. Fulfillment and completeness would bring with them the satiety 
and disappointment of all actual experience. The poem gives Keats's beauty worship 
in its most refined and delicate form, but, though the Urn becomes a symbol of the 
permanence of beauty and teaches the lesson of the Identity of beauty and truth It 
remains a concrete object, very different from the "spirit" which Shelley addresses 
in the Hymn to Intellectual Beauty. 

Ode to a Nightingale (1820) 430-431 

The essential theme of this poem is the intoxicating, almost stupefying beauty of the 
bird's song, heard in darkness, and the experience it brings with it of momentary 
release from mortal care. Keats yearned for "a life of sensation rather than of thought." 
While the Nightingale is singing he loses himself in ravishment and longs to die in the 
ecstasy of enjoyment, but the exalted mood gives way to deep depression, as he re- 
turns to reality and the thought of self. The poem illustrates Keats's marvelous 



COMMENTAEY ON AUTHOES AND WOEKS 651 

power of rich poetic utterance. The lines are steeped in the sensuous imagery which 
is characteristic of his work, but here as elsewhere the intensity of his imagination car- 
ries him beyond mere sensation into the heart of wonder and romance. 

On First LooTcing into Chapman 's Homer (1817) 431-432 

Keats was unable to read Greek, but he had the greatest enthusiasm for the products 
of the Hellenic imagination, particularly for Greek mythology. Homer in Chapman's 
vigorous Elizabethan translation was a revelation to him of the beauty and wonder of 
the ancient world. 

When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be 432 

Kipling, Eudyard (1865 ) 

^Recessional (1897) 452-453 

The sense of responsibility in the exercise of great power expressed in Kipling's poem 
is and has always been a distinguishing characteristic of British imperialism. 

Labor Party, Eeport of the Sub-Committee 

The Eeconstruction of British Labor ( 1918) 614-618 

Lanier, Sidney (1842-1881) 

America 596 

Lincoln, Abraham (1809-1865) 

Address at Gettysburg (1863) 575 

A compact statement of the crisis of democracy in its contest against disintegra- 
tion, and of "the new birth of freedom" that might issue from the agony of war. 
It was delivered on the eleventh of November, 1S63 ; the Compact of the Pilgrims 
was signed on the eleventh of November, 1620 ; and the armistice by which victory 
was assured to the cause of democracy throughout the world was signed on the 
eleventh of November, 1918. 

Second Inaugural Address ( 1865) 575-576 

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth (1807-1882) 
The Building of the Ship (1849) 

The Ship of State 572 

Lowell, James Eussell (1819-1891) 

Ode Eecited at the Harvard Commemoration (1865) 576-581 

The Biglow Papers (1849) 

What Mr. Eobinson Thinks 569-570 

Governor Briggs was a Whig, candidate for reelection in 1847. General Cushing 
was his opponent, a general in the Mexican war. John P. Robinson, a lawyer and 
Whig member of the Massachusetts legislature, went over to Cushing's side in the 
contest. 

The Pious Editor 's Creed 570-571 

Written just after the Revolution of 1848 in France. 

The Present Crisis (1844) 568-569 

The crisis to which Lowell refers was the annexation of Texas, but the poem is 
equally applicable to America in 1917. 

Marlowe, Christopher (1564-1593) 

Doctor Faustus (1588) 1-12 

An adaptation of the Faust legend from contemporary German sources. The 
first theme in the drama is the criticism of the university education of Marlowe's 
time : law, medicine, theology alike fail to satisfy the boundless ambition of Faustud. 



652 COMMENTARY ON AUTHORS AND WORKS 

"Magic," which here suggests the possibilities of modern science, offers dominion 
as wide as the mind of man. With this desire for power over nature, expansion 
of his own individuality, is linked the medieval idea that he who dabbles in the 
mysteries of nature trades with the devil. The drama is a conflict between this 
sense of sin and the Kenaissance passion for beauty, for power of every sort, for 
immortality. The Good and Evil Angels are objective representations of this struggle 
in the soul, and on this medieval side Evil triumphs and Faustus is lost. But the 
real conflict is between this theory of life and that represented by the desire for 
universal knowledge (pages 6-8), the re-creation of the antique world of beauty (pages 
8 and 10), and the intense passion for life and youth. The drama suggests Marlowe's 
own turbulent youth and that of many Renaissance figures. 

Tamburlaine (Selection) (1587-88) 12-13 

Marlowe's great study of the thirst for universal empire. Tamburlaine, a 
Scythian shepherd who became a world conqueror, answers to the Elizabethan fond- 
ness for romance, to the feeling that all things are possible to him who wills intensely, 
and to the belief, forerunner of that aspect of democracy which teaches the possi- 
bilities for high development even in humble lives, that noble birth is not a test of 
a man's worth. Thus, Mycetes, Cosroe, and others are effeminate weaklings easily cast 
aside by the virile and inflexible Tamburlaine. The drama is a series of unrelated 
episodes in the life of the conqueror, showing his rise to power. In the first selec- 
tion he resolves to get the throne of Persia for himself, and imparts his fiery spirit 
to his followers. In the second selection is an admirable statement of the relation 
between the passion for infinite knowledge and that for infinite power. The third 
passage, in praise of his love Zenocrate, who mourns for the fate of her father who 
has been conquered by Tamburlaine, is not less characteristic of the time : beauty 
can conquer even the conqueror of the world. 

Mkredith, George (1828-1909) 

France 1870 456-460 

Meredith had a keen appreciation of the glorious achievements of Prance in history 
— her championship of freedom and her contributions to thought and culture. He 
beholds with horror the spectacle of France at the mercy of brute force embodied in the 
German military autocracy. The punishment is in part deserved by her temporary 
surrender of her ideals under the ignoble rule of Napoleon III, but he prophesies that 
she will regain her spiritual glory and rise triumphant out of her humiliation. This 
prophecy was amply fulfilled in the period between 1871 and 1914. 

Mill, John Stuart (1806-1873) 

On Liberty (1859) 433-439 

In this famous essay Mill follows the principles of Bentham and other political 
economists who, discarding the doctrine of Natural Rights, established in its place that 
of "utility," the "greatest good of the greatest number," as the basis of government 
and the test of legislation. They believed, on the whole, that the unrestricted working 
of economic law would best promote this end, and so laid the foundation for the 
laissem-faire or "hands-ofl" policies of English liberalism. The salutary practical 
applications of this theory are illustrated in the following selections from John Bright. 
Carlyle and Ruskin assail the materialistic tendencies in the philosophy, while such 
documents as the Program of the British Labor Party illustrate the workings of an 
opposite but correlative principle of government. 

Milton, John (1608-1674) 

A Beady and Easy Way to Establish a Free Commonwealth (1660) 

A Free Commonwealth 157-159 

When the Commonwealth was already tottering to its fall Milton, regardless of 
personal risk, made a sketch of a new constitution embodying his ideals of free gov- 
ernment, as a last desperate effort to prevent the Restoration. The selection shows 
the importance which he attached to local self-government and to. popular education. 
It is not by any means complete democracy which he advocates, but aristocracy in 
the ancient sense of rule by the most fit. The weakest point in his system was Ms 
failure to provide for the recurrent election of representatives. The central council, 
once chosen, was to be practically perpetual, as it had come near to being under the 
Long Parliament. 



COMMENTAEY ON AUTHOES AND WORKS -653 

An Apology for Smectymnuus (1642) 

Himself a True Poem 119-120 

In the course of his controversial writings in defense of the Puritan cause Milton 
often takes occasion to speak of himself and his ideals. He does so without false 
modesty but with a lofty dignity, and these autobiographical passages, taken together 
with corresponding utterances in his poems, constitute an impressive record of a soul 
insurpassable in its purity and grandeur, the noblest type of Puritan personality. The 
present passage shows that Milton could not dissociate the highest art from the char- 
acter of the artist. Having experienced in his youth the call to the high office of a 
poet he had ordered his life to this end, living temperately and nourishing his spirit 
with the loftiest thoughts of the great men of the past. The "renowners of Beatrice 
and Laura" are Dante and Petrarch. Milton's earlier love of knightly romances led 
him to plan a poem in which King Arthur should be the hero. He later abandoned this 
subject for the more serious religious theme of the fall of man. 

Areopagitica (1644) 

The Virtue of Books 146-147 

Milton's Areopagitica, a defense of the freedom of the press, was occasioned by the 
passage in 1643 by the Long Parliament of an act requiring the licensing of books before 
publication by an official censor. As a blow at the principle of liberty of thought this 
act outraged Milton's deepest convictions, and he set himself to oppose it in a document 
of great eloquence, which embodies his fundamental philosophy of government and 
life. At the heart of Milton's protest lies, on the one hand, the zeal of the Renaissance 
for the untrammeled exploration of new truth, on the other the conviction that true 
virtue is attained, not through ignorance of evil or through external constraint, but 
by a man's conquest over himself. 

Of Eestraints 147-148 

Milton shows the absurdity of trying to regulate moral conduct by law. If the 
principle is admitted there is no limit to its application. The Puritans, unconvinced 
by Milton's reasoning, passed more than one regulation tending to the suppression of 
recreations and pastimes delightful to man. Sir Philip Sidney's Arcadia and Monte- 
mayor's Diana, two popular romances, are the works alluded to at the end of the first 
paragraph. In referring to Plato he is thinking of the Bepiihlic, in which the author 
banished the poets from the education of youth in his ideal state. 

Liberty of Thought 148-150 

A Heretic in the Truth 150 

Liberty the Nurse of All Great Wits 150-153 

Milton rightly believed the restriction of liberty of thought to be essentially at 
variance with the spirit of the Reformation, with its cardinal principle of individual 
interpretation of Scripture. It was no less a -departure from the ideals of political 
freedom for which England was fighting. 

EikonoTclastes (1649) 

Of Justice 156-157 

The work from which this selection is taken was written in reply to the Eikon 
Basilike, a book purporting to contain the prayers and meditations of Charles I and 
designed to arouse indignation against the government which had caused his execu- 
tion. 

II Penseroso (1633 ; Published 1645) 122-123 

The poem is a companion piece to L' Allegro (see note). What Milton is really 
doing is painting a portrait of himself in his more serious and thoughtful moods. 
Note the studied contrast between the two poems at every point. Solitude is substi- 
tuted for society, the melancholy aspects of nature for the cheerful, serious reading in 
philosophy and tragedy for story-telling and the witnessing of comedy on the stage, 
religious music for secular, etc. It is to be observed that there is little of the Puritan 
severity even in this more sober portrait. Milton Is still the poet and the lover of 
beauty. 

"Thrice-great Hermes," line 88, is the Platonic philosopher, Hermes Trismegisthus. 



g54 COMMENTAEY ON AUTHOES AND WOEKS 

The references in lines 99-100 are to the chief themes of ancient tragedy. In lines 109- 
120 Milton is thinking of Chaucer's Squire's Tale and of Spenser's Faerie Queen. He did 
not regard the reading of romances as amusement only (see selection from Smectym- 
nuus), especially in Spenser where the story is made the vehicle for a moral allegory. 

L' Allegro (1633; Published 1645) 120-122 

L'Allegro and II Penseroso were written during the happy period just after his 
college days, when Milton was living a life of scholarly leisure at Horton. They 
illustrate the tastes and temper of his youth and show the influences which formed his 
genius on the cultural and aesthetic side, before his connection with the Puritan cause 
had compelled him to take a sterner view of life. The poems represent, not two men, 
but contrasting moods of a single personality, the same life seen in its cheerful and in 
its more sober aspects. L'Allegro is no less a lover of nature and the things of the 
spirit than II Penseroso, but he takes his pleasure in merry sights and sounds, in observ- 
ing and sharing the recreations of the folk, and in watching the pageantry of social 
life in cities. The love of the stage, suggested in lines 131-134, shows Milton's kin- 
ship with the spirit of the Elizabethan age. The innocence and refinement of Milton'si 
tastes is noteworthy. Dissipation and vulgarity have no part in his merriment. 

Letters 

Himself a True Poem (1637) 120 

See note on Apology for Smectymnuus. Diodati was a school and college friend of 
Milton, to whom he writes in Latin verse, setting forth his plans and ideals. 

The Nation's Protest (1658) 160-161 

See note to the sonnet On the Late Massacre in Piedmont. 

Lycidas (1637) 123-126 

Milton's great elegy was occasioned by the death of his college friend, Edward 
King, drowned in crossing the Irish sea, 1637. While expressing a sincere personal 
grief, Milton is even more concerned with the self-realization which the death of a young 
poet like himself, of high promise and ideals, brings home to him. He asks himself 
what is the use of effort and aspiration when life is subject to such accidents, and 
answers that the true reward is God's final approval of each deed. The fact that 
King had, like Milton, planned to enter the Church leads the poet to denounce the cor- 
ruption and worldliness of the clergy. The passage illustrates Milton's deepening con- 
cern with the great issues of his day and his growing sympathy with the cause of Puri- 
tanism. Finally, face to face with the question of immortality, Milton makes his first 
great confession of religious faith and closes his lament on the note of joy and 
triumph. In the last eight lines he turns resolutely away from thoughts of sorrow and 
faces his own future, sobered and strengthened by the experience. 

Milton's use of the conventional language of pastoral literature and his numerous 
classical allusions make Lycidas difficult to appreciate, but they do not prevent it from 
being, as Mark Pattison has said, "the high-water mark of English poetry." Camus, 
line 103, is the spirit of Cambridge, King's and Milton's Alma Mater ; the pilot of the 
Galilean Lake, line 109, St. Peter. The allusions in lines 85-6 and 132-3 are to 
Greek and Roman pastoral poetry. The other important references should be looked 
up in the dictionary. 

071 His Blindness (1655 ; Published 1673) 126 

Milton became totally blind in 1652 as a result of his labors on the Second Defense 
of the English People (see note). This and the following selections are the record 
of the triumph of his courage and faith over this misfortune. Lines 3-7 refer to 
the parable of the talents, Matthew xxv, 14, but Milton's use of the word talent sug- 
gests also the modern meaning. 

On His Having Arrived at the Age of Twenty -Three (1631) 126 

Milton sent this sonnet to a friend who had expostulated with him concerning 
his apparent idleness and aimlessness. He says in the accompanying letter that he 
has taken notice of a certain belatedness in himself. The spirit of patient acquiescence 
in the will of God is the same that was with him later in his blindness. 

On the Detraction Which Followed Upon My Writing Certain Treatises (1645-6) .... 159 

The treatises were those in which Milton advocated freedom of divorce. He here 
rails at those who find the title strange as ignorant opponents of enlightenment. 



COMMENTAEY ON AUTHORS AND WOEKS 655 

On the Same (1645-6) '. 159 

For Milton's ideas of the relation of liberty, truth, and self-control see note on 
Areopagitica, He takes his text from St. John, "Te shall know the truth and the 
truth shall make you free." 

On the Late Massacre in Piedmont ( 1655) ., . 160 

The event which roused this outburst of indignation was the massacre of three 
hundred innocent men, women, and children of the Vaudois or Waldenses, living In 
the Alpine valleys of Piedmont in Italy under the rule of the Duke of Savoy. They 
•were protestants long before the Reformation, having, it was said, maintained in an 
unbroken tradition the practices of primitive Christianity from the time of the 
Apostles, and it was because of their refusal to enter the Catholic Church that they 
were persecuted. The news of the massacre of their co-religionists was deeply felt 
in England and was made the occasion of an official protest. Milton, as Latin secre- 
tary, was called upon to address the governments of seven foreign states on the sub- 
ject. The letter given in the next selection was written as the result of another 
outburst of persecution, three years later. The incident is particularly interesting 
as a part of the long tradition of championship by Englishmen and their descendants 
in America of the rights of the weak against the strong in international affairs. 

On the Lord General Fairfax (1648) 159 

Fairfax was one of the great leaders of the army of the Commonwealth. Milton's 
sense that victory in war is but the lesser triumph of a great people comes home to 
the present generation with peculiar force. 

On the New Forcers of Conscience Under the Long Parliament (1646) 159 

A protest against the tyranny of the Presbyterian system of church government, 
with its ruling classes or synod, which proved to be as galling as the old Episcopacy 
which it replaced. Milton early deserted the Presbyterians for the Independents ; 
later, like Dante, he formed a "party by himself." "The widowed whore plurality" 
is pluralism or the holding by one minister of several livings. 

Paradise Lost (1667; 1674) 

Of Celestial Light 127-128 

Fallen on Evil Days 130 

Urania, to whom Milton addresses this invocation, is the Heavenly Muse, really, in 
the poet's consciousness, the divine spirit itself. 

"Servant of God, Well Done" 131 

God's words of approval addressed to the Seraph Abdiel, who refused to rebel 
with Satan, "among the faithless, faithful only he." 

Books I and II 131-146 

Upon the failure of the Puritan cause Milton set himself to the task of carrying 
out the great poetic plans of his youth, which had been interrupted by almost twenty 
years of rigorous public service. In Paradise Lost the great intellectual and imagina- 
tive heritage of the Renaissance is united with the moral and religious earnestness 
of Puritanism, and the whole is elevated to the highest level of poetry by a supreme 
genius. The subject was, in Milton's thought, the most momentous and profound 
that any poet ever had. It embraces the revolt of Satan, his assault on man, the fall 
and exile of Adam with its legacy of sin and death for all mankind, and the ultimate 
victory of Christ over Satan through the redemption. 

In the first book Milton paints a tremendous picture of the fallen angels, baffled 
and beaten, but unconquerable in their determination "never to submit nor yield." 
The heroic figure of Satan is the supreme work of Milton's imagination. His uncom- 
promising resistance, his terrible but inspiring eloquence, and his superb leadership 
command admiration, but Milton never forgets that he is a perverted being, who has 
taken evil for his good. The characterization is in fact a magnificent study in the 
will to power. Satan's pretensions to rightful rebellion against tyranny are specious. 
He is both lion and fox, according to the Machiavellian rule. Milton portrays a 
would-be conqueror, a Tamburlaine or a Richard III, whose high words bear "semblance 
of worth, not substance," who "glories" in his battalion, yet finds himself "only 



656 COMMENTAEY ON AUTHOES AND WOEKS 

supreme in misery." Finding ease for his relentless thoughts only in destroying he 
seeks to regain his place in the sun by warring on the innocent and weak. It is pre- 
cisely because Milton was himself a rebel that he made the keenest distinction between 
a just and an unjust rebellion, and he clearly marks the essential character of Satan's 
revolt as a negation of the highest good. 

In the second book the poet exhibits the other great personalities among the fallen 
spirits as they debate the policy to be pursued in their present desperate situation. 
The same spirit of hatred and rebellion lives in them all. None of them shows the 
slightest trace of true repentance. But their counsel and their arguments differ with 
their characters. In Moloch, with his fierce desperation, Belial, corrupt and seductive, 
counselling ignoble ease, Mammon, with his gross materialism, and Beelzebub, master 
of a Machiavellian statecraft not without its parallel in modern times, Milton por- 
trays all the great permanent types of public counsellor perverted from the ways of 
morality and truth, an abiding lesson of the danger of entrusting the guidance of 
state affairs to men who have power and genius without character. 

Reason of Church Government (1641) 

The Poet 's Service to the State 128-130 

Note Milton's sane attitude toward public sports and pastimes, in contrast to the 
extreme Puritan. 

Of Discipline , 153 

Beformation in England (1641) 

The Masterpiece of a Politician 154-155 

"They who by writing laid the true foundations" of political science were Plato 
in the Republic and Aristotle in the Politics. Both make the true end of the state 
the virtuous life of its inhabitants, not freedom nor "the greatest good of the greatest 
number" in any material sense, and in this Milton follows them. 

England and America 161-] 62 

Samson Agonistes (1671) 

Fallen on Evil Days 130-131 

In the situation of Samson in his later days, blind and captive among the Phil- 
istines, Milton saw a parallel with his own lot amid the alien society of the Restora- 
tion. That the poet is uttering his own misery gives special poignancy to his hero's 
words. 

Second Defense of the English People (1654) 

Of Darkness Visible. 126-127 

Consciousness of rectitude and a peculiar sense of divine favor were the chief 
consolations of Milton in his misfortune. His conception of the "inner light" as a 
direct revelation of God's spirit to the individual, superior in Its validity even to the 
Bible, was the very essence of Milton's religious faith. It has been pointed out that 
this doctrine brought Milton nearer to the Quakers or Friends than to any other 
religious society of his time. 

Britain the Home of True Liberty 154 

Tenure of Kings and Magistrates (1648-9) 

The Source of Power ; 155-156 

A clear affirmation of the sovereignty of the people and the right of rebellion 
against tyranny, anticipating the political philosophy of John Locke after these 
principles had been a second time vindicated in practice by the Revolution of 1688. 
Milton's ideas should be compared with those of Hobbes (see note). 

The Brotherhood of Man 162 

To CyriacTc Skinner (1655) 126 

The "better guide" is the religious support of the preceding sonnet. 



COMMENTARY ON AUTHORS AND WORKS 657 

To the Lord General Cromwell (1652) 160 

Milton never lost his admiration for the Protector, in whom he saw the union 
of righteousness and strength. He here appeals to him to oppose the threatened 
religious tyranny of a committee of ministers formed "for the propagation of the 
gospel." 

More, Paul Elmer (1864 ) 

» 

Aristocracy and Justice (1915) 

Natural Aristocracy 620-623 

More, Sir Thomas (1478-1535) 

The Imaginary Commonwealth of Utopia (1516; 1551) 63-83 

Sir Thomas More was associated with the great revival of the study of the classics 
known as Humanism, being one of the first students of Greek in England, the friend 
of such distinguished scholars as Colet and Erasmus, and himself a lecturer of note 
on learned subjects. He was also a great statesman, succeeding Wolsey as Lord 
Chancellor in 1529. Utopia, his treatise on the ideal state, was first published, in 
Latin, at Louvain in 1516 ; Ralph Robinson's English translation was published in 
1551, with a second edition five years later. Both in his writings and his life More 
showed the sei-vice of Humanism to be not only the Institution of exact classical 
scholarship but preparation for public service ; scholarship, in the minds of these 
pioneers of modern learning, was not to be divorced from life. The book from which 
our selections are taken is an illustration of the keenness with which the author 
analyzed the evils in government in his own time, and the prophetic power with 
which he treated many questions that are still of great interest. Thus though the 
book is more than four centuries old, and comes to us in the quaint spelling of the 
sixteenth century, it is still a modern book. Examples of this are in the passages 
about war, about labor problems, about punishment for crimes, about poverty, and 
"a certein conspiracy of rlche men." 

MoRLEY, John, Viscount (1838 ) 

Edmund BurTce (1867) 

The Character of Burke 305-307 

Recollections (1917) 

The Spirit of Liberalism 439-440 

Morley, colleague of Gladstone, anti-Imperialist, and steady champion of Home 
Rule, was one of the leaders of the Liberal Party at the outbreak of the present 
war, when he resigned his cabinet office. 

Morris, William (1834-1896) 

The Day Is Coming (1885) 475-476 

Morris became a socialist in his later years. The present poem is a prophecy 
of the coming of the time when wealth and culture shall no longer be the exclusive 
possession of the few. The heart of the socialistic doctrine is contained In the line 
"For that which the worker winneth shall then be his indeed." 

MUNSTERBERG, HuGO (1863-1916) 

The Standing of Scholarship in America (1909) 

A Challenge to the Democratic Principle 597 

Newman, John Henry (1801-1890) 

Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864) 

Certainty and Peace in the Catholic Church 521-524 

Newman meets the challenge of science by a surrender ot the reason, or at least 
of the individual Judgment, and by an unquestioning acceptance of the divine 
authority <of the Catholic Church. Newman's conversion, one of the religious sen- 



658 COMMENTAEY ON AUTHORS AND W0EK8 

sations of the nineteenth century, took place in 1845 as a result of a long p'e.riotl of 
development and internal struggle. At first a leader of the Oxford movesnent (see 
Arnold's StveePness and LigM) Newman felt that the logic of the intellectual posi- 
tion which his strong religious instincts had led him to assume compelled him to 
accept Catholicism. In the Apologia he gives a history of his religious opinions and 
defends the claims of the church to authority over the judgmcfnt of the individual 
in- matters of religious, belief. 

Paine, Thomas (1737-1809) 

The Crisis (1776) 

Times That Try Men's Souls 297-298 

Tom Paine, born an Englishman, emigrated to America in 1774 and became an 
inspiring champion of the cause of independence. His eloquent pamphlets "did for 
the American volunteers what Rouget de Lisle's immortal song did for the French 
levies in the revolutionary wars. . . . These superb pages of exhortation were 
read in every camp to the disheartened men ; their courage commanded victory." 

Eeply to Burlce (1791) 

The Eights of Man 319-333 

"Where there is not liberty there is my country" was the Sjentiment dominating 
Paine's romantic career. Returning to England after the American war he joined 
the group of reformers who were eager to put the principles of the French experiment 
into operation in England. With more passion than logic he defends the principle 
of Revolution against Burke, ignoring many of the latter's profounder arguments, 
but often scoring heavily against his opponent's blindness to the real abuses which 
had caused the movement and to the plain common sense of the democratic principle 
of equality of rights. To the impartial reader the points of view of both Paine and 
Burke are equally valid. The question is one of emphasis and practical implication. 
It cannot be doubted, however, that it was the spirit of Paine rather than that of 
Burke which was destined to "rule the future." 

Pepys, Samuel (1633-1703) 

Diary (1660-1669) 

The Eestoration 175-177 

These passages from the private diary of Samuel Pepys constitute a most inter- 
esting record of the swift transition of England from the Commonwealth to the 
Restoration. They show the relief with which the average English gentleman turned 
from the severities and uncertainty of the Puritan regime, the ecstasy of joy with 
which he hailed the returning monarch, the unseemly haste with which he adopted 
the fashions and frivolities of the new order. Not even the hanging of its leaders, 
alive and dead, could so completely signalize the tragedy of a great cause as the 
lightness of heart with which Pepys presents the comedy of Restoration. Ap a 
protege of Sir Edward Montagu, "My Lord," Pepys was brought into close connection 
with the court of Charles II and derived great emoluments from the new regime. 
He was somewhat shocked and troubled by what he saw, but not for long. 

Pope, Alexander (1688-1744) 

An Essay on Criticism (1711) 212-213 

The selection illustrates the application of principles of order and formal regularity 
to literature as the representation of life. The poet must imitate nature, by which 
Pope meant the highly conventional social life of man. To do so truly and systemati- 
cally he must proceed according to some method. The ancients have provided such a 
method, and modern writers cannot do better than apply to their own subject matter 
the rules of representative art given in precept and example by Homer, Aristotle, 
Horace, Virgil, etc. 

The Mantuan Muse is Maro, Virgil ; the Stagirite, Aristotle, whose Poetics were 
the foundation of ancient critical theory, constituting, with Horace's Art of Poetry, 
the chief text book of the critics and writers of the age of Dryden and Pope. 



COMMENTAEY ON AUTHOES AND WORKS 659 

An Essay on Man (1733-4) 

A Perfect Universe 236-239 

Pope, following Bolingbroke and other philosophers who, while retaining the idea of 
God as a creator, rejected the older conception of his miraculous intervention in the 
world, sees the Universe as a perfect machine, related and mutually dependent in all 
its parts, with man not a center but merely a link in the system. In such a universe 
law is supreme, and nothing can be wrong, except as a result of man's imperfect vision 
of the whole. Such a philosophy leads to acquiescence in the existing order and to 
an attitude of indifference to human wrong. 

Self Love and Eeason 239-240 

Pope's attempt wholly to rationalize the world is extended to the sphere of con- 
duct. All human action is the almost mechanical result of the interplay of these two 
forces. 

Government 240-241 

Enlightened self-interest is the principle which binds society together. There is no 
such thing as purely unselfish devotion to the public good ; virtue in public life is a 
higher form of selfishness. This rationalistic interpretation of society was very popu- 
lar in the eighteenth century. The effective answer to it is to be found in Burke. 
See especially the selection, "Of Chivalry," p. 313. 

Equality 241 

Very different conclusions as to equality are drawn by later theorists from the same 
rationalistic premises regarding the nature of society as those held by Pope. 

Virtue 241 

Pope's insistence on virtue is hardly consistent with his theory of self-love as the 
ruling motive force of conduct, nor with his idea that the crimes of a Borgia or a 
Cataline are part of God's plan of the whole. See p. 238. Such inconsistencies are 
characteristic of the Essay, which represents no coherent system but a brilliant and 
superficial patchwork. Pope was no philosopher and he had but half digested the ideas 
which he received from his friend, Henry St. John, Lord Bolingbroke. 

Moral Essays (1735) 

Woman 235 

This portrait of the ideal qualities of womanhood may be set beside the picture of 
the coquette Belinda, in The Rape of the Lock. 

The Bape of the LocTc (1711, 1712) 188-198 

With matchless art and with a delicate grace and keenness of wit unsurpassed in 
English poetry Pope makes an actual incident in the fashionable circles of his day, 
namely the stealing by Lord Petre of a lock of Miss Arabella Fermor's hair, the occa- 
sion of a complete picture of the social life of the time, with all its foibles and 
triviality. The event is burlesqued by being treated in the lofty Style of epic, with a full 
equipment of "divine" machinery, with an invocation, games, battles, etc., all after the 
most approved traditional manner. Beneath the pretense of compliment and gallantry 
there lies the insulting scorn of woman characteristic of the eighteenth century. 
The mythology of sylphs, gnomes, etc., first introduced by Pope in a revision of the 
poem, is borrowed from the Rosicrucians or Masons of the Middle Ages. 

The Second Epistle of the Second Boole of Horace (1737) 

The Golden Mean 235-236 

Pope adopts as his ideal of life the temperate and common-sense philosophy of the 
Roman poet, Horace. The true philosopher, self-contained, exempt from the passion of 
avarice and the thirst of fame, is above the reach of Fortune. In his own life Pope 
was very far from attaining the poise of mind which he here so eloquently and sin- 
cerely recommends. Addison, whom he affected to despise, approached much nearer to 
the ideal. 



660 



COMMENTAEY ON AUTHOES AND WOEKS 



Ealeigh, Sir Walter (1552-1618) 

The Victory of England (1591) 37-42 

The first part of the selection contains testimony by one who took part in the 
action that defeated Spain in 1588 and established the supremacy of England. The 
last part is a spirited account of the brave fight of an English ship against over- 
whelming odds. Tennyson's Ballad of the Revenge is based on Raleigh's account. 

His Pilgrimuge 107 

The Last Pages of The History of the World 108 

EossETTi, Dante Gabriel (1828-1882) 

At the Sunrise in 1848 • 453 

The "year of revolutions," signalizing the breaking up of the regime of Metternich 
in European politics, was hailed as another dawn of freedom by the English liberals, 
true to their historic principle of championship of the people against governmental . 
oppression and of the national independence of the weaker states, such as Venice, 
Belgium, Greece, and Poland, which had been left under foreign domination by the 
Congress of Vienna in 1815. 

RusKiN, John (1819-1900) 

A Croim of Wild Olive (1866) 

Traffic 477-487 

Ruskin began his literary career as a writer on art, but was led by his conviction 
that all true art had its basis in national character to devote most of his attention in 
his later years to questions of morality and conduct. His attack in this lecture is, like 
Carlyle's and Arnold's, directed against the materialistic ideals of commercial and 
industrial England. 

The Soldier's Duty to His Country 487-489 

With characteristic boldness Ruskin tells a body of young students preparing to be 
professional soldiers his freest thoughts concerning war. He distinguishes sharply 
between war waged in a material cause and war waged for an ideal. The soldier's duty 
to his country is not to fight for her, right or wrong, but to see that she is right, to 
defend her against the internal enemies of corruption and baseness with all their 
heroism. To Ruskin the victories of peace are not less but more renowned than those 
of war. 

Pars Clavigera (1871-1878) 

The White-Thorn Blossom 489-495 

In his last years Ruskin devoted his time and his fortune to the uplifting of the work- 
ing classes. Fors Clavigera is a series of open letters to workmen in which he sets forth 
his theories of social reform. The project for an ideal community outlined in the 
last paragraph was actually put into operation as the Guild of St. George, one of the 
many sublime failures in the history of the attempts of idealists to realize in practice 
their dream of a perfect commonwealth. The emphasis on art as a final product of a 
communal life restored to its true basis of morality and the community of material 
possessions is characteristic. So also is the impracticable determination to do away 
with the conveniences of life which have resulted from modern scientific discovery and 
have interfered with rather than assisted man in his attempt to live for the things 
which are really worth while. 

Shakespeare, William (1564-1616) 
Henry V (1599) 

England at War ■ 32-33 

From Shakespeare's great war drama, portraying his ideal ruler. Some of Henry's 
characteristics — his sense that the war against France was a righteous war to re- 
claim English territory, his spirit, his freedom from superciliousness and his lack of 
ceremony or self-seeking, and the British courage that fears not to fight against su- 
perior numbers — are shown in the selections. 



COMMENTARY ON AUTHORS AND WORKS 661 

The Commonwealth of the Bees 90-91 

Troilus and Cressida (1602) 

Of ' ' Degree' ' 91-93 

These two passages present the view of order and the proper relations of classes 
and occupations in the healthy commonwealth. It is the conservative view, expressed 
also by Hooker, and, in a later time, by Burke ; the opposite of the view of those who 
sympathized with the French Revolution. 

King John- (1594) 

Unity Against the Foe 32 

The final speech of Faulconbridge, who throughout the drama stands for English 
unity against Rome and hostile kings. The speech had added significance for Shake- 
speare's audience because of the victory over Spain, which was gained through the 
fact that all parties in England made common cause for the safety of the nation*. 

Bichard II (1594) 

This England 31 

John of Gaunt, on his deathbed, utters this prophecy of thei future greatness of 
England, a prophecy that to the Elizabethans who witnessed Shakespeare's drama 
seemed fulfilled. York has just spoken of the national decadence because of imita- 
tion of the manners of Italy, 

"Whose manners still onr tardy apish nation 
Limps after in base imitation," 

when Gaunt promises national security provided such weaknesses as King Richard 
displayed might be avoided. 

Our Sea- Walled Garden 85-87 

Note that the idea in this scene is the same as that expressed by Elyot in the se- 
lection on the same page. The scene takes place just before the deposition of Richard 
by Bolingbroke, afterwards King Henry IV. The theme is that England's natural 
defense, the sea, will protect the nation if only internal dissension is not allowed to 
creep in. 

Of Divine Right 87-90 

The selfish and sentimental profession of attachment to the British soil should be 
compared with the passionate loyalty of Gaunt's dying words. This passage is 
Shakespeare's clearest statement of the doctrine of divine right, destined to become 
the rock that divided England from its sovereigns in the seventeenth century, The 
drama as a whole justifies the deposition of a wicked monarch. 

Sonnets (About 1593-97) 102-105 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe (1792-1822) 

Adonais (1821) 421-428 

In this elegy Shelley pays tribute to the memory of John Keats, who died at Rome 
in 1821. Shelley knew Keats, but the poem is not so much an expression of personal 
grief as it* is an embodiment of his own philosophy. Keats was, in Shelley's thought, 
like himself a consecrated worshipper of ideal beauty. He is mourned first by the 
divine parent of all earthly loveliness, Urania, who is identical with the- spirit of 
Heavenly beauty in the Hymn. The Dreams, Splendors, Desires, etc., which Shelley 
personifies in lines 73 fif. are the creations of Adonais's imagination, the passions 
and ideals embodied in the poetry of Keats. Among the mourners are also the chief 
poets of Shelley's group — Byron, "the Pilgrim of Eternity" ; Tom Moore (268-70) ; 
and Shelley himself, "who in another's fate now wept his own." In the invective 
against the enemies of Adonais (315 ff.) Shelley is .thinking of the hostile reviewers, 
whose bitter attack on Keats's Endymion was popularly supposed to have caused his 
death. He is also voicing his own protest against the coldness and scorn with which 
the world had looked upon himself and his poetical work. 

The question of immortality is first raise.d in lines 154 ff., where the revival of 
nature in the spring, the perpetual rebirth of material beauty, is bitterly contrasted 
with the apparently everlasting death of the soul. Shelley returns to the subject 



662 COMMENTAEY ON AUTHORS AND WOEKS 

toward the close of the poem and the note of grief is changed to one of joy at the 
thought that the spirit does not die but becomes "a portion of the eternal." Shelley's 
faith in eternal life is a part of his general philosophy of the reality of the ideal. The 
soul of Adonais does not enjoy an individual existence, but blends witli the creative 
spirit which is the true source of all earthly beauty, the "One" which remains when 
"The many change and pass." Finally the poem becomes an exhortation to follow 
Adonais by passing in spirit beyond material reality to the "abode where the eternal 
are," to the realm of pure ideas. 

A Dirge (1822) 428 

England in 1819 (1819) 418 

The reactionary forces in government were in full control in England as elsewhere 
after the Congress of Vienna in 1815. Shelley proposes no practical remedy, and in 
this he differs from the earlier revolutionists. He does, however, maintain the old 
fervent hope for the future, endeavoring to bring about a great change by pa.inting 
the ideal. His conception of his own function is described in To a Skylark : 

Like a poet, hidden 

In the light of thought ; 
Singing hymns unbidden, 
Till the world is wrought 
To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not. 
Hellas (1821) 

The World's Great Age Begins Anew 420-421 

See footnote. Shelley's eager hope is subject to discouragement, and the note of 
deep despondency, as at the close of this rapturous prophecy, is as characteristic 
in his poetry as the, note of faith. Compare A Dirge. 

Hymn to Intellectual Beauty (1816) 415-416 

Intellectual Beauty is ideal beauty, the beauty perceived not by the senses but 
by the mind. This divine archetype of beauty is Shelley's deity. All earthly beauty 
is a fragment of it, and Shelley is a worshipper of earthly beauty only as it leads to 
the divine. He describes his first vision of the "awful Loveliness" as a sort of religious 
conversion. He had sought, he tells us, for a hold on spiritual reality through the 
ordinary channels of religion and superstition and these had failed him. When once 
he had caught sight of the spiritual vision in the form of beauty he dedicated his life 
to it, and he conceived of his study, his poetry, his love as being aspects of this wor- 
ship. The source of Shelley's mysticism is Platonic. It is to be observed that the ideal 
of beauty includes also the ideal of love. 

Ode to the West Wind (1819) 416-418 

This poem is the greatest and most impassioned of Shelley's lyrics. He rejoices 
in the power and freedom of the West Wind, as Byron might have done, but he goes 
beyond this and makes the Wind a great symbol of regeneration, praying that he may 
be possessed of this divine force in order that his words may be of influence in 
quickening the new birth of man. 

Ozymandias (1819) • • ; 381 

Political Greatness (1821) . . . * 381 

Prometheus Unbound (1819) 

The Power of Man 418 

In Shelley's vision of the regenerated earth love takes the place of law. The 
selfishness and hatred which divide men will give way to a universal harmony of 
thought and purpose. There is no limit to what man may accomplish in art, poetry, 
and science. 

A Vision of the Future 418-420 

In Shelley's treatment of the Prometheus myth (see note on Byron's Prometheus) 
the fall of Jupiter symbolizes the overthrow of all tyranny and the liberation of 
man's spirit. Inheriting from the theorists of the French Revolution, particularly 
Godwin, the idea that human nature is essentially benevolent and good, and that 
man needs only to be freed from the evil restraint of government, custom, law, and 



COMMENTAKY ON AUTHOES AND WOEKS 663 

traditional religion to become wliat he was designed to be by nature, Shelley 
transmuted the somewhat frigid doctrines into a glorious vision of a regenerated 
earth. In the present passage the Spirit of the Hour (i.e., the hour in which the 
great revolution was brought about) reports to Prometheus, who by his unyielding 
. moral resistance to the tyrant has brought about man's liberation, the marvellous 
changes which took place on earth after the fall of Jupiter. Shelley's thought about 
society is weak in its relation to reality, but it must be remembered that he did not 
pretend to be a practical reformer. The heart of his vision of perfection remains 
true for all time and is valuable as a revelation of the goal of human striving. 
He is a dreamer, but mankind cannot live without such dreams. » 

The Day! 420 

"The Day" is the day of Jupiter's fall, the time when mankind shall at last be 
free. Shelley asserts the supremacy of the moral qualities of man, and paints the 
ideal of human character which was embodied in his own life. 

The World's Great Age Begins Anew 420-421 

Smuts, Et. Hon. J. 0. (1858-—) 

The British Commonwealth of Nations (1917) 623-625 

SouTHEY, Egbert (1774-1843) 

The Life of Horatio Lord Nelson (1813) 

Nelson at Trafalgar 360-366 

England's naval victory under the greatest of her sea commanders established 
the supremacy of her fleet and put an end to Napoleon's hope of an invasion. 

Spenser, Edmund (1552-1599) 

An Symn in Honor of Beauty (1596) 

The Gospel of Beauty 23-24 

Spenser wrote four hymns In which he set forth a philosophy of Beauty originally 
drawn from Plato and dwelt on by many writers in the Renaissance. The original 
Platonic philosophy was modified by Dante's idealization of Beatrice and Petrarch's 
sonnets in praise of Laura, so that the love of man for woman became a religion of 
beauty. Marlowe's praise of beauty (page 13) represents the worship of physical or 
earthly beauty alone. Hooker uses the theme in the Platonic sense of the heavenly 
perfection to which the soul aspires (page 14). Spenser dwells on the beauty of 
soul that is the image of the divine beauty. This "Religion of Beauty," as It has been 
called, inspired much of the love poetry of the Renaissance, in Italy, France, and 
England. See, for example, Spenser's Amoretti, a collection of sonnets, and Sidney's 
sonnets In praise of Stella. 

Mother Hubherd's Tale (probably written about 1579; published 1591) 

' ' The Brave Courtier " 49-50 

This eloquent passage should be compared with Wordsworth's Happy Warrior. 
* ' Of Virtuous and Gentle Discipline, ' ' 1589 47-49 

Spenser's association with Raleigh in Ireland led to a friendship that resulted In 
the dedication of the Faene Queene to the man whom Spenser happily called "the 
Shepherd of the Ocean," in allusion to Raleigh's services to colonization and discovery. 
The letter of dedication, from which this extract is taken, is important not only for 
Its setting forth of the plan and purposes of the Faerie Queene, but also for Its Ideas 
on the training of men for public service. 

TIt^ Faerie Queene, II, vii (1590) 

Self -Discipline : The Story of Guyon 15-23 

The theme of Spenser's great epic poem, planned in twelve books, only six of 
which were completed, was the fashioning of a "gentleman or noble person In vir- 
tuous and gentle discipline," that is, the attainment of the perfection as warrior, 
poet, scholar, philosopher, of which Marlowe, Bacon, Hooker, Sidney also wrote. 
Each book was to detail the adventures of a knight conspicuous for some virtud, 
such as Holiness, Chastity, Friendship, Justice, Courtesy, etc. Prince Arthur rep- 
resented Magnificence, or Greatness of Mind, the sum of all the virtues. The selec- 



664 COMMENTARY ON AUTHORS AND WORKS 

tion here given is from the second book, in which Guyon, the knight of Temper- 
ance, goes through various tests before his great adventure, the destruction of the 
Bower of Bliss in which Acrasia, an enchantress, the opposite of Temperance, led 
men astray. The supreme test of Guyon in this process of preparation is his journey 
through the Cave of Mammon, or worldliness. The ideal that is set forth is that of 
self-restraint, the ancient classical conception of Temperance. That is, Spenser 
shows that unlimited self-development such as that desired by Faustus or Tambur- 
laine is wrong ; there must be an inner check to curb lawless desire. 

Stanton, Frank L. (1857 ) 

One Country = " 589 

Steele, Sir Richard (1671-1729) 

The Spectator (1711-1714) 

The Spectator Club 201-203 

The idea of conveying his social satire by means of the Action of a club, of which 
the author is a member and whose conversations and opinions he purports to record. 
Is Steele's most original contribution to the design of the periodical essay. His first 
sketch for this essay is given in the preceding selection. There were hundreds of 
such clubs in actual existence in London, but there is no such unique and delightful 
personage as Sir Roger de Coverley outside the pages of fiction. The figure was after- 
wards elaborated with a more delicate art by Addison. 

The Career of Conquest 

The selection applies the standards of British common-sense to the ambitious 
folly of the Grand Monarque. The Peace of Ryswick, 1697, following the English 
naval victory at La Hogue and the formation of the Grand Alliance against France, 
was the temporary frustration of Louis's hope of reestablishing the Stuarts in England 
and extending the bounds of his empire on the continent. 

The Tatler (1709-1711) 

The Trumpet Club .199-201 

Mental poverty and narrowness of interest have brought the members of this club 
to a state of complete torpidity in their old age. The picture is a really telling warn- 
ing against allowing the life of the mind to atrophy in youth and manhood. 

Men of Fire 241-242 

Swift, Jonathan (1667-1745) 

Gulliver's Travels (1726) 219-235 

In "Political Acrobatics" Swift ridicules by an amusing parody the tricks and 
devices to, which public ministers have to resort in order to secure and maintain 
their places. The tight-rope suggests the instability of high office. 

The "violent faction at home" which is alluded to in "Political Parties and Inter- 
national Relations in Lllliput" Is the Tory party or rather that branch of it which 
still adhered to the exiled house of Stuart. The "potent enemy" is Louis XIV. The 
dispute about egg-breaking refers to the doctrinal controversies which had influenced 
English political history since the Reformation. The Emperor who lost his head is 
Charles I, the one who lost his crown, James II. 

In the fourth selection, "English Institutions," Swift scathingly denounces the 
social and political fabric of England by exhibiting it as it appears to the eyes of an 
impartial observer. The imperturbability of manner, the sinewy vigor of the language, 
and the keenness of the thrusts are characteristic of the powers which make Swift 
rank among the world's great satirists. 

The satire in the next selection, "Research," is directed against certain types of 
scientific investigators and theorists, who possess boundless patience and ingenuity 
without the saving grace of common sense. Fondness for "projects" was a weakness 
of the eighteenth century, witness Defoe's Essay on Projects and the scheme con- 
ceived by the fertile brain of Sir Richard Steele for bringing fish alive from the coasts 
of Newfoundland. The newly developed interest in science led to a passion for inves- 
tigation and experiment which, however ridiculous in some of its immediate results, 
held a promise for future development which Swift did not, perhaps, altogether 
appreciate. 



COMMENTAEY ON AUTHOES AND WOEKS 665 

In the last book of Chilliver's Travels bitterness and misanthropy get the better 
of Swift's reason. His attack, as in the selection on "War," is aimed, not at the 
foibles and abuses of society, but against human nature itself. "I hate and detest 
the animal called man," he once wrote to Pope, "and upon this great foundation of 
misanthropy the whole building of my Travels is erected." In such a mood as this 
Swift ceases to be useful for the improvement of mankind. His indictment is the 
more terrible because it is partly true. 

SwiNBUENE, Algernon Charles (1837-1909) 

An Appeal 452 

An exhortation to England to remain loyal to its ancient Ideals of justice and 
not to join the tyrannous crew of continental governments leagued together for 
oppression. 

The Garden of Proserpine (1866) 537-538 

Proserpine, goddess of the dead, stands as a symbol of oblivion and rest from 
the vain and hopeless turmoil of life. To Swinburne poetry is a kind of narcotic 
through which man enters the gates of the garden of Proserpine. He makes no effort 
to deal resolutely with the perplexities and discouragement of human existence and 
knows of no remedy for the Ills of life but sleep. The attitude is the exact antithesis 
of Browning's. 

On the Monument Erected to Mazzini at Genoa 455-456 

A Song in Time of Order (1852) 451-452 

The period referred to is that Immediately after the revolutions of 1848, In which 
the cause of liberty seemed to have been definitely lost. There remains to the 
Idealist the refuge of his own unconquered mind and the society of the few who 
like himself bid a continued defiance to tyranny — and wait. 

T0 Louis Kossuth 456 

To Walt Whitman in America 461-462 

Swinburne finds in Whitman an expression of the spirit of freedom and an embodi- 
ment of the great democratic hope which the example of the new world afforded to 
the old. 

Tennyson, Alfred (1809-1892) 

Crossing the Bar (1889) 526 

England and America in 1782 (1874) 299 

Hands All Bound (1852) 450 

In Memoriam (1850) 

The Challenge of Science 524-525 

The death of his dearest friend, Arthur Hallam, brought Tennyson's religious 
faith to the test. In Memoriam is the record of the inner confilct occasioned by his 
Borrow and of the spiritual triumph over despair and doubt. Tennyson was fully 
aware of the claims of science and of its irreconcilability with naive faith. The 
poems here given are the embodiment of the intense effort of the best minds of the 
Victorian age to work out a new faith which should not blind the eyes of reason 
to the order of facts so coolly and irrefutably set forth by men like Huxley. Dar- 
win's Origin of the Species was not published until nine years after In Memoriam 
but Tennyson is familiar with the main lines of the evolutionary hypothesis and 
accepts it. In the last selection he transfers the law of development from the material 
to the spiritual sphere, seeing the whole vast course of the earth's history as cul- 
minating in man and pointing forward to his future progress toward a divine goal. 

Love Thou Thy Land (1833) 445-446 

Northern Farmer: New Style (1870) 476-477 

Tennyson portrays a type of character wholly dominated by sordid materialism. 
The ideals of Carlyle's "Plugson of Undershot" are not confined to the industrial 
classes, but operate as powerfully and in an even meaner way in rural life. 



QQQ COMMENTAEY ON AUTHOKS AND WOEKS 

Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington (1852) '. 447-450 

Tennyson's ardent love of England finds in the greatest of English soldiers its 
natural rallying point. Great as are the virtues celebrated in this noblest of martial 
odes, the figure of Wellington would scarcely be exalted as the ideal hero by a poet 
less steeped in nationalism than Tennyson. 

Of Old Sat Freedom on the Heights (1833) 445 

The Higher Pantheism (1870) 525-526 

Pantheism sees God and Nature as one. The "higher pantheism" makes God a 
spirit immanent in but transcending Nature. Tennyson's philosophy of the absolute 
is substantially the same as Carlyle's. 

To th^ Queen (1873) 450-451 

Tennyson's intense loyalty to the sovereign as the representative of English tradi- 
tions and institutions is not a result but a cause of his having been chosen Poet 
Laureate. The plea in this poem for a full consciousness of England's imperial 
mission and of a correspondingly vigorous foreign policy puts Tennyson on the side 
of the conservative party headed by Disraeli. His indignation is aroused by those 
who would countenance the dissolution of the empire by supporting the movement 
for the separation of Canada. 

Wages (1868) 526 

Tou AsTc Me, Why, (1833) 445 

In Tennyson the love of freedom and the love of England are identical. He here 
casts his voice for the ordered liberty of Burke, won through long generations of slow 
development and associated with all that is most precious in the national tradition. 
He elsewhere exclaims against "the blind fool fury of the Seine." 

Thackeray, William Makepeace (1811-1863) 

Vanity Fair (1847-48) 

Waterloo 371-380 

Vaughan, Henry ( 1622 (?) -1695) 

Behind the Veil (1655) 113-114 

The Betreat (1650) 112-113 

Vaughan's religious feeling differs from the saintly piety of Herbert through its 
mysticism. The soul and eternity are the subjects of his rapt contemplation and 
spiritual ecstasy. The present poem embodies the Platonic conception of a preexistent 
heavenly state, from which the soul comes pure and divine into the world of time. 
Compare Wordsworth's Intimations of Immortality^ p. 386. 

The World (1650) 113 

The vision of the one and eternal, in contrast to the shadowy unreality of the 
many, is again Platonic, but the philosophical conception is blended with Christian 
imagery and feeling. 

Washington, George (1732-1799) 
Farewell Address (1796) 

Liberty and Union 539-542 

Party Spirit •. 542-543 

America and the World 543-545 

These three extracts from one of the greatest of American state papers deal with 
the three questions of paramount importance in domestic and foreign relations that 
confronted the new nation. The first is one of many warnings, by Washington and 
others, of the dangers of sectionalism, the rock on which the nation was one day to 
strike with imminent peril, and a source of danger in all times. The second selection 
anticipates the dangers of the "wolfish parties" that sprang up after Washington' 



COMMENTARY ON AUTHORS AND WORKS 667 

time. See the selection from Irving for further comment on this. The third selection is 
the classic phrasing of the theory that dominated American foreign policy until 1917. 

Washington Anticipates the Declaration 295 

This paragraph from a letter written in February, 1776, shows how clearly Wash- 
ington saw the task that was ahead of the colonies. Many people, especially in the 
middle colonies, were loyal to the British government. Many others thought of the 
resistance that had been made, at Lexington, Bunker Hill, and elsewhere, as merely a 
protest ; they had no idea of separation. But Washington saw that independence should 
be declared "in words as clear as the sun," not only for the effect in England, but as a 
means for bringing Americans into unity of thought. 

Webstee, Daniel (1782-1852) 
Bunker Hill Oration (1825) 

Free Government 561-563 

Sacred Obligations 563-564 

The first selection is a clear statement of the way in which the power pf the people 
was set up in America and of American sympathy for the principle of free govern- 
ment that was in 1825 fighting in Europe and in South America against the "inter- 
vention" doctrine of Metternich and the Holy Alliance. The selection also has point 
with reference to the recent revolutions in Russia and in Germany and Austria. The 
second selection should be engraved on the memory of every American citizen, so that 
the obligation to defend the principle of free government may become a personal obliga- 
tion to see to it "that nothing weaken its authority with the world." 

Centennial Oration on Washington (1832) 

The American Experiment 560-561 

"The spirit of human liberty and of free government . . . has stretched its course 
into the midst of the nations." 

Whitman, Walt. (1819-1892) 
Democratic Vistas (1882) 

The Purpose of Democracy 584-586 

A New Earth and a New Man 586-587 

Dangers Within the State 587-588 

These three selections, with the fragment on Nationality which follows,, still 
further develop Whitman's thought of democracy as the mass of men struggling 
upward, and introduce his vision of the future. The last paragraph of "A New Earth 
and a New Man" blends the idea of equality, democracy the leveler, with Emerson's 
Ideal of personality, the highest development of the individual. This two-fold sig- 
nificance is brought out by the two-fold, mystic nature of the Nation, a group of 
separate states (personalities) welded into a unity (the Nation), yet without loss of 
individual life. See Nationality below. 

I Hear America Singing (1860) 572 

Nationality— {And Yet) 588-589 

See the note above. 

Not the Pilot (1867) 590 

An expression of Whitman's oft-repeated conception that his mission was to 
point out the destiny of democracy. Like the verses that follow, an extraordinary 
prophecy of the events of 1917-1918. 

Star of France (1870-1871) 583-584 

This poem should be compared with Meredith's France 1870, p. 456. The reference in 
both cases is to the fate of France in the Franco-Prussian war. Whitman's poem 
prophesies the republic that was to issue from the conflict, and the union of France 
and America in the cause of liberty in 1917. 



668 COMMENTARY ON AUTHORS AND WORKS 

Pioneers! Pioneers! (1865) 572-574 

Bise, Days, From Your Fathomless Deeps 574-575 

These three poems express Whitman's sense of the mass of American democracy, 
the flood of men, taking possession of a vast continent. Contrast Webster's thought 
of democracy as government, and Emerson's thought of it as development of the 
Individual. 

Collect 

The Destiny of America 590-591 

The Prophecy of a New Era 590 

Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood (1872) 581-583 

A prophecy of the mission of America in the world, now In process of fulfillment. 

Whittier, John Greenleaf (1807-1892) 

Lexington (1875) 294 

With the last stanza compare "The Destiny of England and America," by J. R. 
Oreen, Tennyson's "England and America in 1782," Dobell's "America," and Swin- 
burne's "To Walt Whitman." 

The Poor Voter on Election Day (1852) 571-572 

Wilson, WooDROw (1856 ) 

Ahraliam Lincoln (1916) 594-596 

International Justice (1918) 628-630 

The Associated Peoples of the World (1918) 630-632 

The Meaning of the Declaration of Independence (1914) 591-594 

Delivered while the world was still at peace, this address contains the essence of 
the author's political philosophy as developed since that time. 

The Menace of Prussian Ambition (1917) 608-611 

Wordsworth, William (1770-1850) 

Character of the Happy Warrior (1806) 393 

Wordsworth's conception of the Ideal military character Is in harmony with his em- 
phasis in the preceding selections on temperance, self-control, and a lofty conscious- 
ness of duty. The Happy Warrior remains human-hearted even amid the terrible cir- 
cumstances of war. 

Elegiac Stanzas (1805) 389-390 

The poem reflects the change which had come over Wordsworth's spiritual outlook in 
the years since his return from France. The ideal which he now esteems is that of 
human firmness and self-control amid the shock of circumstance. The lines were written 
shortly after the drowning of his brother John. "A deep distress hath humanized my 
soul." 

The Excursion {1S15) 

On Universal Education 394-395 

The so-called "Toryism" of Wordsworth's later years, which led him to oppose the 
Reform Bill of 1832, did not prevent his sympathy with some of the best forward move- 
ments of the nineteenth century. In The Excursion, which contains besides much of his 
more characteristic philosophy, a discussion of all manner of political and social prob- 
lems, he writes against industrial oppression, child-labor, and the ignorance of the 
lower classes. 



COMMENTARY ON AUTHORS AND WORKS 669 

Expostulation and Beply (1798) 384 

The attitude of simple receptiveness assumed by Wordsworth in this poem is the 
direct outcome of his reaction from the revolutionary deification of the reason and of 
Ms personal experience of the healing power of Nature after he had "yielded up moral 
questions in despair." The poem implies his theory of the divine and beneficent life 
in Nature, source of the best impulses and highest inspiration of man, to be entered 
into not by effort but by attuning the spirit to receive its influence. 

Laodamia (1814) 391-394 

The subject is an unusual one with Wordsworth, who commonly confines his atten- 
tion to the real scenes and persons of his own experience, but the moral idea of the 
poem is characteristic of the poet's thought in his more mature years. Laodamia is 
condemned because she gives way to impulse and passion. She is unable to rise to 
sympathy with the lofty ideal of duty which led Protesilaus to sacrifice his life. 

Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey (1798) 384-386 

The return to a beautiful scene not visited since the crisis in his life brought 
about by the French Revolution gives Wordsworth the occasion to compare his present 
with his former emotions on the spot and to review all that Nature has meant and 
still means to him. First, as a memory, the beauty of the scene has been with him in 
absence as a consolation and perhaps, unconsciously, has prompted him to acts of 
kindness and love. To it he may also have owed moments of insight into the divine 
harmony of the world. Returning now to the scene he feels that he is changed. 
The wild rapture with which he looked on Nature in youth is gone. Yet this thought 
causes no despondency, for in his present contemplation of Nature there are two 
new elements as compensation for what is lost : the feeling for humanity which has 
resulted from his contact with men and their sufferings ; and a philosophical conscious- 
ness of the divinity which pervades both Nature and the soul of man. 

Turning now to his sister he sees in her the Image of what once he was, an un- 
conscious child of Nature, and prophesies that her devotion will be repaid by an ex- 
perience of Nature's beneficent influence like his own throughout her life. 

Lines on the Expected Invasion 1803 359 

Ode: Intimations of Immortality (1803-6) 386-389 

In this poem Wordsworth deals, more philosophically, with a theme similar to that 
in Tintern Al)hey. Confronted by the phenomenon of a change in his power of respond- 
ing to Nature and grieved by the thought that he can no longer experience the earlier 
rapture the poet seeks an explanation and finds it in the Platonic doctrine of pre- 
existence (Stanza V). The divine thrill of childhood is an evidence of the heavenly 
origin of the soul and of its eternal existence. The man's remembrance of these ecstasies 
of his early years are the "intimations of immortality." As a result of this meditation 
the poet is consoled for the loss of his earlier experience, in the place of which he has 
won a deeper sympathy for man and a profound philosophic faith. Compare Vaughan's 
poem The Retreat, which Wordsworth apparently had in mind. The train of thought 
in the Ode gives the key to the reverence for childhood which Wordsworth shared 
with many poets of the romantic period. 

Ode to Duty (1805) 390 

In making this noble appeal to the principle of morality for guidance and support 
Wordsworth in a measure recants from his earlier faith in the spontaneous and un- 
guided impulses of the heart. Experience of life had taught him to feel more and more 
the need of an invariable standard. He continues to recognize the beauty of the creed 
of joy and love, but he knows that human nature must heed also in its times of weak- 
ness and error tke mandate of the stern but divinely beautiful power which preserves 
the stars in their courses and lays the law of sacrifice and restraint upon the heart of 
man. Compare Arnold's Morality. 

Sonnets 

"Fair Star of Evening" (1802) 356 

This sonnet was composed by the seaside near Calais during the short pause in hos- 
tilities following the peace of Amiens. 



570 COMMENTAEY ON AUTHORS AND WORKS 

0*1 the Extinction of the Venetian Republic (1802) 356 

The city-republic of Venice was conquered by Napoleon in 1797 and turned over to 
Austria. The first two lines refer to the greatness of Venice as a trading nation and a 
bulwark against the Turk in the Middle Ages. 

Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation of Switzerland (1807) 356-357 

The invasion of Switzerland by the armies of Revolutionary France under Napoleon 
in 1797 convinced Wordsworth that they were no longer champions of liberty but op- 
pressors. The mighty sea-voice of Liberty is, of course, England's. 

These Times Strike Monied Worldlings with Dismay (1803) 357 

"Milton! Thou Shouldst Be Living at This Hour" (1802) 357 

September, 1802, Near Dover (1802) 357 

Only a virtuous nation can be free. The lesson was one that Wordsworth learned 
from France. Compare Coleridge's France, p. 350. 

Written in London, September, 1802 357 

See footnote. 

"There Is a Bondage Worse, Far Worse, to Bear" (1803) 358 

Here Pause : The Poet Claims at Least This Praise (1811) 358 

Wordsworth sees his whole poetical activity during the years of the Napoleonic 
wars as a defense of morality and self-restraint combined with national independence. 

"It Is Not to Be Thought of" (1802) 358 

"When I Have Borne in Memory" (1802) 358 

England! The Time Is Come (1803) 358 

Vanguard of Liberty (1803) 359 

"Come Ye— Who, If (Which Heaven Avert) " 359 

"Another Year!" (1806).. 359 

October, 1803 359 

Anticipation, October, 1803 360 

Waterloo (1816) • 380 

Wordsworth's celebrations of the final victory hardly reach the level of his poems 
written during the struggle. 

Occasioned by the Battle of Waterloo (1816) 380 

Moscow (1816) 380 

Praise of Russian national heroism is rare in English literature and appears to have 
been confined to the two periods in history when Russia and England were allies in war. 

The World Is Too Much With Us 389 

To Toussaint L 'Ouverture 389 

The Convention of Cintra (1809) 

The War of Liberty 352-356 

See footnote. 



COMMENTAEY ON AUTHOES AND WOEKS 671 

The Mountain Echo (1806) 390-391 

In his earlier nature poems Wordsworth does not distinguish so sharply between 
the voices of the sense and the higher voice of God within the soul. The implied dual- 
ism of human nature removes the Wordsworth of this period farther from the romanti- 
cism of Rousseau, and distinguishes his point of view from that of Byron or Keats, 

The Poet 381 

The Preface to the Lyrical Ballads (1798, 1815) 

The Poet's Mission 382-384 

In the earlier part of this document (not given here) Wordsworth propounds the 
famous theory that the language of poetry is that of real men, and is not essentially 
different from that of prose. He also advocates the use of subjects from simple life, 
rendered significant and universal by the meditation of the poet. The more permanent 
contribution of the Preface is the idea of the function of the poet as an interpreter of 
life, quickening with thought and feeling the common experience of men. Wordsworth's 
serious view of poetry did much to restore it to the position which it had lost as an 
essential element in the deepest human culture. Compare the preface to this volume 
and Arnold's Sweetness and Light, p. 495. 

Tfee PreJtwZe (1799-1805; published 1850) 

Burke 305 

Experiences of an English Idealist 337-350 

The selection is from that part of Wordsworth's spiritual autobiography which deals 
with the great crisis in his life brought about by his contact with the French Revo- 
lution. Like other young English idealists of his time he watched the great experiment 
In France with eager joy and hope. The tragic disappointment he also shared with 
many of his contemporaries, and his return to the point of view of Burke is symptomatic 
of the great reaction which came to restore spiritual values which had been lost sight of 
and to temper the revolutionary principles as they were passed on to the succeeding 
age. 

To a STcylarTc (1825) 391 

It is characteristic of Wordsworth that he does not, like Shelley, see even the sky- 
lark as a symbol of wholly untrammelled freedom. 

WOTTON, Sir Henry (1568-1639) 

The Character of a Happy Life 105 



INDEX OF AUTHORS, TITLES, AND FIRST LINES 

In the following Index, the names of authors and titles are printed in capital letters; the 
first lines of poems are printed in sntall letters 



A book was writ of late, 159 

A milk-white Hind, immortal and unchanged, 186 

A true born Englishman's a contradictien, 215 

Absalom and Achitophel, From, 184 

Abt Vogler^ 530 

Addison, Joseph, 198, 242 

Address at Gettysburg, 575 

Address Before the Workingmen's Club, An, 

From, 440 
Address Delivered at the Royal Military 

Academy, From, 487 
Address to the Deil, 266 
Address to the King, 273 
Adonais, 421 

Advancement of Learning, The, From, 56 
After All, 589 
Alderman, Edwin A., 619 
"All Knowledge to Be My Province," 13 
America, 461 
America, 596 

America and England, 625 

America and Freedom, From the Preface to, 611 
America and the French Revolution, 329 
America and the World, 543 
America in the World, 627 
American Experiment, The, 560 
American Taxation, From, 274 
American War, The, 264 
"And the Pursuit of Happiness," 79 
And welcome now, great monarch, 183 
"Another Year," 359 
Anticipation. October, 1803, 360 
Apologia pro Vita Sua, From, 521 
Apology for Smectymnuus, An, 119 
Appeal, An, 452 
Appeal for Unity, An, 174 
Areopagitica, From, 146 
Aristocracy and Justice, From, 620 
Arnold, Matthew, 304, 474, 495, 534 
Art Thou indeed among these, 452 
As I stood by yon roofless tower, 265 
Asolando, 534 

Associated Peoples of the World, The, 630 
AsTR^A Redux, From, 183 
At the midnight in the silence of the sleep-time, 

534 
At the sunrise in 1848, 453 
Author's Reflections, The, 558 
Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, 160 
Awake, my St. John ! leave all meaner things, 236 



Bacon, Francis, 13, 50, 101 
Balfour, Arthur J., 625 



Ballad of Agincouet, 34 

Beauty, 429 

Because you have thrown off your Prelate Lord, 

159 
Behind the Veil, 113 
BiGLOw Papers, The, From, 569, 570 
Biographia Literaria, Prom, 395 
Bob Southey ! You're a poet, 410 
BOKE OF the Governour, The, From, 42, 46 
Bradford, William, 162 
"Brave Courtier, The," 49 
Brave infant of Saguntum, clear, 106 
Bright, John, 440 

Britain the Home of True Liberty, 154 
British Commonwealth of Nations, The, 623 
British Constitution, The, 216 
British Social Politics, From, 613 
Brotherhood of Man, 162 
Browning, Robert, 444 
Bryant, William Cullen, 539 
Building of the Ship, The, From, &72 
Bunker Hill Oration, From the, 561, 563 
BuNYAN, John, 114 
Burke, (WordsworthJ, 305 
Burke, Character op, (John-Morley), 305 
Burke, Edmund, 274, 307 
Burns, Robert, 253 
Bury the Great Duke, 447 
Busy Life, A, 207 
Butler, Samuel, 177 
By Moscow self-devoted to a blaze, 380 
By the rude bridge that arched the flood, 294 
Byron, Lord, 366, 406 



Cabinet Government Under George III, 272 

Can tyrants but by tyrants conquer'd be, 409 

Captains of Industry, 470 

Career of Conquest, The, 218 

Carlyle, Thomas, 268, 299, 304, 463, 516 

"Carpe Diem," 536 

Cause, The, 352 

Centennial Oration on Washington, From, 560 

Certainty and Peace in the Catholic Church, 

521 
Challenge of Science, The, 524 
Challenge to the Democratic Principle, A, 597 
Character of Elizabeth, The, 25 
Character of a Happy Life, The, 105 
Character of Burke, The, 305 
Character of the Happy Warrior, 393 
Character of Pitt, The, 269 
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, From, 366, 407 



673 



674 



INDEX OF AUTHOES, TITLES, AND FIEST LINES 



Christabbl, From, 401 

Clough, Arthur Hugh, 453, 536 

CoLKRiDGEj Samuel Taylor, 350, 395 

Collar., TSe, 112 

Collect, Prom, 590 

Come hither, lads, and barken, 475 

Come, my tan-faced children, 572 

"Comb Ye — Who, If," 359 

Comedy op Politics, The, 546 

Commonwealth of the Bees, The, 90 

Compact of the Pilgrims, The, 163 

Concord Hymn, 294 

Convention of Cintra, The, From, 352 

CoEiNNA's Going a-Maying, 117 

Cotter's Saturday Night, The, 253 

Counsels of Experience, 50 

COWPER, William, 247, 298, 336 

Crabbe, George, 251 

Crisis, The, From, 297 

Crisis, The Present, 568 

Cromwell, Oliver, 171 

Cromwell, our chief of men, 160 

Crossing the Bar, 526 

Crouched on the pavement, close by Belgrave 

Square, 474 
Crown of Wild Olive, A, 477 
Crisis, Sonnets on the, 356 
Cyriack, this three years' day, 126 

Daffodils, To, 118 

Dangers Within the State, 587 

Day Is Coming, The, 475 

Day, The, 420 

Death, 105 

Death, be not proud, though some have called 
thee, 105 

Death-Birth of a World, The, 304 

Declaration of Independence, The, From, 296 

Deeds of Elizabethan Seamen, 36 

Defects in Learning, Some, 59 

Defoe, Daniel, 210, 215 

Dejection : An Ode, 404 

Democratic Vistas, From, 584, 586, 587 

Destiny of America, The, 590 

Destiny of England and America^ 298 

Dewey, John, 597, 601, 627 

Diary, From the, (Pepys), 175 

Dirge, A, 428 

Disappointment and Restoration, 341 

Discourse upon International Relations, Hap- 
piness, AND Reformers, 72 

Divine Life in Man and Nature, The, 384 

DoBELL, Sidney, 461 

Does mighty Gaul invasion threat, 266 

Don Juan, 410, 412 

Donne, John, 105 

Dover Beach, 536 

Drayton, Michael, 34, 36 

Dream, A, 262 

Dryden, John, 183 

Dumfries Volunteers, The, 266 

Dyer, Sir Edward, 105 

Ecclesiastical Polity, From, 14, 93 
Education of Men Who Are to Rule, 42 



Education of Women, The, 210 

EiKONOKLASTES, From, 156 

Elegiac Stanzas, Suggested by a Picture op 

Peele Castle, 389 
Elegy Written in a Country Churchyaed, 

An, 245 
Blyot, Sir Thomas, 42, 46, 84 
Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 294, 564 
Endymion, From, 429 
England and America, 161 
England and America in 1872, 299 
England at War, 32 
England in 1819, 418 
"England ! the Time Is Come," 358 
England Through Utopian Eyes, 66 
England, with all thy faults I love thee still, 251 
English Camp, The, 33 
English Institutions, 225 
Epistle, An, 526 
Equality, 241 

Essay on Burns, An, Prom, 268 
Essay on Criticism, An, From, 212 
Essay on Man, An, Prom, 236, 239, 240 
Essay upon Projects, An, 210 
Essays (Bacon), 50 

Essays or Counsels Civil and Moral, 50 
Eternal Spirit of the chainless mind, 406 
Ethereal minstrel ! pilgrim of the sky, 391 
Excursion, The, From, 394 
Experiment, American, The, 560 
Experiment in Democracy, An, 618 
Experiences of an English Idealist, 337 ; 
Expostulation and Reply, 384 

Faerie Queen, The, Prom, 15, 47 

Fair Daffodils, we weep to see, 118 

"Fair Star op Evening," 356 

Fair stood the wind for France, 34 

Fairfax, whose name in arms, 159 

Fallen on Evil Days, 130 

Farewell Address, The, From, 539, 543 

Faustus, Tragical History op Doctor, The, 1 

Pear death ? to feel the fog in my threat, 534 

Fight with Apollyon, The, 114 

First follow Nature, and your judgment frame, 

212 
First Inaugural Address, Prom the, 545 
First pledge our Queen this solemn night, 450 
First Promotion of Learning, The, 164 
First View of the Revolution, 337 
Fitzgerald, Edward, 536 
Five years have past ; five summers, 384 
FoRS Clavigera, From, 489 
Foundations of Our Government, 545 
France 1870, 456 
France : An Odb, 350 
France. Before Harplbue, 32 
Free Commonwealth, A, 157 
Free Government, 561 
French Revolution, The, From, 299, 304 

Garden op Proserpine, The, 537 

Garden of the Commonwealth, 85 
Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, 118 
Genius of Burke ! forgive the pen, 305 



INDEX OF AUTHOES, TITLES, AND FIKST LINES 



675 



George^ David Lloyd, 603 

German Philosophy and Politics, From, 601 

Get up, get up for shame, the blooming morn, 117 

Give me my scallop-shell of quiet, 107 

Glory of warrior, glory of orator, 526 

God of our fathers, known of old, 452 

God said, Let there be light, 453 

Godwin, William, 333 

Golden Mean, The, 235 

Gospel of Beauty, The, 23 

Gospel of Duty and Its Implications, 601 

Government, 240 

Government Is fob the Living, 319 

Gray, Thomas, 245 

Green, John Richard, 25, 28, 109, 269, 298 

Grey, Viscount, 611 

Grounds of Hope, The, 356 

Grow old along with me, 531 

Guld-mornin' to your Majesty, 262 

Gulliver's Travels, Selections from, 219 

Guvener B. Is a sensible man, 569 

Hakluyt, Richard, 36 

Hands All Round, 450 

Hankey, Donald, 618 

Happiness and Labor, 464 

Happy those early days, when I, 112 

Hawthorne, Nathaniel, 165 

Hayes, Carleton, 613 

Hellas, From, 420 

Hence, loath&d melancholy, 120 

Henley, William Ernest, 538 

Henry, Patrick, 295 

Henry V, From, 32 

"Her Voice the Harmony of the World," 99 

Herbert, George, 112 

"Here Pause : The Poet Claims," 358 

Here, where the world is quiet, 537 

Heretic in the Truth, A, 150 

Herrick, Robert, 117 

Hesperides and Noble Numbers, From, 117 

Higher Pantheism, The, 525 

Himself a True Poem, 119 

Hind and the Panther, The, From, 186 

History of Plymouth Plantation, From the, 

162 
History of the World, From, 108 
Hobbes, Thomas, 178 
Home-Thoughts, from Abroad, 444 
Home-Thoughts, from the Sea, 445 
Hood, Thomas, 473 
Hooker, Richard, 14, 93 
How happy is he born and taught, 105 
How soon hath time, the subtle thief of youth, 

126 
How to Judge a Play, 213 
Hudibras, From, 177 
Huxley, Thomas Henry, 507 
Hymn in Honor of Beauty, An, From, 23 
Hymn to Intellectual Beauty, 415 

I did but prompt the age, 159 

I du believe in Freedom's cause, 570 

I Hear America Singing, 572 

I met a traveler from an antique land, 381 



I saw Eternity the other night, 113 

I see tremendous entrances and exits, 590 

I struck the board, and cried, 112 

I was thy neighbor once, thou rugged Pile, 389 

I weep for Adonais — he is dead, 421 

Idealist of the Revolution, An, 338 

Idylls of the King, Epilogue, 450 

If thou indeed derive thy light from Heaven, 381 

IL Phnseeoso, 122 

Imaginary Commonwealth of Utopia, 63 

Imperial Britain, An, 274 

In Mbmoriam, From, 524 

In Praise of Beauty, 13 

In the first year of freedom's second dawn, 418 

Infinite Desire, 12 

Inheritance, The, 463 

Inland, within a hoJlow vale, I stood, 357 

Inquiry Concbrninq Political Justicii, An, 

From, 333 
Internationai, Honob, 603 
Intimations of Immortality, 386 
Intrepid sons of Albion ! not by yoy, 880 
Invictus, 538 
Irving, Washington, 546 
Is there, for honest poverty, 258 
Is this a fast, to keep, 119 
Isles of Greece, Thb, 412 
"It Is Not to be Thought of," 358 
Italia, mother of the souls of men, 455 
Italian in England, The, 453 

Jefferson, Thomas, 296, 545 

Johnson, Edward, 164 

JoNsoN, Ben, 106 

"Junius," 272 

Just for a handful of silver he left us, 444 

Karshish, the picker-up of learning's crumbs, 526 
Keats, John, 429 
Kipling, Rudyard, 452 

Knickerbocker's History of New York, From, 
546 

La Belle Dame Sans Mbrci, 429 

Labor, 468 

Labor in Utopia, 76 

Lady's Library, A, 209 

L' Allegro, 120 

Lanier, Sidney, 596 

Laodamia, 391 

League of Nations, A, 331 

Let me not to, the marriage of true minds, 104 

Let those who are in favor with their stare, 103 

Letter to Diodati, A, From, 120 

Letter to Lord Chancellor Burghlbt, A, 13 

Letter to the Duke of Grafton, A, From, 272 

Letter to the Sheriffs of Bristol, 283 

Letter to the Rev. John Newton, 298 

Leviathan, From, 178 

Lexington, 294 

Liberty and Union, 539 

"Liberty Connected with Order, A," 307 

Liberty of Thought, 148 

Liberty of Thought and Discussion, 435 

Liberty or Death, 295 

Liberty the Nurse of All Great Wits, 150 



676 



INDEX OF AUTHOKS, TITLES, AND FIEST LINES 



Life of Nelson, The, From, 360 

Light of our fathers' eyes, and in our own, 456 

Lincoln, Abraham, 575 

Lincoln, Abraham (Woodrom Wilson), 594 

Lines Composed a Few Milks Above Tintkrn 

Abbey, 384 
Long as thine art shall love true love, 596 
Longfellow, Henry Wadswobth, 572 
Lord, thou hast given me a cell, 118 
Lost Leader, The, 444 
Lot of Poverty, The, 248 
Love, 112 
Love bade me welcome ; yet my soul drew back, 

112 
LovB Thod Thy Land, 445 
LowBLL, JaJiIBS Eusskll, 568, 576 
Lycidas, 123 

Macpherson's Farewelii, 261 

"Made in Germany," 320 

Maintaining Things That Are Establishid, 93 

Man's a Man for A' That, A, 258 

Marlowe, Christopher, 1 

Masterpiece of a Politician, The, 154 

Mat-Pole op Merky Mount, The, 165 

Mean, The Golden, 235 

Meaning of the Declaration of Independence, 

The, 591 
Meantime, day by day, the roads, 338 
Men of Fire, 241 

Men say, Columbia, we shall hear thy guns, 461 
Menace of Prussian Ambition, The, 608 
Menace of Spain, The, 28 
Meredith, George, 456 
Mill, John Stuart, 433 
Milton, John, 119-162 
"Milton ! Thou Shouldst Be Living at This 

Hour," 357 
Mind of Germany, The, 597 
Moral Effects of Aristocracy, The, 335 
Moral Essays, From, 235 
Morality, 535 

More Divine Perfection, A, 14 
•More, Paul Elmer, 620 
More, Sir Thomas, 63 
MoRLET, John, "Viscount, 305, 439 
Morris, William, 475 
Moscow, 380 

Mother Hubberd's Tale, From, 49 
Mountain Echo, The, 390 

Much have I travel'd in the realms of gold, 431 
Munsterberg, Hugo, 597 
My Country, 251 
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains, 

430 
My lov'd, my honor'd, much respected friend, 253 
My Mind to Mb a Kingdom Is, 105 

Nation of Men, A, 564 
Nationality — (And Yet), 588 
Nation's Protest, The, 160 
Natural Aristocracy, 620 
Natural Supernaturalism, 516 
Nature of a Commonwealth, The, 178 
Nature of the British Constitution, The, 309 
Nelson at Trafalgar, 360 



New Earth and a New Man, A, 586 

New Force in Politics, A, 613 

Newman, John Henry, 521 

No Berserk thirst of bload had they, 294 

Nobly, nobly Cape Saint Vincent, 445 

Nor happiness, nor majesty, nor fame, 381 

Northern Farmer : New Style, 476 

Not marble, nor the gilded monuments, 103 

Not mine own fears, nor the prophetic soul, 104 

Not the Pilot, 590 

Not the pilot has charged himself, 590 

Notes Left Over, 588 

O ! blest with temper, whose unclouded ray, 235 

O Friend ! I know not which way, 357 

O loyal to the royal in thyself, 450 

Mother of a Mighty Race, 539 

Star of France, 583 

O Thou, that sendest out the man, 299 

O thou 1 whatever title suit thee, 266 

O, wild West Wind, thou breath, 416 

O, yet we trust that somehow good, 524 

Obermann Once More, 304 

Occasioned by the Battle of Waterloo, 380 

Ocean, The, 409 

October, 1803, 359 

Ode on the Death of the Duke of Wellington, 

447 
Ode on a Grecian Urn, 431 
Ode Recited at the Harvard Commemoration, 

576 
Ode to a Nightingale, 430 
Ode to Duty, 390 
Ode to the West Wind, 416 
Of an Ambitious Norman, 327 
Of Celestial Light, 127 
Of "Chivalry," 321 
Of Chivalry, 313 
Of Commonwealth, 178 
Of Darkness Visible, 126 
Of "Degree," 91 
Of Democracy, 553 
Op Democracy and War, 553 
Op Discipline, 153 
Of Dispatch, 55 
Op Divine Right, 87 
Op Empire, 101 
Op Free Government, 316 
Op Government, 93 
Of Great Place, 53 
Of Innovations, 102 
Of Justice, 156 
Op Law in Nature, 94 

Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit, 131 
Of Nature in Men, 53 

Op Old Sat Freedom on the Heights, 445 
Of Perfectibility, 334 
Of Reformation in England, 161 
Op Restraints, 147 
Of Slavery, 247 
Of Studies, 52 

Of the Architecture of Fortune, 60 
Of the Law of Nations, 98 
Of the Liberty op Subjects, 180 
Of the Nature op Liberty, 307 
Op the Rights of Men, 311 



INDEX OF AUTHORS, TITLES, AND FIRST LINES 



677 



Of the Rise of Parties, 549 
Of the Several Kinds of Commonwealth, 180 
Of the Sources of Government, 94 
Of Travel, 51 
Of Truth, 50 
Of Tyranny, 249 

Of Virtuous and Gentle Discipline, 47 
Of Wah, 249 

Of War and Treaties, 551 
Of Yankees, 546 

Oh threats of Hell and Hopes of Paradise, 536 
Oh, to be in England, 444 

Old, mad, blind, despised, and dying king, An, 418 
On Conciliating the Colonies, 277 
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer, 431 
On His Having Arrived at the Age op Twenty- 
three, 126 
On His Blindness, 126 
On Liberty, From, 433 
On the Affairs of America, 283 
On the American Ebvolution, 298 
On the Detraction Which Followed upon My 

Writing Certain Treatises, 159 
On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic, 

356 
On the French Revolution, 336 
On the Late Massacre in Piedmont, 160 
On the Lord General Fairfax, 159 
On the Monument Erected to Mazzini at Genoa, 

455 
On the New Forcers of Conscience Under the 

Long Parliament, 159 
On the Same, 159 
On Understanding the Mind of Germany, From, 

597 
On Universal Education, 394 
Once did she hold the gorgeous east in fee, 356 
One Country, 589 

One lesson. Nature, let me learn of thee, 534 
"One Sovereign Governor," 84 
Onward March of Freedom, The, 409 
Oration Delivered Before the Phi Beta Kappa 

Society, An, From, 564 
Organization of Democracy, The, 619 
Our Sea-Walled Garden, 85 
Out of the night that covers me, 538 
Ozymandias, 381 

Paine, Thomas, 297, 819 

Paine's Reply to Burke, From, 319 

Paradise Lost, From, 127, 130, 131 

Party Spirit, 542 

Past and Present, From, 463-472 

Paternalism, 437 

Patriot, The, 455 

Peace Hath Its Victories, 173 

Pepys, Samuel, 175 

Perfect Universe, A, 236 

Physical Basis of Life, The, 507 

Pilgrimage, His, 107 

Pilgrims and Their Compact, The, 162 

Pilgrim's Progress, The, From, 114 

Pindaric Ode, A, 106 

Pioneers ! O Pioneers, 572 

Pious Editor's Creed, The, 570 

Plugson of Undershot, 465 



Poet, The, 381 

Poet's Mission, The, 382 

Poet's Service to the State, The, 128 

Political Acrobatics, 219 

Political Busybody, A, 205 

Political Greatness, 381 

Political Justice, 333 

Political Parties and International Rela- 
tions IN LiLLIPUT, 221 

Political Verse of John Dryden, The, From, 
183 

Poor soul, the center of my sinful earth, 104 

Poor Voter on Election Day, The, 571 

Pope, Alexander, 188, 212, 235 

Power of Man, The, 418 

Praise op Learning, The, 56 

Preface to the Lyrical Ballads, The, Prom, 
382 

Prelude, The, From, 305, 337 

Present Crisis, The, 568 

Principle, The, 433 

Progress of the Nation Under the Liberal 
Regime, 440 

Prometheus, 406 

Prometheus Unbound, From, 418 

Propaganda and Poetry, 395 

Prophecy of a New Era, The, 590 

Prospice, 534 

Public Opinion in the Making, 203 

Public Servants in Lilliput, 225 

Puritan Spirit, The, 109 

Puritan, The, 177 

Purpose of Democracy, The, 584 

Push hard across the sand, 451 

Quiet Work^ 534 

Rabbi Ben Ezra, 531 

Raleigh, Sir Walter, 37, 107, 108 

Rank Is But the Guinea's Stamp, The, 46 

Rape op the Lock, The, 188 

Ready and Easy Way to Establish a Free Com- 
monwealth, A, 157 

Reality of Humble Life, The, 251 

Reason of Church Government, From, 128, 153 

Recessional, 452 

Recollections, From, 439 

Reconstruction op British Labor^ 614 

Reflections on the French Revolution, From, 
307 

Reformation in England, From, 154 

Relation op National Happiness to National 
Independence, 354 

Remainder op Anno : 1620, 163 

Renegade Poets, The, 410 

Report of the Fight Betwixt the Revenge 
and an Armada, From, 37 

Research, 228 

Restoration, The, 175 

Retreat, The, 112 

Richard II, From, 31, 85 

Rights of Man, The, 319 

Rise, O Days, from Your Fathomless Deeps, 
574 

RossETTi, Dante Gabriel, 453 

Rough wind, that moanest loud, 428 



678 



INDEX OF AUTHOES, TITLES, AND FIRST LINES 



RuBAiYAT OF Omak Khaytam, ThBj From, 536 
RusKiN, John, 477-495 

Sacred Obligations, 563 

Samson Agonistes, From, 130 

Sartor Eesartds, From, 516 

Say Not the Struggle Nought Availbth, 453 

Scots Wha Hae, 265 

Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, 265 

Second Defense, The, From, 126, 154 

Second Epistle of the Second Book op Horace, 
The, 235 

Second Inaugural Address, 575 

Self-Dependence, 535 

Self-Discipline: the Story of Guyon, 15 

Self Love and Reason, 239 

Send but a song oversea for us, 461 

September, 1802, Near Dover, 357 

"Servant op God, Well Done," 131 

Service op Learning to the State, 56 

Shakespeare, William, 31, 85 

Shelley, Percy Bysshe, 381, 415 

Ship of State, The, 572 

Short History of the English People, A, 
From, 25, 109, 269 

Shout, for a mighty Victory is won, 360 

Significance of America's Entry, 611 

Since brass, nor stone, nor earth, nor boundless 
sea, 104 

Sincerity of Burns, The, 268 

Smuts, The Rt. Hon. J. C, 623 

Soldier's Duty to His Country, The, 487 

Solitude, 407 

Some Defects in Learning, 59 

Some Elizabethan Political Ideas in Shake- 
speare's Dramas, 85 

Song in Time of Order, A, 451 

Song of the Shirt, The, 473 

Sonnet on Chillon, 406 

Sonnets (Shakespeare) , 102 

Sonnets on Napoleon, 359 

Sonnets on the Crisis, 356 

Source of Power, The, 155 

Southby, Robert,. 360 

Spectator as an Instrument op Reform, The, 
198 

Spectator Club, The, 201 

Speech at the Opening op the Little Parlia- 
ment, From, 171 

Speech Delivered at the Opening op Parlia- 
ment, From, 173 

Speech Delivered Before Parliament, From, 
174 

Spenser, Edmund, 15, 47, 49 

Spirit of Liberalism, The, 439 

Standing of Scholarship in America, The, 
From, 597 

Stanton, Frank L., 589 

Steele, Richard, 199, 241 

Stern Daughter of the Voice of God, 390 

Stop ! — For thy tread is on an BmEire's dust, 366 

Storm and Victory, 299 

Storm, The, 304 

Story op Guyon, The, 15 

Strange Medical Experience of Karshish, 526 

Student in Arms, A, From, 618 



Sunset and evening star, 526 

Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright, 112 

Sweetness and Light, 495 

Swift, Jonathan, 219 

Swinburne, Algernon Charles, 451, 537 

Tamburlaine, Selections from, 12 

Task, The, From, 247 

Tatler, The, and Spectator, The, From, 198 

Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 299, 445, 476, 524 

Tenure op Kings and Magistrates, 155 

Tenure op Kings, From, 162 

Thackeray, William Makepeace, 371 

Thanksgiving to God for His House, A, 118 

That second time they hunted me, 453 

That time of year thou mayst in me behold, 104 

The awful shadow of some unseen power, 415 

The bard — whose soul is meek as dawning day, 

380 
"The child is father of the man," 386 
The curfew tolls the knell of parting day, 245 
The inhabitants of old Jerusalem, 184 
The isles of Greece, the isles of Greece, 412 
The proudest now is but my peer, 571 
The sea is calm tonight, 536 
The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, 525 
"There Is a Bondage Worse, Far Worse, to 

Bear," 358 
There is a pleasure In the pathless woods, 409 
"These Times Strike Monied Worldlings with 

Dismay," 357 
They are all gone into the world of light, 113 
"This England," 31 

This is the day, which down the void abysm, 420 
This Third Period of Time, 62 
Thomas More to Peter Giles, op Antwerp, 63 
Thou Mother with Thy Equal Brood, 581 
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, 431 
Thou, too, sail on, O Ship of State, 572 
Thought of a Briton on the Subjugation op 

Switzerland, 356 
Through Paris lay my readiest course, 337 
Times That Try Men's Souls, 297 
Tired with all these, for restful death I cry, 104 
'Tis the middle of night by the castle clock, 401 . 
Titan ! to whose immortal eyes, 406 
To A Friend, 536 
To A Mouse, 261 
To A Skylark, 391 
To Cybiack Skinner, 126 
To Daffodils, 118 
To Keep a True Lent, 119 
To Louis Kossuth, 456 
To THE Lord General Cromwell, 160 
To the Queen, 450 
To the Virginian Voyage, 36 
To the Virgins, 118 
To Toussaint L'Ouverture, 389 
To Walt Whitman in America, 461 
Toast, The, 266 

Toussaint, the most unhappy man of men, 389 
Trade, 436 
Traffic, 477 

Tragical History op Doctor Faustus, Thb, 1 
Tree of Liberty, The, 263 
Triumphs of the Commonwealth, The, 171 



INDEX OF AUTHOES, TITLES, AND EIEST LINES 



679 



Troilus and Ceessida, From, 91 

True Born Englishman, The, 215 

Trumpet Club, The, 199 

TwA Dogs, The, 258 

'Twas in that place o' Scotland's Isle, 258 

Twice Told Tales, From, 165 

Two Counsels on Government, 101 

Two principles in human nature reign, 239 

Two voices are there ; one is of the sea, 357 

Unity Against the Fob, 32 
Uses op Wealth, The, 234 

"Vanguard of Liberty," 359 

Vanity Fair, 115 

Vanity Fair, From, 371 

Vaughan, Henry, 112 

Victory of England, Thb^ 37 

Village, The, From, 251 

Virtue, 112 

Virtue, 241 

Virtue of Books, The, 146 

Vision, A, 265 

Vision op Human Life, A, 242 

Vision of Judgment, The, 413 

Vision op the Future, A, 418 

Voyage to the Houyhnhnms, A, From, 234 

Voyages, The, From, 36 

Wages, 526 

War, 232 

War of Liberty, The, 352 

Washington Anticipates the Declaration, 295 

Washington, George, 296, 539 

Waterloo (Byron), 366 

Waterloo (Thackeray), 371 

Waterloo (Wordsworth) , 380 

We cannot kindle when we will, 535 

We look for her that sunlike stood, 456 

Weak-winged is song, 576 

Wealth and Poverty, 333 

Weary of myself, and sick of asking, 535 

Webster, Daniel, 561 

Welfare of All the People, 82 

Well ! If the Bard was weather-wise, 404 

West London, 474 

What Are the "Rights op Man," 325 

What Mr. Robinson Thinks, 569 



When a deed is done for Freedom, 568 

When civil dudgeon first grew high, 177 

When Guilford good our pilot stood, 264 

When I consider every thing that grows, 102 

When I consider how my light is spent, 126 

"When I Have Borne in Memory," 358 

When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be, 

432 
When I have seen by Time's fell hand defaced, 103 
When, in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes, 

103 
When, looking on the present face of things, 359 
When to the sessions of sweet, silent thought, 103 
Where Lies the Land to Which the Ship 

Would Go, 536 
White-Thorn Blossom, The, 489 
Whitman, Walt, 572, 581 
Whittiee, John Greenleaf, 294, 571 
Who first taught souls enslaved, 240 
Who is the happy warrior, 393 
Who prop, thou ask'st, in these bad days, 535 
"Why?" Because all I happily can and do, 444 
Why I Am a Liberal, 444 
"Why, William, on that old gray stone," 384 
Will to Power, The, 12 
William the Testy Governs by Proclamation, 

548 
Wilson, Woodrow, 591, 608, 628 
Winter Night, A, 256 
With fingers weary and worn, 473 
"With sacrifice before the rising morn," 391 
Woman, 235 

Wonder- Working Providence, A, From, 164 
Wordsworth, William, 305, 337, 352, 380, 381 
World Is Too Much with Us, The, 389 
World, The, 113 

World's Great Age Begins Anew, The, 420 
Wotton, Sir Henry, 105 
Would that the structure brave, 530 
Written in London, September, 1802, 357 
Wrongs of Man, The, 247 

Ye clouds ! that far above me float and pause, 350 

Yes, it was the mountain Echo, 390 

Yes, sir, how small soever be my heap. 

Yet once more, O ye laurels, and once more, 123 

You Ask Me, Why, Tho' III at Ease, 445 

You brave heroic minds, 36 






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